Ji Di Business Hotel Lhasa

... it is so different than most of the towns we have<br>visited. First, it is large and very modern &#8211; the signs of the<br>businesses are in large Chinese characters; some of the signs have<br>Tibetan characters but the Tibetan is in much smaller script. We<br>don't see traditional Tibetan architecture &#8211; white painted stone &#8211;<br>until we get to the old quarter, a small traditional Tibetan area<br>that has survived (so far) the Chinese sprawl. The Dalai ...

... secret meanings. I'm sure that place could be studied for decades and never be fully understood. <br><br><br>I also checked out Jokhang Temple. My tour guide Lois told me the legend of its creation and I thought it was pretty bizarre. Supposedly the temple was built on a lake. They had tried to build the temple a bunch of times, but each time it collapsed. A local shaman woman said that the geography of Tibet was like an ...

... population of Tibet's largest city has reached over 500,000 and they have managed to remove most of Old Lhasa, leaving just the Potala palace and the area around the Jokan temple as a tourist example of what old "bad" feudal Tibet was all about. Lhasa's saving grace is the Tibetan people. <br><br>They coexist under stern conditions with the imported Han Chinese and the rather large military presence , but they still manage to doggedly avoid the Chinese influence and to hold onto ...

... Nach der Rückkehr hat Song Li meinen Weiterflug nach Kathmandu am 16. bestätigt wohin es morgen geht weiss ich noch nicht. Ich hoffe, ich schaffs nach Gyantse - ansonsten lass ich die Zeit in Lhasa ausklingen...<br><br>....und jetzt gibts aber wirklich tibetisches Dinner ( diesmal hab ich sogar einen Riesenhunger !!! :-) )<br><br>

... with crushed stone. We sat around the outside with many other tourists. We were all waiting for the monks to arrive at 3:00. They perform debates with ritualized gestures of clapping their hands while stomping one foot when they make a point to their audience. The person holding the discussion while a couple other monks are seated on red cushions on the stones. It was quite neat to see and we have some good video of their animated discussions.<br><br>On our way out ...

... Bazaar mit dem Johkhang Tempel, den die glaeubigen Tibeter den ganzen Tag mit ihren Gebetsmuehlen umrunden, teilweise auch mit der bereits beschriebenen Auf-den-Bauchleg-Technik. Ich wollte dann noch etwas zum Abendessen kaufen, was erstmal nicht so einfach war. Unser Hotelrestaurant hatte leider im Moment keinen Koch und die kleinen Restaurants verstanden mich nicht so wirklich, weil sie wirklich kein einziges Wort Englisch sprechen und ich die Karte nicht lesen konnte. Jeder ...

... past the queue of patiently and happily waiting pilgrims to view the main statue of a powerful horse-headed protector deity. After hours of waiting in line the pilgrims were allowed to stick their head under the statue of a frowning demon with the donkey from the "Shrek" movies sticking out of it's head to receive a blessing. They would then be yanked back by a "bouncer" monk and sent blissfully along their way. Kids would get a dot of soot dabbed on their noses ...

... fuel for the fires. No trees in the country side here. We saw woman with the baskets on their backs coming back from the yak fields where they had collected the dung. This was our first day on the train, a bit more than we expected in being crowded. We didn't think we would have motion sickness because we had travelled the 36 hours to Churchill without any problems. Thanks to the man in seat 61 for all his train information, we knew there was a NA style toilet in the first class car.

... the black, snow-stained mountain. Traffic was light; our first day, we saw only a few ragged Buddhist pilgrims, one group of orange-clad Hindus on horseback, four Americans in tents, and a single, mute Western woman, gleefully spinning a prayer wheel. We slept in a monastery of the Nyingma, or Ancient Ones, the original Buddhists of Tibet. Like the monk on the train, the abbot, a high re-incarnation, discouraged me from trying to reach Shambhala in a 4x4. Meditate more, he said, feeding ...

... official Tibet tourism website. "Tibet is safe," declared Tanor, an ethnic Tibetan deputy director of the local tourist authority. But at the same time the government became involved in another row over its attitude to the Dalai Lama, even as it tried to present a "back to normal" face to the outside world. The International Olympic Committee said it was making inquiries about remarks made by the Communist Party secretary of Tibet as he welcomed the Olympic torch to Lhasa on ...