Tibet Jingmao Mansion Lhasa

... to kick start my day. We were met downstairs by Meema and Songshi the driver and we were driven first to the Potala to book our entry ticket for tomorrow and then we went to the Jokhang temple area of Barkhor square nearby. Here we had our laundry dropped off to be done at a nearby laundry. Lucky for us today is an auspicious day in the Tibetan Buddhist calendar being the “descending Buddha” day. This meant that in front of the temple there was a mass burning of juniper ...

Hoy cogiamos el tren de vuelta a Chengdu, a las 11, asi que decidimos aprovechar las ultimas horas que nos quedaban en Tibet y nos llevantamos a las cinco.<br>Nos dimos una vuelta por el Barkhor y vimos salir el sol desde la terraza del hotel. Las vistas eran estupendas.

The Tibetan old town beckoned. We had made a decision to support the locals is to not purchase anything from non Tibetan vendors. Chinese traders fill the square with Tat stalls, which fortunately are easy to bypass. We walked around the Temple in a clockwise direction as one is supposed to, with the Tibetan Pilgrims as a show of support. The Chinese tourists walked the opposite way, in order to get better pictures as they shoved their long lenses in the faces of the pilgrims.<br ...

... went to bed sick, puked and felt the headache all night and hard to breath. <br><br>Morning came..I felt better! I woke up early to check out the morning buzz. It rained and that is how I got a picture of a street glistening from the rain. I love the building architecture, very dainty and colorful. <br><br>I stopped to wait for the traffic light to turn, and I stood along with a couple of elderly turning their prayer wheels patiently waiting with ...

... Lama had a chandelier from India above the gold throne. There were murals that included the 13th Dalai Lama and his teachers, some Yellow Hats and the 7th Dalai Lama. Down the hall was the Dalai Lama's bathroom. It needs a bit of work to bring it into the 21st century...<br><br>We were also able to go through the Dalai Lama's mama's meeting room. There is a picture of the Compassion Buddha in her room.<br><br>In the hallway on the way to the stairs there was a painting ...

... it they had the same itinery as me of overlanding into Nepal after a few days in Tibet. Saying it is one thing, organising it is another. There are alot of issues with permits from the authorities. At the moment we are on a permit for 6 days in Lhasa and the periphery. You need further permits to go to the Nepal border, visit Everest Base Camp and the monastery there and go to many other monasteries. All due to recent unrest makes everything more ...

... we popped into the carpet factory next door to our hotel and watched the merrily singing weavers at work. Quite interesting and certainly very cheerful. Afterwards Beat taught us the simple and fun Swiss game of "Arschloch" which we were to play most evenings around the fire as nighttime temperatures sank lower and lower. Xigatse - Old Tingri Our next stop was to be the last monastery on our trip, Sakya monastery, seat of one of the oldest orders of Tibetan ...

... on them. They were sooooo good! We walked on and found the street markets that lead up to Basrkhor Bazar. There is everything for sale. Len gets a new hat and we continue walking and end up in the pedistrian square where the Jokhang Temple is. We watch the Tibbetians praying and go down to lie flat face down hands stretched out. We head back to the hotel and have dinner and an early to bed as it has been a long day.

... you were, just as the third Panchen Lama predicted: 'A person who travels the world looking for Shambhala cannot find it. But that does not mean it cannot be found.' The place itself - Ed Bernbaum's historical prototype, the kingdom that Tibetans thought was Shambhala - sits out in the plain desert, at the very bottom of Asia, beneath sea level, in a heat sink that had melted me 18 years before. But it was cool and overcast when Seamus and I finally soared out of Urumqi, squeezed into ...