Lhasa, Tibet

At 12,000 feet this was the place we bought our Diamox for. This was another place that my visiting was as likely as visiting the moon.

China has definitely made clear that Tibet is a part of China. I don't know if the rest of China was like this, but signs for the 70th anniversary were everywhere. They were literally on almost every light pole. I have not seen as many pictures of the leaders of a country since my visit to Libya under Gaddafi.

Now it was time to climb to the Palace. Once we got there I reevaluated the whole "It was supposed to be higher" thing. The climb was rather intimidating especially at 12,000 feet. I made it up fine. Carrie decided on the alternative visit.

The inside of the palace is unforgettable. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos. I did try Googling to see if I could find a gallery, but there was no one site that offered anything like a complete interior tour. This is the best I can do. I will provide a word tour below that references some of these pictures.

For more information on the history of the palace see here.

For anyone else with asthma be advised. The interior of the temple is filled with the smoke of burning yak butter. Its appearance when melted is a yellow liquid, but it worked itself deep into my lungs and was the first of several insults over the next couple of days.

Gentle Reader: Since I do not have any pictures of the inside to avoid copyright problems I am providing links to photos I found. Since the links are basically a Google search these links may disappear.

You enter the complex above via the stairs at the bottom of the white structure. Inside are more steep stairs until you reach a plaza at the level of the red part on top of the white building. At that point you can head in two directions. The red part on top of the white building is the East Sunshine Apartment. It contains the living quarters for the Dalai Lama along with a private temple, living area, and meeting area.

The other direction leads to the Red Palace

You then descend through many floors each having a different purpose. The top floor is a temple that contained a finely crafted model of another temple. On other floors were a series of stupas(tombs) and areas for scrolls. Another was a large meeting area. Throughout the Red Palace were niches with buddhas.

And everywhere were burning Yak Butter Candles.

Emerging from the Red Palace you begin your decent down. Here is a panorama of Lhasa from the decent.

Our next stop did not require the huge climb. Jokhang Temple is located on a city square.

This is an important temple to the Tibetans. It is now visited by a large number of Tibetans, who come to worship Jowo in the temple's inner sanctum. We witnessed this while we were there.

Again no interior photos.

Our last stop was the summer palace. The cited Wikipedia article provides clarity regarding the circumstances concerning the Dalai Lama's association with the Summer Palace.

The next morning it was back to Lhasa airport to meet our chartered Chinese plane. Security was really tight here. We headed back to Kathmandu along a different route than we took north. This required we fly west a considerable distance before heading south. I confirmed this with my GPS, but unfortunately lost sync as we turned south. Crossing the line of the Himalayas gave us a view to our left of what was identified as Mount Everest.

Back in Kathmandu we got another pass at that chaotic airport. A new screening and then waited for our plane to arrive from India (where it had spent the last two days). We had reached the half way point of the trip (literally we were about 180° from Washington DC) so we were now in our new seats with a new staff. We then did the short 1hr 35 min hop to Agra, India.