First Day in Tibet--Overwhelming!

Johkang Temple

Tse Tan picked us up at 9am with Tashi, the driver, and we set out to downtown Lhasa. After a short drive, we were on an ordinary street, but the mountains seemed to peek around from behind the buildings everywhere we looked. We soon emerged on a square in the middle of town, at the end of which was an ordinary-looking white building with some golden animals on the roof. As we got closer, we saw two large white ovens, into which women were scooping Juniper and incense. Clouds of smoke were billowing from the stack, and we noticed that the whole town seemed to smell faintly of smoke. It felt appropriate to me that I spend Labor Day weekend somewhere that smelled like a campfire, since that’s the smell of the Mill Creek Campground. When we turned the corner around the tree and ovens however, we realized that this was the entrance to the Johkang Temple, our first stop for the day. Draped over the entrance were large curtains, woven from yak hair, and embroidered with Buddhist symbols. The golden animals turned out to be a unicorn and a deer, with a prayer wheel between them. In front of the entrance, about 50 people were performing their prostrations, daily salutes. We entered the inner courtyard where Tse Tan purchased our entry tickets, and as we entered the proper entrance of the temple, we all experienced an extreme sensory overload. Buddhas 30-feet high rose in the center of the room, surrounded by seats for monks, all empty. Every column, post, and beam are painted with brightly colored decorations—flowers, animals, symbols and Buddhas. Every wall space is filled with statues, glass windows protecting them from people, who shove small currency into every crevice they can find, making their offerings to the buddhas. It seems that every 10 feet, there is a multi-wicked candle or an incense burner. The air is thick with the smell of yak butter candles and incense of sandalwood and other herbs. Small chapels line the outer walls, where the local people, who have waited in line carrying thermoses or bags of yak butter in solid or liquid form, pay their tribute to the buddhas. Into the candles, they add their offerings of yak butter, and at the rear of the temple, in the most sacred chapel, they offer their melted yak butter to the Buddha sacrimony and receive a blessing from the monks. When we’d gawked long enough at the interior of the temple, Tse Tan led us up to the roof of the temple, where we could admire the golden roof, one of Lhasa’s most reknowned architectural features. From here, we can also photograph the amazing mountain vistas surrounding the city. The weather was amazing, and after 3 months of gray Beijing skies, I could already feel my Vitamin D levels rising, my mood lifting. We were all beginning to sense that this time in Tibet would be a very special time, though we’d only scratched the surface.

After 45 minutes of shopping the open air market, Barkhor Street (I picked up a few goodies carved from yak bone,) we lunched at Lhasa Kitchen, where we tried yak meat for the first time. We had steamed yak momos (dumplings,) shabaleb (fried bread with yak meat layered inside,) and several other Tibetan specialties. We’ve decided that we like yak.

Potala Palace

From lunch, we journeyed on to Potala Palace, one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites. Potala Palace was the home of the Dalai Lama from the 7th Century until 1959, when the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama fled to India during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. At Potala, we toured through room after room of Buddha statues, prayer wheels, mandalas, and holy scriptures. The tombs of the 5th through the 13th Dalai Lama (excepting the 6th) are in Potala, and some of them are as tall as 40 feet high, gilded with gold and encrusted with turquoise, amber, diamonds, and other precious stones. It is amazing to me that here in Tibet, we are seeing amazing treasures, guarded by a few monks, that have never been plundered. It feels like we are walking through the pyramids of Egypt just after they were built, and everything is in place just as it was thousands of years ago. And as Tibet just reopened its borders to tourism in July, there are very few tourists, enabling us to take our time, take hundreds of pictures, and really drink it all in. How on earth can the rest of our trip compare?

Back at the hotel, we spent some time on the internet, blogging or uploading pictures, and then we took a little nap before dinner. We met up with Amy, another Jet Set employee who is in Tibet on her own tour, and went to dinner at a restaurant with a patio overlooking Barkhor street and the Johkang temple. We tried Lhasa Beer for the first time, and since it was Labor Day, I had a yak burger!

Click Here for more photos of my day.