Flying blind

For some reason, I am unable to view the blog, though I can edit. Don't know what that means, but I hope the pictures got attached and that something is actually showing up.

Today was our first full day in Tibet, so we saw the two big sights in Lhasa, the Portala Palace and the Johkang Temple. They are not to be believed. The palace is built into a hillside (remember, of course, that the base of the hill is at 14,000 feet) and it was the home of the Dalai Lamas until the current one had to flee in 1959. It has the living quarters, chapels, meeting rooms, tombs, and whatever else going back to the 7th century, although much of it has been rebuilt over the years. They say there are 1000 rooms, but nobody's actually counted. Most of the monestaries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but fortunately the government wanted to use the offices in the palace, so it remained.

The Dalai Lamas are cremated, so the tombs aren't big like some, there are sometimes more than one in a relatively small room, but they are incredibly ornate and beautiful. The tomb of the 5th Dalai Lama is made from 3700 kilograms of gold. Every shrine has incense burning and yak butter candles burning and people bringing their own yak butter to put in the candles and it's completely overwhelming. Every day thousands of people walk around the palace spinning prayer wheels and chanting.

The temple is relatively small, but has also been around since the 7th century, and some of the support timbers are original. As you enter you pass dozens of people prostrating themselves and praying by an exterior shrine, which is flanted by 2 10-foot tall incense burners. The inside has about 20 small shrines and one big central one. Thousands of Buddahs of all different types.

We also bought a carpet and walked around a huge open air market.

Okay, I'm starting to feel a bit woozy again- still not used to the altitude, so here's what I rote but couldn't upoad yesterday:

From yesterday

I'm not sure why I wanted to come to Tibet. I just knew I did. But from the moment we booked the trip I had trepidation about it. Why? Well, a couple of things.

First and foremost, the altitude. We're in the capital, Lhasa, home of the Lhasa Apso dog (no, not really, or maybe it is, I don't know). Lhasa is at 3600m above sea level, which is a shade under 12,000 feet. There's not a lot of oxygen to be had here, and I had a real fear that we'd get here, one of us would get altitude sickness. You can never tell who will or won't get it, and you can feel ill even if you've been before and felt fine. I bought some chocolate, because I remember in the 3rd Harry Potter book that chocolate makes you feel better after the Dementors come, so it ought to work for altitude sickness too.

Second, if you think where you went to summer camp is in the middle of nowhere, you ain't seen nothing. This is not only isolated, it's surrounded by mountains, so even though 99.99% of the land is unused (2.5 million people in an area the size of Europe), the airport is 60km away because that's where it's flat. And to get here from the airport you have to drive though a 2 mile-long tunnel through one of the mountains.

Finally, and least important, there's no place nice to stay. Sorry, but I like to come home to a comfortable room. Doesn't need to be fancy, just clean. I had read vastly varying reports about this hotel, regarded as the best in town. Fortunately, our room seems perfectly clean. Comfort is another matter, but considering where we are, I'll settle for clean.

Our itinerary for the day was simple. Drive from the airport to town, rest in the room for the remainder of the day to get acclimated. Drink lots of water. I had a yak burger for dinner (with cheese!). Tomorrow we go out and see things. I've been reading lots about the history of Tibet. The Chinese position is that Tibet has always been part of China, but there's little in the history to support that. Tibet has only been under the rule of any single entity for a small part of its history, and it certainly wasn't under China. What makes Tibet unique is Buddhism, which they imported from India a long time ago.

I've been trying to understand Tibetan Buddhism, but it's complicated and any kind of Buddhism is hard for a non-Buddhist to understand. For one thing, there's lots of Buddhas, only one of which was a 6th century BC historic figure, as far as I can tell. There have historically been 4 main types of Tibetan Buddhism, which I'm not going to list because they're hard to spell and you won't remember them anyway. The Dalai Lama is from one particular sect, but has often been the leader of up to 3 of them. Some Dalai Lamas, like the present (14th) Dalai Lama, are political leaders as well.

The sects vary mostly in the orthodoxy of their practice, but not exactly like Jewish orthodoxy, because I don't think they all read the same holy books. It seems to be all about attaining enlightenment and how fast you can do it and what you need to do to get there. It's multifaceted, even before you start throwing the varying levels of reincarnation (spirit or body or some combination).

Enough of that. You've never seen anything that looks like this place, and we haven't even seen anything except what's alongside the road on the way here from the airport. The houses are low and plain, but with beautifully decorated doors and windows. Every house has 5 different flags flying from the roof, to connect with the 5 elements of nature, (earth, water, sky, fire and something else). I'll attach some pictures if I can. There's a river running through the valley so there's farming near the river, but it gets very dry very fast as you move away, not that you can get too far away before you hit the mountains. Farm animals running around. The biggest, grandest structures aside from the new police station are the gas stations. I don't know why.

Before Lhasa we were in Xi'an, the ancient capital of China, where the Terra Cotta Warriors are. The other thing I noticed there was the driving. Driving in Beijing was pretty civilized. People were aggressive sometimes, and on country roads there's a lot of passing and honking as you pass, but it's clear that rules are being followed. In Xi'an, there's no such order. For one thing, the left lane is supposedly the passing lane on the expressways, but it's not. The slower cars drive in the left lane and everyone passes them on the right. On a 2 lane road, you have more options, because you can pass on the left or on the shoulder to the right, unless of course there's a bicycle or a 3-wheeled moped truck or a tractor or something else on the shoulder. The only thing for sure is that you honk whenever you drive anywhere near any other conveyance.


So yesterday I mention to Lee, our guide, that driving in China is much more interesting than in the US. He said that actually, they have very strict laws, but you'd never know it. We kind of dropped the subject then, but this morning he asked me if driving was more orderly in the US, and I said yeah, and as I looked up, a motorized bicycle going in the wrong direction passed between us and another car on a traffic circle. I mentioned that nothing like that would ever happen in the US, and Lee said that in China, everyone just want the shortest distance between two points (see, I knew math was handy) and it was too long for the bicycle to go all the way around the traffic circle.

I should also point out that it was raining and the variety of ways bicyclists cover themselves and whatever they have with them is fun to watch. Of course there are lots of people riding holding umbrellas, or with big panchos covering themselves and their cargo (or kid on the back). The worst thing we saw was a kid on the back of a bike with a plastic bag over his head. Don't they read warning labels here?