For most travelers, Lhasa is the gateway to the rest of Tibet. An arrival point for acclimatization days, and an introduction to Tibetan culture and customs. After our exposure to Tibetan Buddhism and culture in India, Nepal, and over the last few days, it was a special experience to finally be arriving in Lhasa with some understanding already. This city is one of the highest of its size in the world, sitting at 3,656m above sea level! We were pretty well acclimatized at this point and had stopped the Diamox, but it was still high enough to be inconducive to deep, restorative sleep and generally fatiguing, despite our time spent at altitude. The city is the historic spiritual and cultural heart of Tibet and was the seat of the Dalai Lama as spiritual and political leader from 1642 - 1959. Today the city is still home to a number of important monasteries, temples and pilgrimage sites, but there is also an increasingly obvious modern Chinese influence. You’re all going to stop reading if we mention the word ‘infrastructure’ one more time I’m sure, but I can’t stress enough how impressive the scale of everything is here. Driving in at night it felt like we were arriving in a big modern city, which wasn’t how I had expected to feel in Lhasa. From what I could understand this feeling is common and only increasing year on year. The population of the greater area is around 900,000, and the percentage of Han Chinese in this mix is increasing due to government incentives to move to the area.
We had three days here which felt like a treat after the last week on the move, two days with the tour and then a day just exploring before our evening train into Mainland China. The girls were on a really tight budget so had opted out of the Lhasa sites, and the Italian family had mistakenly (and devastatingly) booked their flight back to Nepal one day early. This meant we got a whole day with Yeshi by ourselves which was a real treat, private tour vibes!
Over our time in Lhasa we visited four major sites for Tibetan Buddhism - Drepung Monastery, Sera Monastery, Potala Palace and Jokhang Temple. Drepung Monastery and Sera Monastery felt very much like living, breathing places of worship and deep spirituality, with lots of visitors (both tour groups like us and local visitors). Again it was clear from the empty Monk residences, size of the maps of the monastery and the general quietness that what felt like energy to us was nothing compared to their former states.
Drepung was perched up on a hill above the city and we got some amazing views over the valley, despite the cloudy day. With the classic Tibetan style white washed walls and traditional window and door coverings, you could close your eyes and really feel like you had gone back in time 100 years.
Sera was very busy with families, as there is a particular deity here that you take young children to for blessings. It made for some great cute baby spotting for Edda and I, and walking through the leafy alleyways here was lovely. A highlight of the whole time in Tibet was watching the monks debate at Sera. Tibetan monastic debates are a dramatic and rigorous tradition used to train the mind and sharpen one's understanding of Buddhist philosophy. A large group of monks were gathered in the courtyard paired up with one sitting (the answerer) and one standing (the challenger). The challenger begins with a dramatic clap and then poses their first question to the answerer. The challenger then follows up, and they go back and forth. Sometimes the process is slow, with long answers and pauses for thought, but often it is fast, quippy and very dramatic. They were debating in Tibetan so we didn’t know what they were saying, but it looked like a lot of fun and often got very fast paced and theatrical.
Potala Palace felt more like a museum than a palace or a place of worship, but it was very special to be walking through the former residence of the Dalai Lama. Security was high and no photos were allowed inside, but the history was deeply steeped in this place. We saw some incredible three dimensional mandalas, made of ghee, gold and sand. This was our first experience of an intense tourist attraction in China, and with hindsight it is comical to look back and think how busy we found it!!
Our final major site in Lhasa was Jokhang Temple. Located in the center of the old town, this place is an active worship site for many and a major pilgrimage destination with people coming from all around the Tibetan Plateau (often by way of prostrations) to visit. It was founded in the 7th century, and is home to the Jowo Rinpoche statue, a depiction of Shakyamuni Buddha that is believed to have been blessed by the Buddha himself, and bought to Tibet by Princess Wencheng. It is the most venerated object in Tibetan Buddhism. Being inside this temple was insane, it was packed with visitors and worshippers, but being outside it was almost more special. It is considered very meritorious to perform Kora around the temple on the Barkhor circuit, spinning prayer wheels, chanting mantras or performing prostrations. Walking this route at sunset with the locals was very special, despite visitors often getting in the way of this sacred act with their photo shoots while dressed up to the nines in traditional Tibetan constume… yikes.
The whole downtown area around the temple was busy with monks, tourists, pilgrims and police. Once we were through the check point to get into the old town area, we loved exploring the shops, contrasting from Popmart (no Labubu in stock) to local Thagka studios. One day we were searching for a specific tea shop in the center of town and it turned out to be closed. We got chatting to an older monk on google translate, and tried to ask where else we could go for tea. He promptly got up and told us to come with him, walked us into a tea shop nearby, bought us a pot of tea, wished us well and was on his way. We could hardly even talk to him (Tibetan is not supported for voice translation on google translate), but he was so warm and friendly and kind. The old town was a real blend of new development (Popmart, KFC, photo shoots, new buildings with stylized facades to look “old”) and then pockets of history (pilgrims prostrating, Thanka studios, this monk walking us through centuries old streets to his favourite tea shop). It was a real privilege to stumble across these little moments in a very quickly changing place.
It will be no surprise to any of you that we ate well while in Lhasa! We thoroughly enjoyed the “east meets west” buffet at the hotel every morning which offered everything from fried eggs to steamed buns. My highlight meal was the noodles and tea we had in a traditional tea house with Yeshi, and for the one and only time on the tour (at our insistence) he joined us for the meal. The noodles are everything we dreamt of and more, and this Tibetan variety was rich with flavour, heat and comfort. We found another spot which turned out to be a local hangout for young people, and thankfully a few other customers had enough English to help us out with ordering. KFC in China for the first time was also a great experience, ordering completely through a Wechat mini program not so much. Very hard, very confusing!
Our newly found freedom in Lhasa felt like learning to walk again. I’m sure we’ll touch on this time and time again but everything is different in China. Sri Lanka, India and Nepal were in many ways “cut from the same cloth” and by the end of our time there it was feeling pretty easy. Something as simple as using maps is a real challenge, the English version of their google maps alternative (AMap) is hard to navigate and often incomplete. One night with the girls we tried to work out where to go for a few beers, and none of us had the first idea where we would even start with researching what might be a good place. We ended up back at the room with a box of beers and many good stories, which of course made for a fun night regardless. Every time we left the hotel felt like a battle with translation apps, map apps, WeChat mini programs, silent electric vehicles and culture shock. We were still loving it, but felt incredibly incompetent. We were so excited the first time we managed to book a DiDi (Chinese Uber) and I proudly reported back to mum and dad when I managed to ask someone where the supermarket was in Mandarin, and even understand the number when they told me it was on the second floor. The small wins felt amazing!
Before long we were headed to the train station in the pouring rain, ready to start our 20 hour journey through the Tibetan Plateaux to Qinghai province. We were both nervous for the trip, but armed with cups of noodles and boatloads of enthusiasm for our journey in this strange and exciting new world.
