chubsang and sera and prayer flags

On Tuesday we walked up the bottom of a mountain just outside of town, to Chubsang ani gompa -- Chubsang nunnery. Chubsang is like a medieval village clustered on a mountainside. There are wandering cows and small chapels scattered through the compound, and the nuns and their abbot are incredibly friendly. As soon as we made our way up through the maze of little alleys, we were welcomed and ushered inside the abbot's rooms, where a traditional New Year's spread was all laid out, and urged upon us. There were tons of little flaky pastries, sweets, fruit, drinks, and most of all, the ubiquitous yak butter tea, bane of most foreigners travling in tibet. It's a soupy, yellow-ish tea that smells and tastes really strongly of... well, yak. Weaker versions of the tea have actually started to grow on me, though the 6 cups I had to down at the nunnery may have had to do with that. After a friendly half-hour of snacking, nuns came in with freshly-made yak momos, tibetan dumplings. Totally stuffed, we finally exited, after being given katas (traditional white scarf) by the abbot and the nuns. Instead of heading back down to the road, we bushwacked our way around the corner of the mountain, and down through dusty fields to Sera monastary, at the base.

At Sera, we began to walk the kora. Just a little way around though, we started climbing up a steep crack in the rocks to reach an outcropping where we wanted to hang some prayer flags. A good-sized climb later (bless pierce and ben for not letting me slip down backwards), we reached the top and added a long strand of prayer flags to the cluster already strung there. We had incredible views on a perfect blue-skied day. I'll load pictures when I can.

One precarious descent later, we continued the kora, edging past a holy spring as well as pilgrims slowing making their way by prostrations around the big monastay.

Yesterday, we woke up late to an invitation by the workers in our hostel to a party at noon. That sounded like good food to us, so we showed up at noon ... only to find that we were the only foreigners there, and our hosts were speaking almost solely tibetan while watching pretty terrible chinese comedy shows on the tv. After much gnoshing on more New Year's snacks (laid out in every home and gathering place these days), and toasting with chang, the local home brew, a fermented barley drink, we tried an exit strategy. It sort of worked. They asked us to come back at 2. With some misgivings we did, but we were treated to a great meal of boiled meat (yak? cow? sheep? goat?) and potatos. Our hostel may be freezing cold, have interesting plumbing and the occasional sound of scurrying feet, but it's owners and workers are totally welcoming, sharing the holiday with us from New Year's morning when they woke us up with traditional foods and drink to ring in the new year, to their own celebration yesterday.

Today, Ben and I spent the afternoon at Drepung Monastary, just outside of Lhasa. Once the largest Tibetan monastary, it is also a maze of compounds and chapels built up a mountainside. A long pilgrim path was laid out throughout the complex with arrows which often pointed in patently opposite directions, but always led us, eventually, through beautiful old courtyards, and buildings filled with chapels and relics. These old monastaries were set up by a system of colleges, each with their own leaders, living quarters, meeting halls, and chapels, and the remnants of this system were evident to us, even with far far fewer monks in residence today. Afterwards, we walked down the mountain to Nechung Monastary, which had been the home of the Nechung oracle, without whom the Dalai Lama rarely acted. The last Oracle left Tibet with the Dalai Lama in 1959. We weren't able to get inside because of the long line of pilgrims, but we were able to see enough to appreciate the pre-buddhist influences of this particular site, including themes of possession and exorcism.

Tomorrow Pierce and his friend Mattias leave (they've been here two weeks already), but Ben and I have a little more than one week left. We've been getting lots of sun, a good bit of exercize, even though it's hard to catch one's breath this high, and a lot of relaxation in addition to being treated to stunning views, friendly monks, and the sheer magnitude of being "on top of the world". The one big frustration so far has been in trying to get a trip together to travel south along the Friendship Highway, down to Everest Base Camp. It's the New Year though, and it's been hard finding anyone to help put together a trip, much less an actual driver/guide. We have some time left, so we haven't given up, but it's starting to look doubtful. Still, there are a few day/2-day trips out of town that I'm really excited about, so we'll be able to push out of Lhasa a bit, no matter what.