week 2 in Tibet

The morning that Pierce and Mattias flew back to Chengdu, Ben and I went to the Potala palace. It was a strange experience, but I'm glad we did it. The Potala Palace was the winter home of the DL and was symbolic of Tibetan leadership. No longer I think -- unlike the other places we visited, the Potala feels to be nothing more than a museum now.... given, a pretty magnificent one. Slipping in just before the doors closed at noon, we followed the pilgrims up the outside of the building in order to wind our way down, clockwise, through the palace. Near the top we peeked into what had been the personal quarters of various of the DLs themselves. Often a set of the guys' robes would be carefully arranged on a seat, as if they'd just slipped out of them. There were many many altars (look at the size of that building!), but some of the most stunning and interesting of the things we saw were the enormous gold and jewel-encrusted stupa tombs of the DLs, sometimes stored in crypts that might span floors 5-8 within the building. All cool stuff. The less-appealing factor came in the form of the rigid line of people that we had to be a part of, shuffling along the pilgrim path accompanied by the shouts and stern attention of guards who certainly took their duties seriously. I'm glad we decided to see it for ourselves and draw our own conclusions, but overall we both thought that, compared to the vibrancy of many other [functioning] sites, the Potala was not worth the steep entrance fee.

The next day, we shook off Lhasa itself for the day and headed out to Ganden monastery. Ganden is about an hour and a half outside of Lhasa and is on top of a mountain with beautiful views of the valley below. Getting there and back was a bus adventure that deserves mention -- the new road which scales the mountain, allowing us to catch the daily bus straight to the monastery, feels like a huge and very dangerous Lombard street as the bus barrels up the steep face around hair-pin turns that seem as though they'd be physically impossible for anything bigger than a roadster. Ben closed his eyes. Once at Ganden however, the drama and beauty of the place overwhelmed any other thoughts. Curved into a protective impression just below the peak of the mountain, the monastery shines brilliant white and gold. Reconstruction and a rebuilding of the monk population is ongoing, because it was badly damaged during the Cultural Revolution (it had been shelled). Surrounding the monastery and completely circling the peak of the mountain, was an incredible kora. The narrow and rocky path gave great views of the valley, and we passed a sky burial site, many burnt juniper and stone offerings, a multitude of prayer flags, hermitages, rock paintings, and a yak as we climbed. After making our way through much of the monastery, seeing both the old, the refurbished, and the new, we sat down on a stoop to chat with a monk. Score one for our communications was the monk's verdict that ben's hairy legs were like a yak. Then he upped the ante, drawing maps with his hands, rolling a few key words like "Bush" and "Islam" back and forth, and finally hammering down and crushing the fingers of his right hand with his left. Foreign policy discussions on the top of a mountain in Tibet.

The next day we again caught a pre-dawn bus, this time heading out of town for two days, to Samye. Built in the late 8th century by Trisong Detsen, the first Tibetan king to embrace Buddhism, this was the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet, and was where the first seven monks lived. Later, it was also the site of a great debate on which strands of Buddhist thought Tibet would ultimately follow.

A few bus-hours outside of Lhasa, we crossed the jewel-like Yarlung Tsangpo river and emerged into what looked like desert. The scenery would swing from sand dunes to mountains besides us, with views of mountains and red-leaved orchards across the blueblue river from us. At this point the bus started bouncing wildly along the rocky road, and didn't stop for another hour and a half, long after we were sore and beat up. Our fellow passengers were all Tibetan and they all had different reactions to the rattling we were getting. One family spent the time chasing after their large bucket of milk which was being churned as it slid around the aisle. Others lit cigarettes and smoked with skill. And in a brief pause for mechanical problems, others pulled out a small plastic gas container and began to distribute cups of home-brewed chang. It was a fun ride! This is the nice old man who sat behind us, chanting mantras under his breath most of the way.

Once in Samye, we found a place to stay in the village by the monastary, and spent the afternoon hanging out with some old tibetan ladies and some local kids. After a long lunch with the old ladies, drinking tea and shooting the shit using mostly hand gestures, we shot pool and ben kicked around a soccer ball with the kids until it got dark. The next day we woke up to very different weather. It was colder, with heavy clouds on all horizons and wind whipping by us. So we pulled our hats down a little lower and took off for a large hill just East of the monastery, where supposedly Guru Rinpoche had once stood and vanquished all the pre-buddhist demons in the valley below. We were buffeted by wind at the top, but caught views of the monastery's unique design. Samye is a 3-dimensional manifestation of a mandala, the buddhist representation of the world. The drama of the day was all around us with prayer flags flapping in the wind around our heads, dark clouds, and the perfect mandala spread out below us. First surreal moment of the day.

As we headed down to the monastery itself, it started to snow. Entering the main building, we found the power out, and in the dark there was only flickering candlelight to expose the chanting monks whom otherwise we could only hear, accompanied by huge drums and deep horns several meters long. Surrounding that main hall was a pitch-black stone corrider that we felt our way through. Samye is famous for it's epic murals, but also for the architecture of this main hall. The bottom floor is Tibetan, the next is Chinese, and the top is Indian. We wound our way up, emerging on the top floor walled only in latticework and filled with the blowing snow fluries. I don't entirely know how to describe it except that it was beautiful and thrilling.

The storm clouds chased us back to Lhasa that afternoon, but didn't drop more than flurries onto the dry plateau.

On our last day, we walked one last time for views of the Potala, but stayed mostly in the Barkhor, doing a little shopping and just generally drinking in the experience of the bustling Tibetan quarter.