Note: If you didn't read my first and second posts about Tibet, you might want to start there and then come back to this one.
A not so
itsy, bitsy palace in the sky
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| Potala Palace |
After
breakfast, we’re off for
the Potala Palace, which sits on the highest point in the city of Llhasa. It’s the home of the Dalai Lama, even though it’s unlikely he’ll ever get
to see it again. The last time he saw it
was in 1959. To get to the palace we’re told, one
must climb 350 steps. At this altitude,
that sounds intimidating. Our guide assures us he thinks we'll have no
problems. I’m sure hoping
he is right, but memories of the stairs from the lake to the parking lot are a
fresh memory from yesterday.
Upon
arrival at Potala Palace, despite the warning of 350 stairs, I guess they did a
mid-course appraisal of this group and particularly the one old guy in the
group (me) and it caused them to seek, and be granted, access to the Palace via
the second level. God bless whoever had
that idea. It saves us 1/2 to 2/3 of the
stairs to get to there. Once there, you
still have more than 100 stairs to deal with inside the palace. Furthermore, there isn’t much time
for relaxing and getting your breath back, because you're on a tight time
schedule. They only allow a tour group to
be inside the palace for one hour. Of
course, out of the 1000 rooms, this means you only get to see about 16. And it
is packed to the gills. This is one of
the most sacred buildings in Buddhism and there is a LOT of Buddhists in the
world, many which make an once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to the Palace.
Inside
the palace, the police are everywhere and they can be quite forceful (they
scream a lot) in moving the crowd along.
Still, the views from the palace are magnificent and we’re fortunate
to have a day with light clouds floating across the sky. Perfect for photography. However, you can't
take any photos once you enter the palace.
Which is unfortunate because the treasures and art inside the Palace are
stunning. CT addresses the problem by
buying each of us a beautiful hardback copy of the official palace guide
(stamped by the palace staff for certification). It’s a wonderful
gesture and gift.
As you take the tour of the
palace, it's
quite easy to see why Christians and even the Chinese have so many issues with
the Buddhist faith. The tour underscores
those differences dramatically. Still,
for Buddhists, this is clearly a sacred place.
This palace is also a monumental engineering feat, especially given the
times in which it was built and the fact that it is designed to withstand
earthquakes.
We
leave the palace and go to the ceremonial area directly across the street,
where better pictures of the front of the palace can be obtained. We find a very heavy Chinese military police
presence here. We’re told this
is because this is one of the locations where they fear the monks will set
themselves on fire. (In fact, the day
after we leave Tibet, a monk does self-immolate). Bob sits down a package to take a picture
with his camera and an officer runs over to tell us you can't set anything down
on the ground. These folks are really
twitchy. But OK. Apparently they're worried
it might be an explosive device. So we
take turns juggling packages for each other while the other shoots
pictures.
We
leave the palace area all together and head for lunch. It’s a lovely rooftop restaurant with a covered area. The
Tibetan food is more to my liking than the Chinese we had already experienced,
this having some bread, veggies and lots of tomatoes and cucumbers in it. It
makes for a very civilized and enjoyable lunch.
Afterwards, CT wants Bob and I to pose with the attractive Tibetan
restaurant ladies on staff (thorns between the roses I guess, to further
emphasize their beauty). The ladies are
very flattered but are good sports and join in. Someone in the group shoots a
number of pictures of them.
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| Thorns in the midst of roses |
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| Jokhang Temple |
The TSA has nothing on these people
In
the afternoon, we go to the Jokhang Temple in the center of old Lhasa. Built in 647 AD, this is clearly another
important religious and cultural symbol.
Getting into the building is only slightly easier than a TSA screening
in the US. Once in, the police are
heavily present, most with fire extinguishers strapped on their backs. It seems the Tibetan monks are also known to self
immolate in this very plaza.
Once
inside the temple, one truly needs a play card to keep track of all the
Buddhas. This is an amazingly
complicated religion further multiplied by the length of its history.
After
the tour, we have thirty minutes to shop in the bazaar in front of the Jokhang
Temple. It's a place where the art of
negotiation is alive and well and many members practice their skills. I prove to be a little rusty on my
negotiation skills on one item, but warm up and do much better on the next, to
the point the salesperson bemoans to Dibble that I got way more discount than I
should have (yes, it might have been for dramatic effect, but she said it with
such meaningl!)
Dinner
is to be another major affair with an alumni group and four young men who rode
their bikes from Chechung to Lhasa, one of whom is taking the tour with his
parents and us. After watching the
bikers on the road, I’d assumed
they were at least partially crazy to deal with that road, the lack of oxygen,
so many vehicles in so little space and a drainage ditch running next to the
road lanes that would swallow a bike and leave a bikers legs badly
damaged. Instead, what we find out at
the dinner is that these are very impressive young men that have overcome all
those challenges and speak with eloquence about the experience. They are all poised and articulate. They carefully
think and compose their answers to questions about their trip. I find myself
wishing we had more youth like this back home.
The father of the young man who is traveling with us mentions the danger
of the trip. I marvel that he didn't
stop his son from doing it. It shows an desire to let his son experience character
building that will undoubtedly serve this young man well, but at a tremendous
potential sacrifice on a personal level.
I’m not sure I
could have done the same.
It
further reminds me of our guide telling us about he and his wife's loss of
their first and only child, a four month old.
He very calmly related the story, with no visible emotion saying only
that because his wife had to work such long hours standing on her feet, he
thought maybe that was why they had lost the child. This story was further accentuated by his
telling us, as we had toured the religious sites that day, the Buddhist belief
in reincarnation and how the soul is recycled.
Perhaps that is partially why he was so at peace with that life event. What I found even more striking was when he
told us about how Tibetans handle disposition of the dead, with cremations
being reserved for the highest in society, monks, leaders and such; air
burials, where the body is hacked into pieces, the meat stripped from the bone
and the bones left on platforms high in the mountains for the birds to pick
over first followed by the meat and flesh of the human being placed on the
platform. Next down on the list was the
water burial, where the body is tossed in the river to be consumed by the
fish. This level is for those who die
from unnatural causes and for children or those whose life is taken for other
reasons. I watch him closely as he
describes this level as I realize this would have been what he and his wife had
gone though. One can only imagine the
gut wrenching that must entail yet he seems totally at peace with it. The ground burial, so common in North America,
is reserved for those who are thought to harbor evil, murderers and those people
who mistreated others in life.
What
brings the story to an even fuller circle is when he later describes why
Tibetans don't eat fish. Which is of
course, because they see it as eating your dead. Another reason is their belief that if one
must take life, you should make as little impact as possible. Thus killing a Yak would feed a family for a
year, but to eat fish you would have to take many lives for just one meal. I can’t recall encountering people like the Tibetans, who so
carefully measure life in all its forms.
The world could learn some things here.
Tomorrow, Sky Lake and hotel experiences in
Tibet.
