Lhasa continued

Our five days in the capital of Tibet were such a welcome relief from the long bus journeys - a chance to properly acclimatise to the altitude, eat loads of pizza and buy all my Tibetan treats!

On our third day we visited the famous Potala. The palace is immense and an awe-inspiring sight from the ground, and equally impressive inside its many chapels. I was slightly disappointed in the museum-like atmosphere, far from the working monastery of Jokang and its hundreds of pilgrims - due to the visiting restrictions at the Potala there are very few worshippers inside, although hundreds prostrate daily outside on the pavement. It's crazy to think some of the Chinese government tried to demolish this building during the Cultural Revolution (there are bus loads of Chinese tourists here now) considering what an impressive place it is. And the views from the top are amazing...










Another highlight was the chance to visit a school for blind children. Braille without Borders was the first training centre for the blind in Tibet and was set up by a blind German woman. We met an amazing 18-year-old girl who showed us around and impressed us with her impeccable English. In fact all of the kids there speak amazing English, better than any Tibetans or Chinese that we've met so far! There is also a massage training scheme there, so of course I visited the clinic run by past blind students for a relaxing Chinese massage.

We went back to school for a lesson on Tibetan medicine at the Lhasa hospital and learnt about the three channels that dictate our health (phlegm, bile and wind) from traditional thangka paintings. We saw herb samples and some terrifying implements of surgery from hundreds of years ago!

We didn't visit all of Lhasa's monasteries but the Sera monastery was a great place to see the monks debating their philosophy. Groups of monks sit around a questioner who poses questions and bluffs the students - correct answers are awarded with a high clap, wrong answers with a downward slap of the hands. It can get quite heated as the monks get into arguments!









On our last day in Lhasa we took a bus out to the enormous Ganden monastery up in the mountains at 4000m. It would have been a superb view but unfortunately the mist came in and we got rained on for the first time since we'd been in Tibet. Nevertheless it was a nice day out and good to experience the next level of altitude before we climb even higher into the Everest valley next week.

As we were leaving Lhasa our new guide told us that the China-Tibet railway was to be completed and open for business on July 1st. There has been much controversy about the train that will link Lhasa with China - much of the landscape has been interrupted, hoards of Chinese tourists will take over Lhasa which the locals will no doubt find hard to deal with, and coal being brought into the region in open carriages will pollute the air in the same way much of China has been affected. Of course the official line is that Tibetans will prosper with improved trade routes and the economy will boom with increased tourism....