Day 6 - Lhasa "Journey To The West"

Sept 28 2008
Lhasa - Elevation 3700m

On Monday morning we met our guide down in the lobby at 8 at the lobby , our first stop for in Lhasa – the heart and soul of Tibet - is the famous Polata palace –the winter palace of the Dalai Lama a vast white and ochre fortress soaring over one of the world’s highest cities-. We walked from our hotel to Potala Palace. It little bit col and rainy this morning but the atmosphere around Potala Palace is indescribable.

Potala Palace , It’s the centerpiece of Lhasa and also all over Tibet, Tibetans –tibet people- come inside the Potala for prayer or round the pilgrims every day.
Having been here less than 24 hours and now we must climbed all of the steps to the top , Its kill us !!!!.

I Saw so many many many many stairs along the wall to reach the mail building at the top. Its so tired , but slowly finally we reached the top
The views from the top of the palace are also spectacular as you can see all of Lhasa below with the snow capped mountains in the background.
The view from midway up the steps

Our last picture , before line up to enter the Potala Palace
After seeing many , many , many , many and many rooms to the palace and Photography is not allowed inside the chapels , we walked down from the back of the Palace.

All of the doors in the palaces have this kind of braided handle. The five colors are to represent the five elements.
Its 11 am when we finished our Potala tour , I didn’t expected my stomach began to hurt and I know I cant enjoy the journey anymore because its getting worse and worse. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Go down from Potala , we met again our guide.

We promptly stopped for lunch around Barkhor area called MAKYEAME – means beautifull woman in Tibetan language- the foods not really good , but from upstairs we can saw area around Barkhor . We ordered soups , momo (dumplings filled with vegetables or yak met) , thukpa – noodles with meat –, cha ngamo -sweet milky tea- and some India food. We there until 2 pm and thanks to God my stomach not really hurt anymore and the mlky tea was so GOOD.

Views from second floor Makyeame
Our stop is the Barkhor , is essentially a kora –pilgrim circuit- that proceeds clock wise around the periphery of the Jokhang Temple.


All along the the pilgrim circuit are shops, stalls , tea houses and hawkes. They selling so many variety , prayer flags , tibet singing bowls, Tibetan boots , nepales biscuit , yak butter , juniper incense, turquoise jewelry and prayer wheels.
There were monks , women , children sitting in the streets with beats in their hand and start to praying , and many people give them money too. It’s a very common way of praying.
The golden – roofed Jokhang Temple is 1300 years old and is TIBET’S HOLIEST SHRINE. I saw in front of the temple there were dozens of Tibetans prostrating. They had pads underneath them and they would bend to their knees, stretch out on their stomach, come back to knees, stand up with their hands together, reach their hands to the sky, and then repeat it over and over again.
Like inside the potala place no photography allowed ,Inside the temple was lit by candles, was very cozy and warm.


I feel power and spirituality from the prayes surrounding the temple. we are lines to enter each room , They praying with many ways , some of them were holding prayer wheels chanting and repeat om mani padme hum, the other people they carried yak butter to pour into the candle holders or just bring small money 1 mao to put in in the stupa. So I can saw so many money from other country , I saw money from Indonesia too.

We returned to the Hotel around 3 pm , and the rest of the day was spent in bed with watching Korean love movie as ussual a love triangle hahahaha and I trying to find way to make my stomach feel better. After slept for 2 hours, 6.30 pm we go out in the street and take some photos in front of Potala Palace AGAIN until 8 pm.

Second day in Lhasa so impressing , It’s even more impressive than it looks in pictures.

Day 5 - Guang Zhou - Lhasa - Tibet

Sept 28 2008

It’s 4:30 a.m. and time for us to wake up. Our flight from guang zhou to lasha 8 am but we haven’t get the ticket from our tour agent. And claire’s driver waiting us around 5.45am.

arghhhhhhhhhhh so sleepy but we must wake up, prepare go to guang zhou airport for the flight to lhasa – we ate our breakfast on the way to airport -.

We have arrived early coz we don’t have any idea about the ticket and whom we will meet – everything can be happen in china - hehehehe.

Our flight from guang zhou – lhasa , will stop in chongqing to change the flight

and Yeah….. boarding the flight was kind of stressful and going through immigration was so many problem.

Security is extremely tight at the airport. All luggage goes through an MRI machine and passengers through metal detectors just to get inside the terminal.

1. Christ give me seal document , our travel agent said we cant opent the document because its secret , when we arrived at lhasa just give the document to our guide.THATS IT , if u open it, our trip will be cancel.

2.So of course we remember what our agent said, but the problem when we want to check in the airport officer want us to open the document , they want to see our permit after long argue with them we let them open the document.

3.Customs was a little different , passengers who have flight ticket to lhasa or chong qing have own line to queue the customs and before we passing our body through the machine we must take off our shoes and put them through the machine. No vehicles are allowed to pull up front.

THE HOLY DOCUMENT - TIBET PERMIT

Fuih… after all the custom , we finally sitting at the gate, the announcement came that the flight to Lhasa would board in fifteen minutes. A little wave of excitement came over me. I still can’t quite believe we’re about to get on a plane to Lhasa – Tibet !

Yeah… TIBET Here We Come, we prepare for this tibet trip from june , but serious research around end of aug but I think its not enough to make us stay as comfortable as possible because we heard that people will exercise at least 6 month to go there , but we didn’t do anything even jogging everymorning to prepare the weather.

we arrived at Lhasa Gonggar airport at 2 PM the airport is not actually in lhasa , but is 2 hours away. We were ready to get off the flight and we followed the crowd of the people to the area where passangers are picked up. We were look for a sign with one of our names on it and I finally saw a man waving a sign that wrote our name. We waved to him and he beckoned us over. He told us that his name was Wang Dui and that he would be our guide during our stay. We walked over the car that we would use for our travels and met our driver.

They greet us with white silk prayer cloths that they drape around our necks. We climb into a car and on the way to our hotel. We promptly stopped for take a first picture to see Buddha that had ben carved into this rock and so many prayer flags drapped all over the hill.

Buddha... right there waiting for us .

Our guide took us to our hotel and we will meet them around 5pm to had dinner with them a. Our hotel was a 3 star hotel and near with potala palace , just cross the street.

first impression about Tibet’s capital city – Lhasa - Lhasa literally means "place of the gods" There are many police controls around Lhasa.

Near our hotel we headed down was lined with army trucks and The soldiers had set up 1 place with various position , 1 soldier see in the north side , west side , south side and the last see the east side, I want to take a pic but I am afraid if they know I took a pic I will go to trouble zone.

Speaking of food, Our first dinner in Tibet we went to Lhasa Kitchen ,

around barkhor lhasa area.

We order tibet native food such as tsampa , yak momos (momos are the Tibetan version of the Chinese dumplings) , some Indian food also we ordered butter tea.

We returned to the Hotel and start to take a rest. When I do sleep I feel so uncomfortable may be because of the high altitudes, its feels like u already sleep very long time. I always woke up after 2 hours slept and its still dark. It’s so terrible when you keep waking up in the night, checking the time, and get frustrated because it’s not time to get up yet and hope its will over soon.

For me and ge, we still have a planning to stay at Mt Everest Base Camp and its will be a story to tell to our grandchildren. hehehehehe

coz i always believe if u can think about it so u can do it.