Tibet 1.9 - Lhasa at last - June 3rd 2009

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Three weeks after leaving Kunming and a few small misadventures, we arrived in Lhasa. I have been reading Peter Hopkirk’s book Trespassers on the Roof of the World and I couldn’t help but put myself in the shoes of many of the western explorers Hopkirk writes about. Almost all of the western travelers in Hopkirk’s book never made it to this enigmatic city. It remained a mystery to the western world until Francis Fitzgerald “invaded” the city on a diplomatic mission involving a british arsenal and several thousand soldiers in 1904. This was all under the guise of establishing free trade with the Tibetans, but it was actually fueled by the paranoia of assumed (falsely it would be revealed) diplomatic ties between Russia and Lhasa and that such a conspiracy would put Russian soldiers perilously close to British India in mysterious lands just to the north. The sad truth however is that the Tibetans were (are) a tragically private people seemingly on the point of xenophobia and that they gave no one, British or Russian, access to their country. The level of secrecy was so high that brutal punishments were carried out for failure to successfully turn away outsiders. Such punishments extended to those hired to assist these intruders to travel in Tibet, wittingly or otherwise.
Some of these stories reveal a savage culture that existed in Tibetan society. This seems to sharply contradict all the similar reports of their friendly and inquisitive nature, which is a side to their culture that I myself have experienced. But now that I’m in Lhasa, I can sort of begin to understand some of the paranoia they had about permitting access to foreigners. Other than the Potala (The Dali Lama’s palace), the Jorkam, and a few other Tibetan buddhist monuments and monasteries, Lhasa is pretty much a Chinese city now. There was a lot of modern businesses and restaurants in Lhasa, all run by ethnic Chinese. Of course, as throughout Tibet and much of China, there was a considerable military presence. That and there seemed to be a lot of begging and pan-handling happening. Open destitution seems to me to be a contradiction to the ideals of what is supposed to be a communist country. However, assuming my understanding of Tibet’s history is accurate, it seems that economically the people are no worse off, and perhaps its arguable that the standard of living for the average Tibetan has increased under Chinese dominion. Still, it seems there is plenty more that could be done to improve the livelihood the the Tibetan people, thought I must admit, my experience and knowledge of their situation is way too limited to make any real authoritative assessment.



There is plenty of Tibetan culture to enjoy in Lhasa, especially in the old town. The Jorkam is one of the holiest temples in Tibetan buddhism and with the number of pilgrims packing the place it is easy to see why. For a westerner like me, it costs around 90 yuan (about 15$) to get in, but there are lines of Tibetan pilgrims that wander in freely, to pray and prostrate at the numerous shrines in the building and give small denominations. This was part of the charm of visiting such a site. Sue, Jackie and I all went to the Jorkam to see this site, and it was a little uncomfortable rubbing and bumping up against all the other Tibetans in the dark cavernous confines of the Jorkam. There are no electrical lights or windows with access to sunlight in the Temple. Predominantly lit by yak butter candles and what little light filters in through the atrium from the upper levels the Jorkam is relatively cool and cave-like, a little stuffy and slightly claustrophobic..... OK for some it would be very claustrophobic, but it was fascinating nonetheless. We did feel like intruders in a sense, with all the pilgrims staring at the out-of-place westerners. But I just needed to remind myself that we did buy our tickets from the monks of the temple, and that although the Tibetans are a deeply religious people who are protective of their believes, this is not to say they are inhospitable. On the contrary, as I’ve come to learn, they are actually quite open and willing to share their culture and religion to those that were respectful and interested.



Outside of the Jorkam there were also many pilgrims showing their reverence and devotion in two ways. First, prostrating involves starting from a standing position they kneel down to their hands and knees, then they slide their hands forward touching their stomachs and forehead to the ground. They would then reverse this motion until they were again at a standing position. How many times they would end up doing this, or what the significance of such an action was, I do not know. However the level of devotion to prostrating was evident in the sophistication of the gear which involved special padding or “shoes” for the hands, which would aid in the sliding movement. The second display of reverence involved walking in a clockwise direction around the Jorkam. Tibetan’s walked clockwise around all buddhist structures such as stupas and even the Potala. The clockwise direction seems to have some significance as well since that is the direction in which they spin their prayer wheels. Unfortunately I’m again ignorant as to what this significance means. Perhaps this needs to be the subject of a future blog....

In Lhasa we managed to do a bit of shopping. I was looking for some Tibetan quilts/tapestries and some prayer flags. We found the tapestries at this artisans collective on the eastern end of the old town. They also had a number of other crafts for sale at the place, supposedly all created by local Tibetans using traditional methods. The benefit of shopping at this place was that all the proceeds went back to the Tibetan communities. Sue scored the biggest, paying a nice sum for this beautiful Tibetan rug. She (and almost myself) was sold on the fact that these rugs were made from 100% Yak wool, which by nature is supposedly more dirt and stain proof, and retains the dyes better than regular sheep wool.

Anyway, this was our first day to play tourist. Unfortunately it had to come at Jun’s expense. Apparently an injury she suffered about a month prior in Vietnam had become infected. As a result, she had to receive antibiotics by IV at a local military hospital that day. Despite this unfortunate turn to our trip, it was nice to have a day without work. Honestly, I hadn’t planned on doing much work around Lhasa, since the area was all alpine desert where the chance of finding mushrooms was very slim to none. But gladly, I decided to go out the next day. That ended up being another memorable experience to my trip... despite my making only one collection.





Andy....