China - Tibet - Lhasa

The Potala Palace is synonymous with Tibet, or at least it was the image I had in mind since my lower secondary school years. It was probably because of the infamous black and white photo of the Potala Palace in the georgraphy book. Seeing the Palace was another childhood ambition achieved. There were many visitors through the palace each day. Within the palace, crowd controllers ushered tour groups through the various rooms, halls, temples, mausoleums, etc quickly. We were lucky because we wandered through the palace at our own pace. Unfortunately, no photographing was allowed inside. Here are some photos from outside and from the entrances: (taken from the south side and courtyard within).

Inside the palace there were drawings and painting dating back to 13th and 14th century. Buddhist manuscripts, written in gold ink on "paper" imprenated with poison (to shield against vermin attacks), of over a thousand years are still kept in good condition in special storage. We inadvertently wandered into a hall where the monks were repacking the manuscripts. Because there were so few of us, one of the monks stopped and brought the manuscripts across to us for a closer look and feel, before he could tell us not to touch. We were very previleged.


(taken from the north side).

Gold seemed to be in most visitors' mind when the visited the Potala Palace and they were not disappointed. The final resting place of the previous Dalai Lamas has gold covered stupas: eg 7th Dalai Lama's stupa has 498kg of gold, while the 5th Dalai Lama's stupa has 3721kg (in today's term, it is worth USD125M!!) of gold.
(taken at night with a pair of very steady hands)

Here are a few pictures taken generally around Lhasa:


We witnessed in the Sera Monastary, monks debating amongst themselves. They discussed the buddhist scriptures and debated their philosophy and interpretation. At times the debates got rather heated. The hand gestures would indicate a question or an answer, and the occasional smack on the head for consistently wrong answers:

Here is one for the environment. This is a picture of a water boiler using solar energy, two halves of a parabola dish and the kettle is placed on focal point: