Day 57 Sunday 29 October Lhasa, Tibet

A blissful lie-in and we just make it to breakfast which is on the roof. It has stunning views over Lhasa which is surrounded by grassy mountains with snow dustings on the tops. A km or so to the west is the Potala Palace gleaming in the morning sun, on its own hill. We won’t visit it today but instead explore the Jokhang Temple in the centre of the old Tibetan Barkhor district.

We approach the temple through Barkhor Square lined with stalls selling everything from religious artifacts, votive scarves, incense, prayer wheels, thangkas (religious paintings) to Tibetan clothing, north face jackets, jewellery (mostly turquoise, amber coral and silver) and ‘antique’ daggers, archery equipment and the occasional under the counter pictures of the dali lama and above the counter pictures of Chairman Mao.

Surrounding the Jokhang temple is an endless clockwise procession of shuffling penitents, many ancient and decrepit bent double or with walking sticks, holding spinning prayer wheels and strings of 108 prayer beads. Other are family groups with scruffy children and women in elaborate ethnic costumes from different parts of Tibet, punctuated by the occasional monk in ox (or yak) blood robes. All appear cheerful, grimy and are happy to be photographed. Its a truly medieval scene.

Once inside the Jokhang its calmer and we explore several chapels and get thoroughly confused by all the different incarnations of past, present and future Buddhas, not to mention the 13 prior Dalai and 10 Panchem lamas, the white and the green Taras and King Songtsen Gampo who seems to have unified Tibet, established Buddhism and been a real 7th Century bob the builder and polyandrist with wives from Tibet, Nepal and China.

Exhausted by all this exoticism we retreat to snowlands restaurant for curry (yak) and lassi before further exploration to the Dropenling handicraft development centre which we find deep in the muslim quarter and where we buy some rather more genuine (we hope) articles than those being sold in some of the market stalls. In a courtyard we are surprised to come across a brand new model X5, which won’t be sold in Aus till next year. We think we might do a trade in. (we see a couple more the following day which is odd since the nearest BMW dealer is 7 days drive away - maybe they are Chinese copies).

Dinner is at the Naga restaurant, French style reminiscent of Luang Prabang but not quite the same standard, with pate de campagne (Yak of course and rather more campagne than pate) and finally real pizza (without any yak).
Weather 7, Sunny
Distance today 0km
Distance from start 12,760km