The scraping of palms on the floor filled the air. Tibetan pilgrims did this repeatedly, some on pads, with cardboard mitts and their legs tied together. They did this in front of Jokhang Temple and Potala.
I was able to get some prayer flags for 8 RMB each.
I've seen these scarves (khataks) worn by mountaineers when attempting Everest. They get them blessed by a monk. Here, they are sold for cheap as offerings to the temples and shrines. I was offered a 2-meter long scarf for 3 RMB.
The pilgrims scraped against the ground prostrating themselves before the temple.
I spent a few hours here to get my Nepal visa (60 days for 255 RMB). The office was open from 10am-12pm, so I arrived at 11am. Whoops. The line was already long, and I was told that if I wanted to be seen, I should have shown up at 8am. Sure enough, people who were here at 9am were barely seen.
After 12pm, a man came out and told everyone to come back on Monday, but he agreed to take the passports of the foreigners and get them processed by this afternoon! Wow! So, I came back in the afternoon and got my Nepalese visa!
Lhasa lies in the Kyi-Chu valley at 3360 m (11,800 ft). The days have been sunny and even hot in the daylight, but cold at night. The roof has been a great spot for drying clothes. In the evenings, the wind picks up and the clothes begin to flap and threaten to fly away with the rest of the prayer flags.
The painting doesn't seem to stop around here. From afar, you can't tell how sloppy the work is. Up close, you can see several coats of paint dripping like cave formations. These guys got lowered to the windowsills with a rope tied around their waist.
The top floor of the White Palace of Potala was where the current incarnation of the Dalai Lama lived until he had to flee in 1959. It was dark and musty and heavily carpetted.
The White Palace of Potala was the winter residence of the Dalai Lama. It was 100 RMB to get in, and photography was forbidden, so I guess you'll have to come here for yourself. They have an English audioguide for 15 RMB (100 RMB deposit) which wasn't worth listening to. This place was made of wood and there were fire warnings everywhere and collections of fire extinguishers in the corners. There were monks walking around collecting money from the collection bins (lots of money is donated at each shrine). There were yak butter candles lit giving off a musty odor. It was cold inside. There were amazing chortens or stupas containing the remains of previous incarnations of the Dalai Lama. Potala is a neat, spooky place.
If you look closely, you will see horizontally-hung prayer flags halfway up the mountain.
Thirteen stories and thousands of rooms, Potala is divided into the White Palace and Red Palace. It was the seat of the Tibetan government and winter residence of the Dalai Lama.
Prayer wheels spun clockwise by pilgrims doing their "kor" or circumambulation around Potala.
A delicious treat at Tashi's, a good end to an otherwise lame meal.
The best part of this is the cream cheese sauce on the left.
I had dinner at Tashi 1 restaurant in the Tibetan tourist quarter. Man, this place is lame. It is the first place listed in the Lhasa chapter, but it sucks. The service is rude. The food is mediocre. It is not worth the visit. I can't believe I ordered this bland plate of fried rice.
Around Jokhang Temple, hundreds of pilgrims circumambulate in a clockwise fashion, spinning prayer wheels sometimes prostrating themselves, and mumbling their mantras.
This is the holiest site for Tibetan Buddhists. Barkhor square lies in front of it, and the Barkhor circuit continues around it, a meandering alleyway of vendors of "all-things-Tibetan-Buddhist-and-fake-North-Face-Jackets".
The rest of the night was cold and bumpy. I was able to get some rest here and there. The windows were frosted over with condensation from our breaths. The other travellers sucked on their oxygen tanks to cope with the thin air up to Tenggula Pass (5180 m), an hour after our rest stop, but I think everyone was feeling better in the well-ventilated bus. I actually did fine without supplementary oxygen, but I was freezing my tail off next to the frozen sheet of a window.
We arrived in Lhasa 18 hours after departure, at 0600. The sun doesn't rise here until 0745 this time of year. Everyone was feeling pretty lousy, so we paid up our bus fares, and went off to search for rooms. We all checked into the Yak Hotel, which was recently refurbished.
There are a few rooms on our floor booked by elderly Tibetans in their traditional clothing. They're not used to Western toilets so there is urine everywhere in the shared bathrooms: on the seat, on the floor, next to the sink. And there is the musky odor of mutton, which, frankly, I do not like.
Stu takes a rest as his head pounds from the lack of oxygen. I felt great. Two of the other travellers fell down in the snow, while catching their breath outside, one of them fell into a cesspool (no bathrooms around here). One of them vomitted and another felt sick. Next time, bring your oxygen tank with you to your meal.
At 6 pm, we stopped at a snowy reststop for dinner. Upon walking into this poorly-ventilated establishment, I felt light-headed. There was a fire in a cast-iron stove and about thirty other people with whom I was competing for oxygen at 15,700 feet in this small confined space.
Beautiful but cold. After four hours on the road, we lost our sunshine, and the temperatures dropped. Outside was a cold cold tundra landscape. And it just got colder from there.
The train is supposed to be operational in a year-and-a-half. The Chinese are very proud of this railroad having been completed in the past month. The Swiss said it was impossible. The train cars are supposed to be pressurized, and the tracks are to be refrigerated to keep them from buckling in the changing temperatures. Just in time for the Olympics hordes to train from Beijing to Lhasa.
We were lucky to have less than half capacity on this bus as we barrelled down the highway to Lhasa. Fewer people equals more room and oxygen for me.
So this is how you get to Lhasa on a bus without paying the 1700 to CITS...
The buses to Lhasa leave from in front of the train station in Golmud every hour from 10 am to 2 pm. There are two sets of buses: one is across the street from the train station and is crawling with PSB officers and the other group (blue-gray) is on the same side of the street as the train station. Go to the blue-gray buses and ask the bus driver or ticket sellers for transport ot Lhasa. I arranged transport for me and five Western tourist for 700 RMB a piece, payment on arrival in Lhasa. This last part is key. The Chinese can get on for 130 RMB. The bus trip takes 18 hours.
I was told that this fee was to pay for the bribes to get past the two checkpoints on the way to Lhasa, but apparently not that day. The bus drivers packed us into taxi's and took us somewhere else. I was told that they didn't want us getting on board the buses as it was too conspicuous. The taxi's took us to the Muslim quarter where we waited for transport past the checkpoints. After a few phone calls, the bus driver said he couldn't find anyone to take us past the checkpoints (about 30 minutes away). Instead, we could ride in the trunk of the bus. Hmm...
Sure enough, we piled into the back, with our luggage, and one of their mobile phones to call in case we were fainting from the fumes, and sat there for about an hour. The first checkpoint was quick, but the second one was a bit slower. Lucky for us, no one checked the trunk for stowaways.
An hour after getting in, we were let out into the brilliant sunlight with a sandy moonscape and beautiful snowcapped mountains in the background.
The road was very bumpy (I hit my head on the ceiling and my elbow against the window a couple times), but it was nice and warm in the sunlight.
Throwing coals into the hot water maker. It's no wonder this thing has to be used with supervision.
This was for the hot water dispenser. Every train has 'em but some of the trains still operate with coal and require the supervision of workers, so they're locked away most of the time. You just have to ask someone to unlock it, or keep an eye out for when people start heading down the halls with their bowls of noodles and thermos. There is a large themos of hot water in each berth.
I tried this wonderful tea in Xining. It has rock sugar, dried dates, dried longans, tea, chrysanthamum, and some other stuff.
Xining is the capital of the Qinghai province. It is north of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and the fourth poorest province in China. Basically there are industrial mining towns here and military outposts. It's been a Siberia of sorts for Chinese political prisoners too.
It was cold here, highs in the 40's and in the 20's at night; the elevation was 2200 meters. I was warm in my thermal underwear and fleece gear. What a change from down south!
I stayed at the Post Hotel where 55 RMB got me a carpetted room ensuite with hot water and a radiator and a hot/warm water dispenser and a tv. I slept for four hours after arriving.
I bought a ticket for a sleeper train to Golmud for the next night.
