Tibetan Countryside

I had a rather less than pleasant dream in which my mother was criticizing the way I was dressed and making me feel humiliated, quite a talent of hers. Not something I should have in mind while in Tibet. Not realizing that Bina didn’t reserve my return ticket is making me feel incredibly stupid. I’m sure I made it confusing by making some of the reservations myself and letting Bina make other reservations. Next time, I’m only going to one country! Keep the trip simple. Of course, knowing me, I’ll think: gee, since I’m going to Thailand, I may as well zip over to Cambodia and see Angkor Wat.

I hope I can get on the Internet in Gyantse and quick make a reservation—I hope the flight isn’t all booked. Perhaps I shouldn’t be worrying—that’s a Buddhist teaching—I have a plan and will go through with it. If the 10:45 flight is booked surely there are at least two others that day—and my flight back to Delhi isn’t till the 13th, so technically if I have to, I can wait till the 12th for a flight back to Kathmandu. This has been a weird trip.

Now we’re in the minivan or jeep or whatever it’s called—and I told Gyantzing—he said no problem, he’ll take care of my return ticket. Whew—what a relief! As usual, all my worry is for nothing. That seems to happen quite a bit on this trip: I have intense worry, and then I just do whatever has to be done, and suddenly it seems like I didn’t have anything to worry about. Or I don’t even bother worrying and just remain equanimous and just do it. Daring do.

Most of the foo dogs in Lhasa are alive. On the sidewalks, circumambulating around temples, and even exploring the Sera Monastery with humans, cute little fluffy dogs are everywhere. I especially see them on leashes on the sidewalks, and I saw several as we passed the Potala and Lukhang Park this morning. Many are yellow, or white and black, or white and yellow. I recognize many as Lhasa apsos and Tibetan spaniels.

I’ve also seen some large shaggy dogs that I believe are Tibetan mastiffs. We just passed a black pair that were fighting. There was a blonde one that I stroked on the head at the Sera Monastery---it was very calm and lying around.

Once I even saw a cat on a leash on the sidewalk. Its human sat at a circular café table with a couple other people. The cat did not look pleased. “What do you take me for? A subservient, worshipful, stupid, drooling dog? We are not amused.”

I haven’t written about the rats yet. In Sera Monastery we got into this discussion. The monasteries have rat problems and I said, “Maybe they could have more cats,” thinking of the ones I’ve seen. But cats can’t catch all the rats, because they get inside the walls. Mice are native to Tibet—little mice—but rats came with Chinese immigrants. I’m sure the butter lamps and offerings of fruits and grains feed rats well. And of course water offerings.

“Outdoor pool” has a whole different meaning in Tibet. Pool tables are outdoors, in front of buildings, at least some of which are probably bars. The pool tables look entirely too large for the tiny shops behind them. I wondered whether the pool tables are taken inside or how they are kept out of the elements, until I started seeing roof-shaped green metal lids that are put on the pool tables, like at the end of the day.

I jotted messy notes while on the road:

Yellow Tzange is a river in Gyantse, the same as we saw leaving the airport. Chomo is a river goddess, 5500 m high, edge of river—high point with mass pass.

Prayer flags mark water burial place. Fish instead of vultures eat the bodies.

We just passed some traditional buildings, and there was a man and woman wrestling in the road—pulling at each other—it looked like they were smiling, so maybe it wasn’t what I thought. Other people were sitting in front of a café or shop and watching with amusement. I think all of them were male. I did not feel comfortable with the situation.

I have seen countless bare willow trees with stumpy trunks that are harsh and gnarly, not like droopy elegant North American willow trees. The only reason I recognized them as willows is because, in truth, they look like the Whomping Willow in the Harry Potter films.

A herd of sheep were in the center of the road, and I laughed and said, “It’s like Ireland!” We stopped, and I got out to take pictures of the herd, but it didn’t take them long to be off to the right of the road. A young woman was herding them; she wore Western clothes, including jeans, but she had a mask over her face similar to a surgical mask. After our encounter with the herd of sheep, we came to a holy lake by Khanbhala Pass, which is 4700 meters at the top. It’s a rode that winds around a mountain. Actually, since “la” means “pass,” it seems a bit redundant to call it “Khanbhala Pass.”

I rode a yak above the sacred lake. I kid you not. I rode a yak!! An elephant last year, a yak this year…maybe next year I’ll ride a camel. We pulled over at sight of a couple of yaks wearing colorful saddles and bells and accompanied by a small number of mostly male people. An old guy asked me if I wanted to ride a yak. I said, “Oh, I don’t know, I’m afraid of heights oh why not,” and I climbed on. It was a bit scary, since my feet were so not on the ground, but it wasn’t nearly as high as the elephant last year. The yak moved forward a few yards. Gyantzing used my camera to take a couple pictures of me, and I was genuinely laughing. It seemed like such an odd situation, and I did it so casually. “Just do it,” truly has been my attitude on this trip; I didn’t even know if I’d survive Kathmandu. In addition to the yak, there was a large shaggy dog that jumped onto a precarious concrete perch at the edge of the pass, and I took a picture of the dog. A young woman wearing one of those homemade cloth surgical-style masks held onto the other end of the leash. I paid for both the yak ride and the dog (because of course I took a picture of the doggy), and we moved on down the road.

Normally the lake is turquoise, but today it’s white: frozen over and covered with snow. It is associated with dakinis, manifestations of female spirituality in Tibetan tradition. I’ve read about dakinis, particularly in the book The Dakini’s Warm Breath: the Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism by Judith Simmer-Brown. They can be old women who you run into on the side of the road, or they can be young women, or they can be goddesses or ghostly spirits. They’re guides believed to help you go in the right direction on your spiritual journey.

We stopped at some point and approached the frozen sacred lake, where a group of Chinese guys were standing directly on the ice; one had a camera with a tripod. Otherwise, out on the frozen lake was a tour guide with a tall bald guy from Holland. When he told me where he was from, I said, “I’ve been to Holland, but only at the Amsterdam airport, on the way to India last year.” He smiled and said, “Most people say they’ve only been to the airport.”

I continually gawked out the windows at the breathtaking scenery, the mountains and the lakes and the hug bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds. Occasionally, we stopped so I could take pictures.

We came to a small town called Nangatse, which consisted mostly of traditional houses, buildings with pool tables outdoors, and shops. One of the buildings was one story tall and made of stone, and it housed a bunch of shops. I also saw some plain modern buildings that housed more shops. Many women wore chupas, the traditional Tibetan dresses. This was the first full day in Tibet that I didn’t wear my homemade chupa but instead wore cargo jeans. I’m glad, because of the yak ride. I saw a goat standing in a doorway, in front of a red door.

We stopped in this town for lunch, at a little restaurant where our round table practically filled the room. I ordered tofu and mushroom dish but apparently mushrooms are out of season, because they brought me a soupy dish containing big slabs of tofu, chives, red peppers…and meat! Gross! But they also brought us all rice, and I think Gyantzing took pity on me what with the veggie shortage, because the waiter brought out a big plate of bok choy stir-fry (or some sort of green stuff) and the driver heaped a bunch of this dish on my rice. I took the chopsticks and dragged the slabs of tofu onto the bowl of rice periodically, and it made a good meal of it. We were all served tea in, strangely, Dixie cups in a blue plastic filigree-like cup holder that has a handle; the tea was hot water with bits of leaves floating in it, and the waiter kept refilling my cup, even if it was more than half full. I also asked for coconut juice, since it was on the menu, but instead they had a canned fruit juice that showed fruit similar to strawberries on the can, but the pulp was clear. Still, it was delicious.

I think Cara would be highly amused at the image of me sitting at a round table in a tiny Tibetan restaurant with a couple of Tibetan guys. And I think Francis would be glad to know that I’ve started holding chopsticks close to the top. If you go to Tibet, you have to know how to use chopsticks.

For the most part, it was a day of driving, driving, driving, with occasional photo stops—such as the walk onto the frozen surface of the sacred lake.

I saw frozen water, a waterfall that isn’t falling, on the side of a mountain. We came to the Kharla Pass, at 5500 meters, with some majorly snowy mountains and one summit like a pyramid.
At the side of the road, on the right, I saw a charming white stupa, rather like a juniper stove, with a dramatic mountain backdrop. The driver pulled over so I could take a picture of it. I got out and aimed the camera, when a swarm of children ran up and stood before the stupa so that I’d take their picture. They asked for money, and I pulled some out of my wallet and proceeded to hand each of them a small bill. They were noisy and grabby and I think some expected me to give them money a second time. One of them nearly snatched the bundle out of my hand, but I was quick. I was also rather overwhelmed, exactly like when I gave fruit to kids in Rajgir, India, last year. They were behaving the same way and have probably seen quite a few tourists.

We went through a similar pass at 4200 meters and saw an artificial turquoise lake caused by a flood (perhaps thanks to the Chinese plot to cut down all the trees in Tibet?) and also a real turquoise lake, where we stopped and I admired the view, wandered a short distance, and took pictures. Prayer flags fluttered on a telephone pole on mountain. It was so cold and windy. I noticed that the wind sounds exactly like it does in the film Kundun, which is about the Dalai Lama; that wind is the first thing you hear when you start watching the film. Gyantse In the year 1480, King Repten Kunseng founded the Peschu Monastery, under the first Panchen Lama. It housed 200,000 monks before the Chinese invasion, and it’s down to 68 monks now.

“Chokhungs” means house of the Buddha. Sangharakshita was an Indian teacher who came before Padmasambhava but couldn’t suppress the demons, according to legend, unlike Padmasambhava. He was a hundred years old before the king came. Now he must be much older than that; he’s a Western scholar who wrote a book about Siddhartha Gautama, and it’s called Who is the Buddha? Oh, I guess that’s just someone who has the same name as Sangharakshita.

I wrote the above notes while Gyantzing was talking and we were sightseeing in Gyantse, which is a town known for its horse races. Sure enough, I saw quite a number of horses with wooden carts. We explored the Palkhor Choide Monastery, which was a lot like the others—colorful murals, a chanting hall that is still used by monks rather than like a museum, lovely gold statues. I climbed around inside the six-story Great Chorten (stupa) that’s a combo Tibetan and Nepalese style, with Nepalese big Buddha eyes toward the top, and around each story were little shrine rooms containing colorful statues.

Instead of spending a night in Gyantse with according to Gyantzing somewhat primitive accommodations, we drove off. We agreed to drive the one and a half hours to Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet and sight of the Panchen Lama’s monastery, Tashilhumpo. So we shall spend two nights in Shigatse instead of one in Gyantse and one in Shigatse, so here I am in a cushy hotel room. Well, it could be a bit warmer…quite a bit warmer. From my hotel room, I have a fabulous view of a building that is part of Tashilhumpo, the Panchen Lama’s palatial monastery. Wow. I read that Tashilhumpo is at the base of a mountain, so I’m thinking that the Potala-like building I see outside my window is one part of the monastery rather than its entirety. It is dramatically perched up on top of a mountain.

In Gyantse, I gazed at a fascinating fortress-monastery perched on a mountain—it looks impossible to reach and no doubt is meant to look that way. It’s as if King Ludwig II of Bavaria came to Tibet and designed the fortress-monastery. Down below it is a charming temple and an amazing stupa that’s Tibetan style below but Nepalese style above, with the big Buddha eyes looking out from four sides. Many big dogs—Tibetan mastiffs, I surmise—lay around in front of the monastery, and they were obviously strays, given how dirty their coats were. I thought that stray dogs in India generally look healthier.

We first followed the path leading to the temple. I spun a row of prayer wheels, and then we walked through a gate with old murals to the left and right: snow lions and big orange tigers caught my eye. Cats, of course. The entrance to the temple—perhaps I should say the front porch—was flanked by larger-than-life images of the guardian kings of the four directions. Very colorful. As Gyantzing has pointed out, all Tibetan temples have the four kings at the entrance. Inside, the fourteenth century murals were seriously blackened with smoke from centuries of butter lamps that used to sit on wooden benches that are like stairs. Alone one wall, those steps still held butter lamps and looked quite charming as the flames flickered in the mostly dark prayer hall. There was an enormous Maitreya statue in this temple, and his head loomed high above.

Another shrine room displayed a row of Buddha statues—particularly a larger-than-life Shakyamuni in the center—the statue itself is original, but the crown and other details were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution (or earlier—tour guides are trained to acknowledge that the Cultural Revolution was wrong but to pretend that the Chinese invasion of Tibet was good and peaceful) and have since been replaced. Along the edges of the room were the huge figures of the eight spiritual daughters and sons of the Buddha—all with gold faces and blue hair and patchwork/appliquéd brocade robes, like at so many temples. After circumambulating the room, and looking high up at these statues, I said, “I think the reason they’re so big is so that they’re more awe-inspiring.” In the main room, I noticed a stretch of what looked like quilts, and two of them were reminiscent of American quilt patterns. But the fabric looked like it was probably more local, and I rather think it’s a coincidence.

The stupa was really like a mandala, with six different levels; you can go up to all of them except the very top. Gyantzing warned me to duck because the doorways, except on the top floor, were very low. When I got to the first one, I ducked into the room and gasped at sight of a colorful and lively bodhisattva along one wall, and colorful murals covering the other walls. I turned to head out and promptly bumped my forehead on the doorframe. A couple of chupa-clad women with a baby and a toddler saw me, and I comically rubbed my forehead while laughing, and they all laughed with me. As we continued circling around, the toddler would look at me and rub her forehead with her head in a round O. Good thing I didn’t bump my head hard.

I kept going around the stupa, and the first level was mainly fierce deities and dakinis. Another level was mainly Taras of different colors. Another level was lamas, such as Tsongkapa. At the top (a fantastic lookout point) were Buddhas and murals of very detailed mandalas. On all levels were very loud pigeons.

In Gyantse there were indeed lots of horses, and in a couple of cases, they stood eating out of a sack pulled over the muzzle. In many cases, they were pulling carts, whether we were still on the “highway” or in the center of the little village. A couple of horse carts, one in front of the other, stopped and stood next to me, in the front, there was a white horse and an older man with a very little girl, the one behind that had at least three people, and I suspect the two carts together formed a family. There were colorful blankets or something like that in the carts, and the people wore, like almost everyone in this town, wearing traditional dress. If it weren’t for the plastic water bottle that the little girl held, the scene would have been the same a hundred years ago.

At least nobody’s wearing Mao suits or Mao caps—I’ve seen so many photos from Tibet in which people still dressed like that, but I’m thinking that’s rather dated. And I’m not seeing portraits of Mao, like Vikram Seth saw when he came to Tibet in 1981. Now it’s normal for Tibetans to wear traditional and/or Western dress. I have seen many chupas.

The Dalai Lama's Palace

It’s evening and I just munched on dried fruit and hazelnuts that I packed….but before eating I checked all my paperwork, and it looks suspiciously like I don’t actually have a reservation for a flight at 10:40 am on March 11. Could this be true?! It looks suspiciously like I’ll promptly get to the China Airways website and hopefully make a reservation. Eek—I’m feeling uneasy about this situation.

It is time that I describe the visit to the Potala, which incidentally is named after the Potalaka, rocky mountain that legend has it the bodhisattva of compassion lives on, whether you call that bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, Chenrezig, Quan Yin, or Kannon.

When we entered the Potala and were ascending a flight of steps, where one look at a window—very deep, like the walls must be about two feet thick—and there’s a wooden frame with no glass. I kind of doubt traditional Tibetan windows used glass—they can always close the shutters, and this isn’t mosquito country. However, it’s such a cold climate, and they have dust storms, so you’d think they’d have windows.

Anyway, on the steps, a group of three little novice monks giggled at me. They had to be younger than sixteen—like about eight or ten—but I’m thinking parents probably get them dressed up as monks in anticipation of their becoming monks at sixteen. No doubt the Chinese government doesn’t mind if this deceives tourists.

There was much climbing of stairs and you couldn’t take pictures in most places, though there were a couple places I did take pictures before noticing the sign with the No Photos symbol on it—a red circle with a line through it, in front of a black camera. This is kind of scary, since there were green uniformed Chinese soldiers all over the place. In any case, we were not at the very top roof, since it has become off limits, but we were on a roof, an area where I took some pictures of the breathtaking view. It’s usually fine to take pictures outdoors but not in. On that one occasion, a boy in a green uniform objected.

The Potala has a large courtyard where operas used to be performed with dancers wearing masks and colorful brocade costumes. High up on a balcony the Dalai Lama used to watch through a sheen red curtain. His living quarters—consisting of audience rooms, study room, libraries, meditation room and bedroom—was high up and the top of a tall and formidable whitewashed structure facing the courtyard. From the courtyard, I looked up and imagined the young Dalai Lama up there, looking down upon the courtyard. Oddly, the courtyard reminded me of the courtyard at Neuschwanstein Castle, which is a Germanic fairy tale castle King Ludwig II had built in the nineteenth century and therefore from a very different place and culture than the Potala.

We did go up and see some of the Dalai Lama’s rooms, though his bedroom is behind a closed door; presumably it still has the same furnishings as when he lived there. The “Watching room” as the balcony is called, is connected to the Audience Chamber, and it has a bright red and ornately carved stepping stool that the Dalai Lama and anyone else used in order to enter the Waiting Room. The room otherwise has the usual sumptuous brocade banners and draperies, in addition to a yellow brocade-draped wooden throne to the left, along the same wall as the stepping stool. There are long cushy-looking benches covered with patterned red, white, and yellow rugs, and some brightly painted tables in front of them.

The various Dalai Lamas didn’t all use the exact same rooms. Different Dalai Lamas had different suites, not entirely surprising given how big the place is. The seventh Dalai Lama had his own little meditation room in which a couple of the walls were mostly glass, with some red- and gold-painted carved wood around the glass. In the room, along the short wall on the right, is his meditation bench, and above it hangs a thangka. Along the long back wall is a cabinet containing gold statues, and the wall facing the bench is covered with brocade draperies.
I experienced sensory overload on a large scale at the Potala and now don’t know quite where to take this next. Oh, yes, we entered a huge prayer hall that doesn’t have the rows of red mattresses you usually see, because as my guide pointed out, “The Potala is now like a museum.” This prayer hall is on display for tourists and is no longer functional, so no monks sit on red benches to chant or play music.

I’m not sure—I think it was a different prayer hall, because I remember a bunch of people were around, but at one point I saw a monk on a bench working on something, and right behind him was a grey and orange cat,. The cat got up and scurried across the path and disappeared—clearly it wasn’t crazy about having so many people around.

We explored many rooms that contained rows and rows of gold statues, in some cases very large ones, bigger than life-size. One enormous tall-ceilinged room contained huge gold stupas covered with jewels; these were the tombs of the Dalai Lamas. Mixed in with the stupas were gold statues and little gold three-dimensional mandalas. When you see photos of the Potala’s façade, the gold roofs mark the location of the Dalai Lamas’ tombs.

At some point, we passed a closed red door a couple feet from a series of five closed red doors in a row, with the usual big round knockers; these were doors to the fifth Dalai Lama’s tomb, which are only opened on Losar, the Tibetan New Year, when countless Tibetans line up to go through the Potala. A long line of pilgrims, whom Gyantzing explained all come from the same village, entered the corridor at about the same time we did. I watched as a couple people stepped out of the line in order to peak through the red double doors that were open a crack. One guy followed them and actually pushed the door slightly more open. Several pilgrims were excited by this and moved toward the door; they all came across as simple and harmless country people.

The pilgrim’s overzealous curiosity inspired the ire of an authority figure, a guy in plain clothes, who marched up to the crowd and shooed them away from the door. He was followed by a mean boy in a green uniform who barked at the crowd and ushered them forward, and even took off a glove and slapped a pilgrim’s shoulder with it. Although that was nothing compared to the torture that I’ve read Tibetans experience, it was still shocking enough to leave me staring with my mouth hanging open. I rather suspect sheer power-tripping malice is the primary reason the authorities don’t want pilgrims to enter certain parts of the Potala, including the very top of the roof. I can understand not wanting people to take photos because the camera flash over time damages artwork.

Finally, we entered the fifth Dalai Lama’s tomb through a different door. The statues were enormous—the usual bodhisattvas and Shakyamuni statues. The stupa itself is covered with ornament and contains the fifth Dalai Lama’s ashes and relics. It was absolutely enormous, like a stupa that you expect to see outdoors, but it was gold encrusted with jewels rather than made of whitewashed earth. Typical Tibetan style, the big bulbous part had a curved window with a very old statue behind it, and another and much smaller Buddha statue sat in a niche in the base.

At some point, we passed through a corridor with, on our left, a glass-walled room with excessively long cabinets containing Buddhist statues not only from Tibet but from several countries, including Nepal, India, and Thailand. One of the cabinets contained a bunch of little reliquary stupas from Thailand. Most of the statues in this room were small, like those anyone might have at home. Some were six hundred years old.

We walked down a dark corridor, and around a corner, on the left, was a meditation cave that belonged to an early Dalai Lama—I’m tempted to say the first, but more likely the fifth or seventh. It had statues—big statues—of Tsongkapa and his Chinese and Nepalese wives, the two princesses responsible for bringing Buddhism to Tibet. The walls were dark grey and, since it was a cave, uneven and bumpy. The room also housed various bodhisattvas, such as Manjushri. At some point, the room was (oddly) used as a kitchen, and there’s a circular metal stove to the right, in front of the statues. The cooks had thought it was auspicious to cook there.

When we stepped outdoors into the sunlight, we were at the back of the Potala and had many stairs to gradually climb down. The stairs were white and fortunately included a low wall to the right, low enough that you could rest your arm on it and admire the scenery. The walls of this part of the Potala were white. From the stairs, I occasionally stopped to admire the view and usually took a picture. The sky was a vast and extremely bright blue. I could hear surreal music that sounded rather like New Age music sung by a woman, and I thought it added a dreaminess to the atmosphere.

I asked, “Is there a concert?” Gyantzing said, “It’s music for people who are exercising.”

I looked down below and could see a park in which there were indeed people exercising, and at least one of them was spinning a large strange white disk. A few feet further away, I noticed a lake, and in the center of it was an island with a small square temple with an elaborate curving roof. Gyantzing explained that this was the Naga Temple in Lukhang Lake, which is inside Lukhang Park and behind the Potala. The island struck me as a very appropriate location for a Naga Temple, since nagas are snake deities.

2

We parted at the hotel for a lunch break. From the hotel, I went to the little shop that sells bottled water, and I bought four more bottles (two of which I’ve already finished—it’s 8:25 am as I’m writing this). I took the bottles, along with the bag of postcards and a little book that I picked up at the Potala, up to my hotel room and dropped some stuff off. I also removed my extra shirt and used the bathroom. I walked from the hotel down the street in the direction of the Jokhang and turned left at the first corner. If I had been headed for the Jokhang, I would have turned right. The narrow street contained many little shops and merchant’s booths and in some cases wagons containing bananas that a merchant was selling, but I wasn’t seeing restaurants.

I saw a woman with a long table on which she served ramen noodles from a heaping huge bowl. In Tibet, Muslim women wear black snoods, and this ramen chef wore such a black lace snood under a sunhat. I walked up to her table and pointed to first the bowl of noodles and then the jar of red chili. She took a little bowl, plopped a heaping serving of noodles into it, then mixed in soy sauce and chili sauce and handed it to me, along with packaged wooden chopsticks. I sat down, opened up the chopsticks and started eating under the fascinated and amused eyes of three children who’d sat down on the bench by me. If nothing else, my eating left-handed may have fascinated them.

The cook wasn’t impressed with my method of scooping up noodles that were covered with the hot sauce and then scooping up dry noodles; she picked up my bowl and mixed the sauce up thoroughly, so that there were no dry noodles. If I had been eating spicy Indian food, I could have eaten from a bowl of bland yogurt and munched on bread or pappadums. Instead, I had nothing to alternate with the hot sauce. I plowed my way through and observed the stinging of my dry lips and sniffed because I didn’t want to blow my nose at the table.

The cook, I observed, opened a canister and placed some strange white stuff into another customer’s bowl of noodles; it was thin, squarish slithers with tiny holes, and I suspected it was fish, since the slick yellow stuff she also chopped up and put in the bowl was fish. She noticed me watching and put two squares of the holey white stuff into my bowl—I ate it, mixing with the noodles and sauce, not wanting to offend but simultaneously appalled that I was probably eating fish for the first time since 1994. While my scruples were damaged, I simultaneously remembered Shantum’s explanation that the Mindfulness Trainings, or five precepts, are guidelines rather than vows. Oh how the mighty have fallen; this is far worse than using the Worst Toilet in India. The strange white stuff had no taste and didn’t gross me out as I would have expected from fish—I was thinking it was either bread or fish, but in hindsight it may have been tofu. Scentless, tasteless, and white; it would be wonderful if it really was tofu. At some point she also noticed the condition of my nose and gave me a piece of toilet paper with which to blow it, which, amused, I did.

While I was eating and making a spectacle of myself (because, incidentally, Lhasa is a place to gawk and be gawked at), I noticed a white juniper stove in which offerings of juniper were burning. I then noticed the colorful and ornate doorway to a small white temple. This was behind the noodle stand. I also noticed, to my amusement, that I was practically next door to a real indoor restaurant that even had its name in English. After I emptied my bowl, except for some red liquid at the bottom, I pulled a fifty yuan bill out of my wallet, and the cook pointed at a ten yuan bill, so I gave her that and she handed me back the fifty. So I think I got a filling meal for a few pennies.

I got up and headed for the little temple, to be accosted by numerous beggars. I wouldn’t give any of them money, since I didn’t want to start a riot, and I kept walking toward the prayer wheels. As a young-looking ragged male beggar approached me on the right, I held my water bottle slightly out, and he took it out of my hand. This struck me as very funny and I suppressed a laugh. The bottle in fact only contained about two inches of water.

I walked the few more steps into the temple and spun the two-foot-tall gold prayer wheels with gusto; the temple contained a concise line of the wheels. I then joined the crowd of pilgrims circumambulating around an Avalokiteshvara shrine that seemed tiny after my morning at the Potala. But it was still quite ornate: the bodhisattva wore a gold crown incrusted with turquoise and coral. I circumambulated three times—this involved being pushed by fervently murmuring pilgrims through a narrow and darkish corridor. I then headed back out and down the street to the hotel, where I used the Internet for half an hour.

Sera Monastery

As we rode to the Sera Monastery, which is on the outskirts of Lhasa, Gyantzing told me that it housed five thousand monks before the Chinese invasion, and now it only has eight hundred monks. To me, that still seems like an awfully big number, but at the same time I don’t think it’s appropriate for the colonial government to limit the number of people who want a spiritual and communal life (or at least supposedly spiritual—not all monks are good, and because of the occupation, monks and nuns aren’t allowed to study as deeply as they should, and as they do in Dharamsala). Gyantzing explained that boys have to be at least sixteen years old to become monks now, and the Chinese authorities look at their background first, to make sure they have no relatives in India or relatives who are political protesters. I think that generally boys who become monks when they’re only five years old aren’t old enough to know whether that really is their calling, but on the other hand I’ve read that there’s so much for them to learn that they have to start at such a very early age. The part about the authorities checking potential monks’ backgrounds strikes me as much more oppressive and intrusive than the part about making them wait till they’re sixteen. Strangely, I didn’t think to ask how old girls had to be to become nuns, but I guess it didn’t occur to me because we were at an all-male monastery.

The Chinese destroyed the statue of Padmasambhava in front of Mount Kailash, huge statue, right after it was built. Power tripping much? They did the same with another statue—this is recent stuff if the Chinese government doesn’t approve of a public statue—like they’d approve of something Buddhist anyway!—then they tear it down. As I pointed out, it’s power-tripping politicians. But China’s not the only country that has power-tripping politicians—the USA has a blatantly power-tripping Whiteboyworld ungovernable government.

We were on the road to the monastery, when I spotted yaks for the first time, standing around amid small bare trees that I hesitate to call a forest. The narrow road was lined with merchants who had simple little booths. They didn’t look like they made a good living, with their dingy clothing and unkempt hair. The road leads directly to the monastery, where you buy tickets as though the monastery was an amusement park. That’s how the Chinese treat Buddhism in Tibet.

At the end of this road was the looming whitewashed monastery, such a different world from the Chinese streets of Lhasa. After we got out of the car and Gyantzing got the tickets, we walked up steps at a dramatic slant. I saw whitewashed buildings to my left and to my right.

The first place we visited was the printing press, a room that has traditionally been used as a printing press I’m thinking for centuries. The walls were lined with shelves and shelves full of carved wooden blocks. Some shelves contained modern books in Tibetan but I also saw stacks of the long, slender pages of Tibetan traditional scriptures, not only on shelves but also on the floor.

There were low glass cabinets forming a square in the center of the room, like in a shop. On top of the back glass cabinet were stacked black-printed banners on yellow fabric lying stacked on top of the glass cabinet. Gyantzing explained to me that these are pinned onto a door for good luck, and I decided to purchase a banner for me and another for my brother. The banners I purchased are quite different: the one with Manjushri at the top protects you from illness, and the one that I got for myself is a mandala. At some point while I wandered around this fascinating room, I noticed a couple of monks staring at me. They were doing it the same way as villagers visiting the Potala had stared at me, but it was disconcerting to be stared at by monks.

In more or less the center of the monastery is a shell of a building that was bombed after the Chinese invasion (supposedly during the Cultural Revolution, but in fact the Chinese started bombing Lhasa in 1959). One wall facing the entrance stood, still white stone blocks with black-framed windows, and it was disconcerting to see weeds growing out of the windows. Weirder still was looking through the windows and seeing the sky and the hill slanting upward, instead of seeing the interior of a building with brocade banners and gold Buddha statues. I walked around the corner, and there was very little of the opposite wall or side walls remained. It looked like an ancient ruin, and yet it had been intact before the late nineteen-fifties. It is a great shame that the Chinese won’t even admit that this sort of thing happened before the Cultural Revolution. Liars. Oh, yeah, we can’t let honesty get in the way of ideology.

We took a walk through the main part of Sera Monastery, with a functioning prayer hall and little rooms containing statues of Shakyamuni, Tsongkapa, and the like. After our visits to Ganden Monastery, the Potala, and the Jokhang Temple, the art and décor in Sera Monastery’s temples and shrine rooms seemed redundant, though nonetheless beautiful and stirring. There were a few other tourists, particularly a group of Germans. Most of the tourists in Tibet are Chinese, and this is only March, so the tourist season won’t actually begin for a couple months.

Large red double doors lead into a courtyard surrounded by a whitewashed stone wall. Inside the courtyard are some trees, and when Gyantzing and I entered it, the courtyard was also full of red-clad monks, most of whom looked between the ages of sixteen and forty. They were practicing the traditional Tibetan debating, which to an outsider looks quite comical. They split into twos, and one monk stands before the other and asks a question, stretching out his arms and slapping his palms together. The other answers, and as he finishes his answer, he stretches out his arms and slaps his palms together. This is often done with smiles and laughter. Sometimes one monk questions a group of four monks. After watching this for about half an hour, we wandered into another section of courtyard, where middle-aged monks debated in a much quieter and gentler manner, while sitting cross-legged on the ground. That wasn’t nearly as interesting to watch.

Between three and five in the afternoon, monks entertain tourists at Sera Monastery by practicing their traditional debating (Michael Palin calls it kung fu debating) in the monastery’s courtyard. Before I left on this trip, I read an online report presented by the International Campaign for Tibet; it was specifically for people who were about to be tourists in Tibet, and among other things it explained the monks at Sera Monastery still debate as they had in the past, but now it entertains tourists and the topics of their debates are much simpler than they were before the Chinese invasion. They aren’t allowed to study as much, and they are not allowed to study Tibetan Buddhism with the depth that previous generations studied and practiced. The gurus, the Rimpoches, are in exile and teaching practitioners outside of Tibet, not in it.

We walked slowly up a path that went up, up the mountain. The mountain itself was a light brown color and crumbly with rocks, some of which were quite large. Not much plant life grew high on the mountain; that’s a clue that we’re at a high elevation. Above, I gazed at bright and colorful pictures of bodhisattvas painted on rocks, some of which were very high up. I imagined robed painters climbing up to precarious locations just so they could paint Buddhas and bodhisattvas on mountain rocks.

In the distance is a yellow-painted stone temple that Gyantzing explained is in front of Tsongkapa’s favorite meditation cave. I remembered the small Tibetan temple in front of the Buddha’s austerities cave near Bodh Gaya, India. During Tsongkapa’s time, the meditation cave would have been a simple cave without any ornate temple in front of it.

We climbed up and got closer to huge painted rocks and to a tall skinny empty tower from which a huge thangka is hung on Losar. It was very narrow, with slightly slanting walls and the obligatory black-framed windows, but Gyantzing explained that inside the tower is empty; there’s a staircase but no furniture or artwork. Of course, the building’s sole purpose is to display the giant thangka.

In front of the tower was a plateau, and I stepped near the edge, amid the shrubbery, and standing at this lookout point, I gazed at the distant Potala. One of the enormous, flattish stones next to the tower was covered with several bright Green Taras. We turned to head back toward the lively monastery, and I noticed a woman sitting on the ground and wearing a brimmed hat and colorful striped shawl, and I thought she looked Peruvian.

I’m hearing a yowling tomcat out in the parking lot or some such place, somewhere outside my window. I think I heard him last night, too. He probably smells me and thinks I’m a female cat.

Drepung Monastery and the Jokhang Temple

My altitude sickness this time includes not only dizziness but also nausea and headache, but fortunately I took a painkiller.

I had breakfast at the rooftop restaurant, with its breathtaking view, and it was an English breakfast with tea or coffee—no bottled water to be found. I thought I had time to go up to my room, but I couldn’t get the keycard to work. This was rather unfortunate, since I hadn’t remembered to put on sunscreen before leaving the room. Afterwards, I met up with Gyantzing, and the driver took us to Drepung Monastery, the eleventh century monastery we saw while driving yesterday. “Drepung” means “rice heap.”

During the tour, I took a few notes: Sacred items that are important to a Tibetan monastery: Chortens Statues Scriptures Tsongkapa’s monastery—founded in 1416. Power—wisdom—compassion—three statues representing these three things are continually displayed together, because you can’t have one without the others. Yamunthaka—major fierce deity, protector of Yellow Hat Sect (Gelugpa). Karmapa—Black Hat Sect, Tsupu monastery, 70 km west of Lhasa. Panchen Lama = Amitabha, Buddha of the Past. The seventh Dalai Lama built the Norbulingka, the summer palace in Lhasa. Cedrundrop founded Tashilhumpo, the Panchen Lama’s monastery. Baby—deserted when robbers invaded, and he was protected by crows. (The first Dalai Lama, that is.)

At the Drepung Monastery this morning, we visited a typical Tibetan prayer hall or chanting hall, and there was a cheerful monk on a window seat to whom you were to give money if you want to take photos. Up against his side and on his robes was a fluffy brown and cream-colored cat, curled up into a ball. I placed a yuan bill in front of the monk, saw the cat, and said, “Oh, a kitty!” and smiled. Who knows if the monk or the cat understood what I said. I was tempted to pet the cat, but given its close proximity to the monk, I decided against it. It wouldn’t be the first time I nearly petted a Tibetan monk. Um, never mind.

While I was blissed out at the monastery, with the endless blue sky and stony mountains and stunning snow-capped mountains serving as a surreal backdrop, I was aware that there used to be one hundred thousand monks there before the Chinese invaded, that it used to be a much livelier place, with four universities inside it. It still contains a functioning university, but I was struck by how quiet, how almost deserted, the place seemed. The monks there now are all caretakers—they clean the place up, cook food, take money for photography, and refill the metal offering bowls with water or refill the big butter lamps. That is not deep scholarly stuff.

As a woman, I can understand seeing the Tibetan monastic system as power-tripping and elitist, but I nonetheless think it’s important to have scholars and spiritual practitioners who are doing the deep stuff. Of course, I think they should include approximately the same number of women as men. Nonetheless, I see the way the Chinese limit the monastery as also being oppressive, as intolerant of religion or more importantly spirituality. I often saw a monk or some guy whether or not he was wearing red robes, adding large chunks of yellow butter to the enormous butter lamps, two foot wide metal bowls on a pedestal in front of shrines. Or someone, who in some cases looked like a pilgrim rather than a monk, poured liquid butter into the lamp, or a monk lit the row of wicks sticking up out of the uneven butter mess. Just because we were indoors didn’t mean we were in a cozy room; some of the butter was very solid, no matter that flames burned at the top of the wicks. The rancid butter smell was rather less than pleasant; maybe that’s why my nose hasn’t noticed the aroma of unwashed pilgrims.

We climbed many stairs and wandered into many rooms, some—many—of which had amazing sculptures (what you might even call dolls) draped in colorful patchwork brocade capes and often in coral and turquoise jewelry. Some sculptures were instead studded with such jewels. Many of the statues were enormous, some as large or larger than life; some were a couple feet tall, and some very small, such as the cabinets filled with a thousand identical Shakyamuni Buddha statues. There was a lot of repetition in the subjects of the statues: we saw a great many thousand-armed and eleven-headed Avolakiteshvaras; Green Taras and White Taras; and a great many Tsong Kapas (hardly surprising, since he founded this monastery and it’s very much associated with him). Since I’m not from Tibet, Tsong Kapa isn’t that significant to me; I have a greater appreciation for compassionate bodhisattvas such as Avolakiteshvara and Tara. There were at least two sets of arhats, some fierce deities such as a huge Palden Lhamo figure—she’s a protector of Lhasa and the Dalai Lama.

In one prayer hall, alone a wall, were large likenesses of all the Dalai Lamas except the current one, which got us on the topic of the rather suspicious deaths of many Dalai Lamas when they were very young; for instance, the ninth was a little kid. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Dalai Lamas died when they were kids, likely thanks to poisoning.

We probably could have gotten through the tour faster if I didn’t talk so much, believe it or not. I even mentioned Dharamsala sometimes, and Gyantzing said, “That must seem more like Tibet than here,” and I agreed. He was in Dharamsala six years ago, so he’s not brainwashed as I had feared. He’s not squeamish about discussing things that I expected to be taboo, such as the controversy over the current Panchen Lama. I was probably pushing it when he explained the stacks of manuscripts in a glass case and I said that we saw many manuscripts at the exile library in Dharamsala, and as we walked toward a doorway, I said, “And we even met the Prime Minister.” Not exactly a safe topic! There were indeed people around, and I’ve read that even people who look like monks could be spies.

To my surprise, we toured the kitchen. It has a very high ceiling like most of the rooms, but it doesn’t have the colorful murals covering the walls and columns that the prayer halls and other rooms have; the kitchen was all painted a dark brown and was quite dark, although traditional wooden cabinets were painted red and yellow and with a floral pattern. There were gigantic metal pots for feeding large numbers of people, and there were rows and rows of large teapots like the ones the monks carried during the Dalai Lama’s teachings, but these teapots were bigger.

As soon as we entered the kitchen, I heard a cat meowing! There was a grey and white cat walking around, and it was very vocal, friendly, and purred enthusiastically while I petted it. A monk had just cooked little beige potatoes; Gyantzing offered me a couple, and they were very hot and tasty, boiled and salted. The cat may have been hoping to get a potato, too. It had to settle for Gyantzing and I petting it and my taking a couple pictures of it.

Oh yeah, there’s more about the Drepung Monastery that I have to mention! It includes an upper section that was the Dalai Lama’s living quarters—like the second through fourth Dalai Lamas—before the Potala was built. It was much like I believe the Dalai Lama’s rooms look like at the Potala, which I’ll get to visit tomorrow. There was an Audience Chamber, red-painted furniture and a tall throne where the Dalai Lama sat while regular people came in and talked to him or at least bowed to him. There was a very old yellow brocade cape set up on the throne, next to which was a display case; I’m thinking it contained a statue and offerings, but that may have been another similar room. Next door was an audience chamber where the Dalai Lama talked with politicians, and connected to that was a room full of beautiful red-painted, carved furniture: cabinets on the sides, a bench facing the door, a couple of small, low cabinets in front of the bench. The walls of the Audience Chamber or one of the other rooms were painted with murals that told stories.

I was a little surprised at the murals in one small room, a simple room with a staircase leading upstairs. The room contained no furniture and was like a hall that led to the outdoors and that was one of the last places we went. It had not only murals of various figures on a black background, but above that was a border displaying animal and human skins hanging. There were also some skulls painted here and there. It was quite tantric, and quite gruesome. 2 During my lunch break, I wandered down the street and went into the first noodle shop I came to. The young women behind the counter didn’t understand English and so I pointed at a picture of something that looked vegetarian. It turned out to have a small pile of yak meat, ground up, placed on the center top. Gross! I ate the noodles and peanuts and chives around the meat and was careful not to even touch it with my chopsticks, while I more or less read an article in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle but paid more attention to my surroundings than to the magazine.

While I was at this noodle stop, a total of three beggars approached me. Despite Shantum’s talk about not giving to beggars because that’s perpetuating their lifestyle and thereby disempowering them, I gave a small bill to each beggar. I sat in a far corner and simply couldn’t refuse—they walked up to me while I sat in a corner, so it wasn’t like when beggars are on the street and you’re walking past them. I remembered the Jataka tale about the Bodhisattva, a previous life of the Buddha, giving to beggars no matter what and even letting people steal from him. The first beggar in the noodle shop was a filthy little girl, who pressed her palms together and looked at me with big eyes. She had wandered in silently, unaccompanied by any adult. The second beggar was a dirty young woman in a chupa and with a baby on her back. The third beggar was an old woman, also in traditional dress, who walked with a cane and had a circular, lined face. Given the individual circumstances, it seemed appropriate to give money to each of them. It was certainly a firsthand exposure to the feminization of poverty, since they were each female and I might even go so far as to say they were like a Triple Goddess: Maiden, Mother, Crone, because they covered different stages of our lifespan. Who knows, maybe they were all dakinis in disguise.

From what I’ve read about visiting Tibet, you’re kind of expected to leave food in your bowl so that monks, nuns, or beggars can eat the leftovers (as long as they don’t mind your germs, of which I doubt they’ve ever heard). I thought of that when a couple of nuns showed up. No beggar was waiting for me to finish eating, but I left the bowl half full, with all the yak meat and the noodles and chives directly underneath it.

Kathmandu was gloomy, but there’s something stirring in my soul at sight of the snow-capped mountains and gliding hawks and wind-beaten banners and prayer flags, and the Potala looming so high in the brilliant blue sky full of fluffy white clouds. It’s all so breathtaking and awe-inspiring, and it’s so easy to forget my neurotic troubles.

Today when I cleaned out my passport bag during my lunch break, I found a Kit Kat bar, which I thought was from Jagdish. I later looked at it lying on the nightstand, and I wondered: when am I going to stop looking for a surrogate mother? It is a futile search. I need to nurture myself, to be my own mother.

I think rapid heartbeat—as in high blood pressure—must be one of the symptoms of altitude sickness. Same goes for dehydration, which causes diarrhea. On the other hand, it would be more accurate to say that high blood pressure is a reaction to the high altitude, and the dehydration quite likely comes from the fact that I have to go out and buy bottles of water to drink.

I also have strangely discovered that the same Germans who sat with me on the plane are staying at the Yak Hotel; I met them at breakfast. We also ran into each other again at Drepung Monastery. As one of them said, “The world gets smaller when you’re in Tibet.”

3

After lunch, Gyantzing and I met up again at the hotel lobby, and we walked to the shop that sold bottled water, where I stocked up on four more bottles. (I just can’t get enough water, and I’m still having diarrhea as of seven pm today.)

We then walked to the Jokhang Temple. In front of the temple is a huge expanse of pavement—actually, it’s rectangular slabs of what might be slate rather than ordinary cement blocks—a courtyard ahead of the Jokhang Temple, quite the happening place. Pilgrims circumambulated and prostrated before the Jokhang, and some people were out shopping. You can get both your spiritual and material needs (or wants) in the same place, the Barkhor, the walkway around the Jokhang. I saw people in clothing from different regions of Tibet and a variety of prayer wheels twirling in pilgrim’s hands. There was a stupa-shaped stove where people burned offerings of juniper in the morning, as we had seen when we arrived at the Drepung Monastery early enough to see people pick up the green branches and place them in a stove in front of the monastery.
Inside the Jokhang, I’m thinking that the row of Dalai Lama sculptures (all up to the Thirteenth) that I previously described were at the Jokhang, not Drepung. I also saw many photos of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and at least two were painted. East or West, people sometimes painted photos in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Jokhang’s exterior primarily dates from the seventeenth century, and you have to go inside to see seventh century woodwork, for the Jokhang dates back to when Buddhism was first introduced to Tibet. Originally Buddhism in Tibet involved just the Jokhang Temple and some lay practitioners, but eventually there were seven monks. That is why temples and monasteries often have carvings of seven critters, mainly snow lions, on the façade, running horizontally over the doorways. When we entered the front door, instantly we were surrounded by seventh century woodwork in a narrow corridor—the doors and doorframes were very dark wood, and the walls were painted dark yellow and red. In an alcove were walls with old bodhisattva murals and in front of them were large-as-life papier-mâché figures that replace the originals after the so-called Cultural Revolution. Most of the sculptures were destroyed in the 1950s and 60s.

Inside the big main temple now, there stands an enormous Avalokiteshvara statue in the center facing the entrance, and in front of it are many long red banners, like any Tibetan prayer hall, but unlike at Drepung Monastery, this hall was clearly put to use and alive. Many dark red capes sat in rows on the low red benches, and in the center of the room were musical instruments, such as an enormous drum. On the outer walls were small, bright murals telling stories: in particular, the story of the building of the Jokhang, complete with a stupa in the center. According to this legend, the first Buddhist king threw a ring to indicate where the temple would be built and it landed in the lake. The illustration showed that wooden boards were cut and carried and set up across the lake.

Around the perimeters of the room are display cases full of statues and some documents of the seventeenth century made of that dark wood with reliefs that have been worn down over the years. Some shrine rooms had large dark wooden double doors that are chained and padlocked; they’d be open in the morning, when a big crowd is inside. These are special shrines, labeled over the doorway, and they contain a special theme, such as the Tsongkapa shrine, or the Avalokiteshvara shrine. Each shrine that we entered contains large and elaborate gold Tibetan sculptures wearing brocade.

At some point, I saw a skinny little grey cat walking in the aisle, and it leaped onto the wooden fence or bench that’s around the central prayer hall. Then the cat leaped up on a high Buddha throne. A cat can look at a Buddha. I’m delighted to see cats in Tibet; strangely, in India stray dogs are all over the place, but you rarely see a cat. Maybe that’s because dogs are on average so much more outgoing and needier than cats.

A particularly festive shrine is a big room with a large Avalokiteshvara. It was approximately three or four feet just seated. This Avalokiteshvara was originally a plain sculpture but over time received donations of gold, turquoise, and coral, with the result that elaborate decoration was piled on and it now has an excessively ornate crown of gold, turquoise, and coral, with big hanging earrings and a collar to match. A bodhisattva stepping in style. Even in traditions other than Tibetan, bodhisattvas are often depicted wearing a great deal of jewelry and crowns and flowing silk sashes, showing that they are more worldly than full-blown Buddhas, since they choose to stay in this world in order to help those who are unenlightened. The sculpture also wears a colorful, patchwork or appliquéd brocade robe, like those worn by so many sculptures. Around the sides of the room are tall standing life-size bodhisattvas, of course painted gold with blue hair, and wearing patchwork brocade robes with long silk fringe.

We climbed up on the flat rooftop of the Jokhang and looked out over the crowd that is continually circling around the temple. We had an excellent view of the entire square, so we watched not only pilgrims circumambulating the temple and in some cases spinning prayer wheels, but we also saw the merchandise booths in two long rows on either side of the square, where many people haggled. Also in front of the temple is a little space inside a stone wall containing a very old tombstone-like stone sticking up with a message carved into it. Gyantzing mentioned that it basically says that China will never invade Tibet, and I laughed and commented on the irony. I was a bit surprised that he brought it up.

Gyantzing said, “Many, many people circle around the temple.” Just as he said this I saw a fluffy white little dog on a leash, and I said, “Not to mention the occasional dog.”

We got back down the treacherous ladder-like stairs and parted in front of the Jokhang, where Gyantzing said I’m welcome to circumambulate the temple. I was happy to do so, having read so much about it. I walked slowly and steadily, at the same pace as the pilgrims in front of me. It was a walking meditation, so I was mindful of my steps at the same time that I was gawking at my fascinating surroundings. I was moving like this through a vast crowd, in lanes lined with shops and merchandise stalls.

Some merchants sold mundane things like plastic toys and flashlights, which you could get just about anywhere in the world. Others sold pictures of the Panchen Lama and other religious figures; Tibetan Buddhist statues and ritual tools; coral, silver, and turquoise jewelry; musical instruments for rituals; ordinary clothing such as t-shirts with the message “Yak yak yak Tibet;” and ready-made traditional Tibetan clothing such as elegant black chupas. I noticed a fabric store that contained brocade and thought I might shop there sometime, but right now I just enjoyed the walk.

Of course, I had a lot more to look at than merchandise. Beyond the stalls and salespeople were the tall stone Tibetan buildings with shops on the main floor and perhaps apartments up above. Some of the people in the crowd were red-clad monks, and others were pilgrims who in many cases wore traditional dress, such as rough-looking heavy wool robes. When I reached the front of the Jokhang, its beautiful façade was a welcome sight, and rows of pilgrims dramatically prostrated before it. I only went around twice because halfway round the second time, I noticed that I was dizzy and nauseous again, so I headed back to my hotel room. Unlike in Dharamsala, where the altitude is low compared to Lhasa, I experienced two days of altitude sickness.
I only saw a total of five white people all day, and three of them were the Germans staying at this hotel. While circumambulating the Jokhang, I had just been thinking I was the only non-Asian in the whole crowd, when I briefly noticed a pair of Brits.

10:20 pm—I’ve taken some labels off water bottles as cheap souvenirs; I think it’s sad that the labels are in Chinese, not Tibetan. It’s also sad that this major street is called Beijing Road, the most prominent street in Lhasa, and that it’s lined with Chinese-looking shops. It’s not till you get to this neighborhood, the Old Tibetan Neighborhood (like a historic landmark, something from the past), that the shops all have signs in Tibetan, in addition to Chinese. It’s not unusual to see Tibetan, Chinese, and English—for the shops around the Jokhang in particular, this is standard. It struck me as ironic to see a store that’s called “Ethnic Clothing Shop” when the “ethnic” clothing is Tibetan and is basically what you see many women wearing, in particular chupas and striped aprons.

My Arrival in Lhasa, Tibet

Flying over Tibet, I see tippy-top peaks of snow-capped mountains peaked out of the clouds. Cloud formations included what looked like a panda bear sticking its tongue out. Another cloud resembled someone resting, perhaps a reclining Buddha, and another cloud was too reminiscent of a mushroom cloud. I must have seen the top of Mount Everest, but there were so many mountain tops that I don’t know which one it was.

Germans surrounded me on the plane, and when they spoke English, it was with a British accent. A Tibetan guy across the aisle (I had the window seat) asked the German guy next to me if he’d put a book in his bag. It was a hardcover book and pretty big, and he bought it in India and no doubt it was not a pro-Chinese occupation kind of book. The German guy was dubious about it, since he didn’t want to get in trouble either. He turned to me and asked, “Do you speak English?”
I smiled and said, “Yeah.”
“Yeah. You’re British?”
“No, American,” I admitted. He then explained the situation to me and asked if he should take the book, and I said I wouldn’t do it, just to be safe. I then explained, “If he’s caught, he’d get into worse trouble, though. He could be imprisoned. But you’d still get in trouble.” At the airport near Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, my bags had to all go back through a security check, even though we were arriving rather than departing. This young guy in a green Chinese uniform and wearing clear plastic gloves searched both my carry-ons but not my suitcase. Stuff I got in Dharamsala and that I don’t want the Chinese to see is actually in the suitcase, so I lucked out in that respect—so far, anyway. I guess they’re more concerned about what we bring than what we take to an airport for departure, since this is fascist Chinese-occupied Tibet.

The soldier even flipped through pages in my books and notebooks, probably to see if I brought pictures of the Dalai Lama. I’m so glad I didn’t purchase any such pictures in Dharamsala, after all! I’ll wait and get some when I return to Kathmandu.

What the tall, stern and unsmiling Chinese soldier didn’t do is read the smallish print on the front cover of my spiral bound photocopied edition of the Tibetan Dhammapada: there are lots of words on the cover, and toward the bottom is a paragraph specifying the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Dharamsala and the dates of the teachings. Of course this was all in English, and I suspect that he wouldn’t have understood many of the words on the cover. I don’t think Chinese or Tibetan people speak English as much as people from India and Nepal do, since in those countries it’s taught in school even when they’re little kids. That’s the best way to learn more than one language: start in elementary school; I wish we’d do that in America.

I recall reading that, for whatever reason, China doesn’t allow you to bring more than twenty changes of underwear. When I read about that, I imagined what it could be like when a Chinese authority looks through my suitcase.

“You have too much underwear! You are a member of a splittist faction!” “No, that’s just a rip in the seam.” “Why you have Dalai Lama pictures in your underwear?” “I figured of all the places that would least likely get looked at carefully…”

This is so crazy—I’m in Tibet for real! I’d like to take a picture of a yeti, but I won’t be out in the wild, and I doubt a yeti would be circumambulating the Jokhang Temple.

Gyantzing is my tour guide, a guy. I was hoping for a female tour guide. After this trip, I’ll want a one-way ticket to Herland. I was relieved to leave that mean boy in a green uniform and head toward this big open space devoid of furniture with the one exception of a sort of table on which I had to place my Chinese visa, an eight and a half by eleven inch piece of white paper with black ink and an official-looking red stamp. A middle-aged Tibetan guy in a dark jacket approached me and asked if I’m Susan, and I smiled and said, “Yes!” He gave me a khatta, a white Tibetan greeting scarf that’s sheen and printed with auspicious Buddhist symbols. It has a very long silky fringe on each end, and the fringe tangles with everything.

Writing in the minivan while riding from the airport, I took notes in a horrible scrawl, while Gyantzing gave me information:
The airport is at 3600 meters above sea level, and Lhasa is at 3700 meters above sea level. All I know about meters is they’re approximately four feet. I didn’t do the math; I just know it’s big numbers.
The river near the airport is the Brahmaputra, and it’s winding like turquoise arteries. From Mount Kailash to India is 60 kilometers. The Yellow Valley is sandy with short, spiky brown and red plants.
Barley, wheat, and peas are the main crops. I know they can grow potatoes and other root vegetables, though, and they’re actually capable of growing quite a number of vegetables and flowers during a couple of summer months, at least on the plateau. Nowadays there are greenhouses, but oddly they looked empty as we rode past them from the airport. It seems to me like this would be a great time of year to put the greenhouses to use.
Lhasa Gytsu is the central river, and it goes to northern Tibet. ( I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I totally misspelled that.)

Twenty percent of Tibetan males were monks, and two percent of Tibetan women were nuns, before the Cultural Revolution. Or to be more accurate, this was before about 1959, since the Chinese had already invaded and done a great deal of harm before the Cultural Revolution and kicked plenty of monks and nuns out of their monastic lifestyle. However, the tour guide isn’t supposed to say that: the official Chinese bull shit propaganda story is that the invasion was “the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” (yeah, just like Georgie Porgy and his minion’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were “Peaceful Liberations”) and it’s absolutely verboten to point out that the invasion was in fact very violent and oppressive, not a peaceful liberation at all. Not to mention that buildings like monasteries were bombed; monks and nuns raped and murdered, that sort of thing. Peaceful liberation, indeed.

400 nuns—biggest number in Tibet—on mountain. 600,000 = population of Lhasa, 40% Tibetan. New buildings are coming up in Chinese style. Tall glass skyscrapers, I notice. China has certainly lifted its leg and pissed on Tibet.

I see on the river reddish brown ducks with pale yellow heads, black-tipped wings. We passed greenhouses, where people grow tomatoes, cucumbers, etc, and a group of people planting trees with a cart loaded with branches. We passed Western-looking cows and sheep. I’m kind of surprised that the cows aren’t more like Indian cows.

We passed an 11th century monastery, Ballendesh, built in typical Tibetan style, whitewashed with slanting walls. Pretty. Cremated, ashes in stupa—brought ashes back in 1960’s (I’m not sure if this comment refers to an abbot or to the monks of that monastery in general or not—too bad my notes weren’t more detailed). We came to a mountain with carved and painted Buddhas. Around the time of the invasion or the Cultural Revolution, there was a request that the central government (as in Beijing) not destroy the monastery, so here it stands. (We were still south of Lhasa while I scribbled these notes, while the tour guide was speaking in the jeep.)

The military base, a big tall scary building a few minutes down the road from the old monastery, is three years old. I looked up at the looming rectangle, a very modern building, and thought: That’s a sign that you’re in an oppressive fascist police state. It’s such a power-tripping symbol to have a military base right there, on the outskirts of Lhasa. It disgusts me but doesn’t really surprise me. I seem some green military vehicles in front of the building, around which is a fence with a gate where a stiff green-clad soldier stands. He looks like he’s frozen in place; he may as well be an android rather than a person.

We stopped to see the beautiful, bright Buddha paintings on a mountain, and the ducks on the lake across the road were talkative in and at the edge of the snakelike winding little bits of river. Before we walked up to the mountain and looked at the big bright Buddha, we went through a colorful gate painted in Tibetan symbols, and we stopped at a juniper stove. It’s whitewashed and probably made of earth, and it’s shaped rather like a vase or like a Tibetan stupa, with curved sides and a curved aperture where the juniper is placed. Inside the aperture, the surface is burnt black and has remnants of the plant, and a little bit of smoke still issues out. I’ve seen these many times in photos of Tibetan architecture, and I could tell they were stoves, but I never knew exactly what they were. They’re located in front of all monasteries and temples, and they are used for burning offerings of juniper every morning. I hope they grow plenty of juniper bushes nearby.

The Buddha is indeed huge and painted and slightly carved on the mountainside. It’s low enough that the artist or artists could have been standing on the ground while making it, rather than standing on scaffolding. It’s not smooth and sophisticated but rather has the rough texture of the rocky mountain and has a folk art look to it. Colorful deities, smaller than the Buddha, are painted on the mountain, and I recognize Green Tara, a Goddess of compassion who has one foot down from her lotus throne, like she’s about to get down and help people out. I wish she’d come help me, but I have to help myself.

A few yards past the big Buddha mountain, we passed newly-built summer houses. Although the houses have Tibetan-style murals, the walls are filled with very large greenish glass windows; they are deserted little vacation houses presumably for Han Chinese invaders. They consist of modern architecture despite the murals, and the architect has made no attempt at imitating traditional Tibetan architecture; the little houses look like they might only have one room, maybe a little more than that, and they have peaked roofs. Given what the climate is like, I don’t think people would stay in them for more than a couple months. Would they really enjoy it?

I see plenty of modern versions of Tibetan houses. They have garage doors like Indian and Nepalese buildings but also ornate red Tibetan doors. They have grey walls made of what looks like big stone or cement blocks. They can have large front picture windows, probably for the living room, and they also have plenty of other windows, with glass. Traditional Tibetan windows didn’t have glass but had shutters—given the climate, I’m thinking you’d have to be bundled up all the time, even in the house. Of course, the Tibetan beer chang would warm people up, as would hot food and a fire.

We came to traffic police, who are Chinese in fancy blue uniforms, before we passed bulldozed (or more likely bombed) and graffiti-decorated older Tibetan houses. If they were destroyed in the fifties or sixties, I’m surprised nobody’s cleared away the evidence and instead has left these reminders to inspire resentment and to perhaps inspire some Tibetans to be suspicious of the official Chinese version of their history. I’ve read that Tibetans living in Tibet aren’t getting the real story, and this is not surprising; though if they have parents or grandparents around who remember what really happened, then I suspect they learn from them.

We passed under the new railroad and saw the station in the distance. We passed the notorious train station, which mimics traditional Tibetan monastic architecture and was completed in 2006. I’ve read that global warming means the permafrost is melting, and this will make the train tracks sink and crumble in a short time. Really smart thinking. But of course, the Chinese are in denial about so many things. I’ve also read that while the official story is that the railroad is good for Tibet and that building it gave many Tibetans jobs, the truth is that the better jobs were given to Chinese and that Tibetans had the worse and lower-paying jobs on the railroad. And of course it also means that all the more Han Chinese can move into Tibet, as if there aren’t enough. They don’t even have the lungs for this climate—I can’t think they’d be all that much at home.

On the left we passed a cement factory, which according to Gyantzing is one of the first factories that the Chinese built in Tibet, in the 1960’s, causing the worst pollution in Tibet.
Also on the left, after we’ve entered Lhasa, we passed Drepung Monastery. It is on a mountainside beyond shops and looms up looking quite large and impressive, all whitewashed walls slanting inward so that the base of the wall is wider than the top, just in all traditional Tibetan architecture, and the monastery has the obligatory black-framed windows. Sera Monastery is in Lhasa and Ganden, which houses the yellow-hat sect, is in Gyantse. It dates to the 11th-12th centuries, 14th century. The last sect only dates to the seventeenth century and is a reformist sect thanks to the fifth Dalai Lama. He got other orders to change into the Yellow Hat (Gelugpa)—most monasteries in Tibet are now yellow-hat. The second through the fourteenth Dalai Lamas had their education in this monastery, Drepung. It’s a big and special place. I’ve had the impression that lately the reason there are so many more Gelugpa monks and nuns is because of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s charisma, but it sounds like it predates him.

We’ve passed countless Chinese shops on the outskirts of Lhasa. I look at the signs over the roll-up doors and see scarcely any Tibetan script, all Chinese. Yes, I mentioned roll-up doors; I didn’t expect Tibet to have the same sort of entrances to shops that India and Nepal have, but there it is. I’m guessing that China also has shop doors that look to Westerners like garage doors, because under the circumstances Tibet is much more influenced by China than by India, although Buddhism came from India to Tibet and therefore in the past India had a huge influence on Tibetan culture. We stopped at the Bank of China, a remarkably new-looking building (like so many) but they’re not taking US dollars at this hour, so we’ll go back tomorrow morning to exchange some of my money.

I saw a very skinny and young Chinese woman sitting behind a guy on a motorcycle. She wore tight jeans and a purple jacket, and I noticed that she had tall black boots with spiked heels. I guess it was the boots, plus things I’ve read about modern Lhasa, but I strongly suspected her of being a prostitute sitting behind a customer. The motorcycle was at a wide intersection and zoomed off around a corner to the left. The streets are so wide and clean here, nothing like the narrow, dirty, and chaotic streets in Kathmandu.

As we drove past the towering and impressive Potala Palace, I gasped and gawked and the tour guide told me a few things about it. The Potala has thirteen stories and a thousand rooms. On the façade different sections are painted different colors: red, white, or yellow. The red rooms are the Dalai Lama’s and for politics. The white rooms are for the monastery. In other words, the Potala has a color-coded façade. The yellow section is a courtyard between the special white section, which contains among other things the Dalai Lama’s rooms, and the red. This isn’t tourist season, so we can spend more time in the Potala; normally tourists are only allowed one hour in the Potala and it is crowded.

The Potala sits on top of a mountain, the Marpo Ri or Red Hill, and it looms over Lhasa as if it’s giving the Chinese government the finger. I’m not one of those Shangri-la people who think that Tibet has been nonviolent for the past hundred years; I know it has in that time been just another patriarchal country, and according to the history books Tibet has had wars with China and even battles between different sects, different monasteries. Nonetheless, I figure that since the mountains are still standing, the Potala is still standing, and the Jokhang Temple is still standing, Tibet still has some magic.

I don’t think it’s possible to be a radical feminist and be a Shangri-la person, someone who sees Tibet and Tibetans through rose-colored glasses. If you have feminist consciousness, then shortly after you start learning about Tibetan culture it becomes really obvious that it’s male-dominated, and you might also suspect the monastic system of being somewhat power-tripping in general, not just in its contempt for women and nuns.

Actually, the monastic system isn’t all to blame for that, but rather the social structure in general: parents encourage their sons to go to the monastery, which traditionally was where you got the best education. But parents highly discourage their daughters to become nuns and thereby get a comparable education to the boys; they’re encouraged to get married and give birth to children. Even if they do become nuns, they have a tendency to do domestic chores around their parents’ house or for the monks, so that they still don’t get the kind of education and training that monks get. Nuns are not fully ordained bhikkunis and are totally considered subservient to the monks. Also, in Tibetan tradition, monks perform rites and ceremonies for the people, but nuns totally don’t. It’s so misogynist and hateful, and every time I read or think about power-tripping males in Buddhism I find it terribly ironic, given what Buddhist practice is supposed to be all about. Cultivating male ego has no resemblance to cultivating egolessless, quite the contrary. I should perhaps mention that of course my male and androcentric tour guide didn’t mention any of these things; my comments come from many books I’ve read about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.

The Yak Hotel, where I’ll be staying, is just down the street from the Potala itself, on the main drag, Beijing Street. It is a very wide and very modern and clean paved street, again in sharp contrast with what I’m accustomed to seeing in India and Nepal. The streets in Lhasa are indeed reminiscent of a Western street, and the steering wheel is on the left side, just like in America. In both India and Nepal, it’s on the right, and traffic goes on the left side of the road.

The Yak Hotel, which I started to mention, is at least two stories tall and has a grey concrete façade. Facing the main drag is a wide doorway into the lobby, and the doors are open and display two door curtains, or whatever they’re called, that are white with blue trim and appliquéd with big blue Buddhist continuous knots; we had seen some for sale at the nunnery in Dharamsala, and Marsha purchased one in the gift shop. To enter the hotel parking lot, we actually drove through a gateway that led to a courtyard where other vehicles are parked. The courtyard is surrounded by tall grey walls that imitate traditional Tibetan architecture but have straight walls rather than the truly traditional ones that slant inwards.

This neighborhood, where my so-called budget hotel is located, is the Old Lhasa neighborhood, where most of the Tibetans live and where the architecture at least pretends to be traditional Tibetan architecture. The street is flanked on both sides with tall, grey stone or concrete block buildings, with black-framed windows and flat roofs. Along each side of the very wide street is a lane for rickshaws that have striped canopies imitating the top horizontal of Buddhist flags or Tibetan banners; that is, the canopies have a nylon ruffle all the way around, striped in red, yellow, and green, but they’re cheap and faded-looking compared to the rich brocades that you would see inside a Tibetan temple.

Before I parted with Gyantzing in the lobby, he gave me a brief run-down on tomorrow morning. For breakfast, there’s a fifth floor rooftop restaurant. At 9:45 I’ll meet with Gyantzing in the lobby.

Most of the hotel staff apparently consists of very young and thin Tibetan women. A skinny girl in a mauve padded nylon jacket took my wheeled suitcase and carried it up a flight of stairs to my room. Also a boy helped out in the room, and between them they introduced me to the heater with its white plastic remote control and someone turned it up for me. I tipped them and looked around the room with a grin.

My hotel room is so not my idea of what you would expect in a budget hotel. This is so much fancier than a Motel 6! The room even has complimentary white terrycloth bathrobes hanging in the closet, and the bathroom contains complementary toothbrush, shampoo, bath gel, and a comb, each in its individual little cardboard box. And on a small table by the windows are a teapot, tea bags, and Chinese-style white porcelain teacups with lids and decorated with a Yak Hotel logo illustrating yaks. There’s a mini bar, but it just has a few beverages—pop in red and white cans like Coca-Cola, Lhasa beer, and four bottles of water; I’ll definitely drink all the water. There’s a Western toilet and bath; I figured in a budget hotel I’d be squatting for both the toilet and a bucket bath. Furthermore, the décor isn’t plain and drab; the room is beautiful—it is brightly painted with Tibetan Buddhist murals, including the Wheel of the Law. The ceiling is also brightly painted with ridges like those in the architecture of Tibetan monasteries. The only thing budget-like that I can figure out is that there’s no elevator. I don’t think there’s room service either, but I’ve never used that anyway.

I am in Tibet! I am so dizzy! I ate some dried fruit and hazelnuts that I brought, and I took the Chinese herbal medicine and an altitude pill. I’ve only been to a dozen countries, but I somehow suspect Tibet is the weirdest country in the world. I hope the aroma of incense and butter lamps will be stronger than the smell of hygienically challenged pilgrims.

I should mention, thanks to a glance back at my scrawled notes, that when we got to the old Tibetan neighborhood, which is called—guess what—the Old Tibetan Neighborhood, there are shops with lettering in both Tibetan and Chinese. Again, the shops have open fronts like in India and Nepal, and when they close for business, they roll down the “garage” door.

2
With altitude sickness and a cold, I went to bed at 8 pm tonight. I just woke from a dream in which I was outdoors with a happy group of people holding hands and dancing around a pine tree… or maybe we danced around a player piano that mostly played automatically but you could push keys and make some music. I was dancing with the Dalai Lama! He was on my left and let me hold his pinky while everyone danced. The dancing style seemed rather more Jewish than Buddhist, like at a Jewish wedding.