Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Tashilamphu Monastery, Shigatse

Prayer flags in our hotel courtyard.
Entrance to the Tashilamphu Monastery.

Beautiful people.
Repainting the paintings.
The inner courtyard.
The pole of yak tails.

Monk quarters.

On the kora walk we came across a wall covered in yak horns.

The monastery from the kora walk.

The replica of the Potala Palace.



Wednesday, May 16th.
Today Rob and I had a quick breakfast in our room of fruit and yogurt we had bought from the supermarket last night. We had problems with our toilet. We had used it and ignored the sign about putting used toilet paper in the basket, not in the toilet. Consequently, we couldn’t use it this morning. We finally got someone to come and unplug it and right after it was clear, the cold water went off for the whole hotel. So, we still couldn’t use it.
We boarded the van and drove to Tashilamphu Monastery. This is one of the largest in Tibet and has over 600 monks living, learning, and working there. BK took us on a two-hour tour of the vast complex visiting many small chapels and one large one, the Great Maitreya Chapel, which was built between 1914 and 1918 and houses the 26.2 metre tall golden Buddha, which sits on a 3.8 metre golden lotus flower seat. It is made from 279 kilograms of gold and 230000 kilograms of copper and is adorned with innumerable precious stones including ‘eye beads, turquoise, corals and pearls’. It is regarded as the largest gilt-copper statue in the world. 
After we were finished we went to a local restaurant for lunch. Then we went for a walk on a path, called a kora, around the whole Tashilamphu monastery complex, which involved some climbing up and down and every twenty metres or so there was a large incense burner giving off scent and lots of smoke. And right when we started a dust storm blew up and the air was full of dust, smoke and incense. It was hard to breathe and see because it all stung the eyes. Luckily the dust storm ended fairly quickly but the rest remained. As always it is fascinating to watch the faithful who come from all over Tibet to pray at an important site like this. Just at the end of the route we could see a large replica of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. It sits on a hill and is huge but much smaller than the original.
When we finished our trip around the monastery we wound up at a large local street market which sold all manner of souvenirs. Some of us walked along exploring and shopping. I used the time to people hunt. Yannik found a man who would braid his little ‘ponytail’ in his beard. He loved that. He over paid the guy, who then insisted that Yannick pick something else from his table of souvenirs. When we met up again and began our walk back to the hotel, Dirk decided to go into a local barbershop and get his hair cut. Yannick and Dirk asked the price from a man standing there and were told twenty Yuan, about four dollars. So, he decided to do it. I decided too, since I hadn’t shaved for two weeks. He said mine would be the same price. I was led into another little room where he sat me in a chair with a very slanted back and my head was in the perfect position if he wanted to slit my throat. He put warm water face clothes on me and rubbed them around before giving me a good shave. When I said I wanted my head shaved too, he led me back into the other room but used a clipper to give me a close haircut. But I was happy I got all of that for $5.
We continued on to the hotel and had a couple of hours to sort things and freshen up before dinner. Rob and I hung out in the room. At 7:00 we met up again and went back to the Tashi Restaurant for dinner. I had my first beer in Tibet, a Lhasa Beer. We met Goran there again. We hadn’t seen him for the last three days, because our itineraries were slightly different. We compared our visits to the base camp. After dinner we walked back to the hotel again stopping at the supermarket and then huffing and puffing back up the stairs to the room for the night. 

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