The Potala Palace and Norbulingka

The incomparable Polata Palace.

With Baikuntha Simkhada (or BK) our new GAdventures Chief Experience Officer.

Views from the stairs going up.

The upper courtyard.

A lovely woman who made the pilgrimage to the top with her children.

The view from the top.

Country folk in their traditional clothing.

Traditional Tibetan woodwork and decorations.

One of the doors in the wall of the Norbulingka complex.

The Dalai Lamas summer residence in Norbulingka.

This building was apparently featured in the 7 Years in Tibet movie.

From a foot bridge on our street.

He wanted me to take his photo.

Friday, May 11^th.

We left today at 9:00 for our tour of the Potala Palace. It is about a fifteen minute walk from our hotel. When we got there we had to go through security where they checked us for banned substances including bottles of water. We were warned by BK so we left ours at the hotel. We took photos from the outside courtyard of the massive structure before entering and beginning the climb to the top. It was a strenuous climb of about 600 stairs, but we just went slowly, stopped to take photos and catch our breath, and eventually we all made it.

The Potala Palace, in what used to be the Tibet Autonomous Region, was the winter residence of the Dalai Lama from the 14^th century to when the Dalai Lama fled to India during the 1959 Tibetan uprising. It is now a museum and World Heritage Site. The first structure on this site was constructed in the 7^th century, but most of the palace was built in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Inside are a number of stupa tombs of past Dalai Lamas. They are gold and encrusted with jewels and look like a seven or eight layer cake, very impressive.

The building measures 400 metres east-west and 350 metres north-south, with sloping stone walls averaging 3 m. thick, and 5 m. (more than 16 ft) thick at the base, and with copper poured into the foundations to help proof it against earthquakes. Thirteen stories of buildings—containing over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and about 200,000 statues, soar 117 metres (384 ft) on top of Marpo Ri, the "Red Hill", rising more than 300 m (about 1,000 ft) in total above the valley floor.

There are two actual palaces here, the red and the white. We went inside the white palace first which is the administration offices of the Dalai Lama. The red palace contains his residence. Inside the actual palace we were not allowed to take any photos, but it was full of the usual Buddhist symbols with plenty of statues of past, present and future buddhas, protector buddhas and other art and artefacts, including volumes of ancient hand written texts. There was an inner courtyard where we were again allowed to take photos. The palace was awesome inside and out. The amount of work, creativity and dedication that went into its construction is beyond belief.

The Chinese strictly control how many people are allowed in during the day and per hour. As a result, it was not too crowded and we were able to move around quite well and could hear BK’s information clearly.

We exited by the back of the building and walked back down just as many steps. When we got to the bottom we crossed the road to load into taxis for our next trip, but Rob was missing. BK went back to find him, but could not so we moved on with our Tibetan guide, while BK remained behind to wait for him.

Our next visit was to the Norbulingka, literally "The Jewelled Park", which is a number of palaces in a large walled park in Lhasa, built from 1755. It served as the traditional summer residence of the successive Dalai Lamas from the 1780s up until the 14^th Dalai Lama’s exile in 1959. He preferred to live here in his summer residence rather than the Potala Palace (maybe because of the stairs). Norbulingka is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He lived in the palace for five years and even hosted Mao ZeDong there in 1954. He fled in 1959 from this palace and made his escape out of Tibet on horseback.

We visited the palaces of the 7^th, 13^th and 14^th, which was the current Dalai Lama. The first summer residence was built here by the 7^th Dalai and served both as administrative centre and religious centre. It is a unique representation of Tibetan palace architecture.

After that tour we took taxis back to the hotel where we had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves. I went for lunch at the Tashi 1 restaurant again, where I met Nick, Yannick, Dirk and Els. Then they went back to the hotel to rest and I went back to the Jokhang Square again to watch the people. I returned to the hotel about 5:00 where BK told me that he had found Rob and sent him with our Tibetan guide to Norbulingka so that he wouldn’t miss that. Rob came back to the room about 5:30 and we hung out until 7:30. He went back to the palace to get some more shots and I went for dinner with the rest of the group to the Lhasa Kitchen and we all had Indian food. Then I went to the supermarket to buy some supplies for the long drive tomorrow. Then off to bed.