Morning of last full day

The morning of our last full day in Tibet we drove about 18 miles outside of Lhasa to Drak Yerpa Monastery. Are you getting the feeling all we did was tour monasteries? You'd be right, but they were all very different and interesting in their own ways. Drak Yerpa is a bunch of meditation caves with a monastery built around them. It was destroyed during the cultural revolution and I found this tidbit in a Google search, "Although it could not have been a military threat to the Chinese, Drak Yerpa was terribly damaged during the Cultural Revolution. Its monasteries were destroyed, its caves were defaced, and its trees and shrubs uprooted. Today, hermits are gradually returning to the caves and its shrines are being restored."

The drive was also very interesting with all the prayer flags draped over the mountains and drying yak dung along the side of the road. This was the stop where Kenny and I were at the highest altitude we've ever been, just over 16,000 feet (4885 meters). I don't think I would have really even noticed it if I hadn't been Dominic's sherpa.

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Sera Monastery

The afternoon of day 2 we went to Sera Monastery which houses about 800 monks and is famous for their afternoon debates. The monks face each other down, stomping, smacking their hands and shouting in each other faces. Our tour book said, "Think Tibetan Socrates meets Jerry Springer." It also said debating is a method of learning the texts the monks are studying. They have to prove they understand their learnings and aren't just memorizing and regurgitating them. It was quite interesting and I've attached a short movie at the end of the pictures so you get a better idea.

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Chanting monks at Drepung Monastery

Right as we were about to leave Drepung Monastery in the morning, one of the monks told our guide that they were about to start a chanting/prayer service if we wanted to stay. It was pretty amazing and hypnotic. All the noises you hear are the chants, no instruments and the smoke is all incense. The Tibetans love their incense. It's everywhere from inside the temples and monasteries to burning in huge burners on the street. Our guide loved it, but it was a bit overwhelming for us and made my eyes burn after a while. The video is about 45 seconds long, but you can get the idea after 25-30 seconds.

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Tibet - Day 2 morning

We spent morning number 2 at Drepung Monastery right outside the town of Lhasa. According to my guide book, for centuries Drepung was the largest monastery in all of Tibet. At one time it housed over 10,000 monks. Today there are around 700 monks living there. Not all of the monasteries allowed photography, but this one did so I posted some photos of the amazing colors. We also lucked out as it was some Buddhist holy day and we were able to observe the monks chanting. I'll upload a short video of that in another post. It was pretty amazing.

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Packing the roof

These men and women were tamping down down some dirt on a roof and our guide said they sang to make the time pass quickly. I had this song in my head for the rest of the day. You can see the woman with the watering can as she spotted Dominic on my back. I thought the Chinese people in Beijing loved kids....it's nothing compared to Tibetans. You can also see all the woman in the front row staring at him. Then their eyes would get bigger and bigger as they realized we had three boys. Kenny constantly got the thumbs up for having three boys. Our guide said he'd never had any other customers like us. We stopped traffic everywhere we went and we literally stopped the concert right after this video was shot. Our guide also got a bit nervous with us because we'd have a crowd of Tibetans surrounding us and he said that made the Chinese police nervous. At first I thought he was blowing smoke, but sure enough I started noticing the police coming over to investigate the crowds that followed us around.

Tibet - Day 1

We spent our first day seeing the Potala Palace in the morning. This is where the Dalai Lama would reside if he were allowed back into Tibet. It was quite a hike and we definitely felt the altitude when climbing the steps. The town of Lhasa sits at 12000 feet (3650 meters) and a lot of people suffer from altitude sickness when traveling to Lhasa. We had no problems except feeling out of breath especially when climbing stairs and steps.

The afternoon was spent at Jokhang Temple which is a 1300-year-old structure and the spiritual center of Tibet. At any time day or night you see pilgrims prostrating themselves outside and on the circular kora or path around the temple.

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Diving in the deep (or high) end

The boys finished school on the 18th so we thought we might as well start exploring Asia. Xian's terracotta warriors, nope. Chengdu's pandas, nah. Shanghai, uh-uh. Those would all be way too easy. We loaded up three kids, 4 suitcases, stroller, car seat, backpack and headed to the political lightening rod, seemingly fading Hollywood pet, altitude sickness inducing, Buddhist spiritual wonderland of TIBET. It was all worth it though...what an amazing trip. It's going to take some time to weed through the 600+ pictures, so in this post I've just listed some things I want to remember about the trip. Probably TMI for most people, but since this is my only form of journaling it's mostly for me. I'll eventually get to more pictures, promise.

~ I came away with a much better understanding of Tibetan history, but probably am more confused about the current political climate. I definitely learned it's not as simple as the slogan "Free Tibet," but most things aren't.

~ I wasn't prepared for the heavy Chinese military/police presence. It's more overt than Israel and our guide constantly had to remind us to keep political questions/comments for the car because there are "ears everywhere." We were also told not to photograph the police, but Jack didn't get that memo so I think we have a few pictures from when Jack was in charge of the camera.

~ I was shocked that Tibetans aren't allowed to have passports and can't travel without some major hoops being jumped through.

~ Unlike the rest of China, Tibetans are allowed to have two kids if they live in the city, three if they live in the country.

~ We visited many temples/monasteries which house thousands of monks. This started me thinking about the Catholic church's recent scandals and why Buddhism hasn't had the same issue. I could care less what the Catholic church lets their priests do, but in the future when someone tries to blame the problems on celibacy with a statement like, "it's just not natural" all I will be able to think is, "well, why don't the Buddhists have an issue with it?" It's thousands of men, living a celibate life, with plenty of contact with lay people and I've never heard of a problem. Not a judgement in any way, just another thing that made me go, "hmmm."

~ Tibetan buddhists have one of the more interesting takes on vegetarianism. According to our guide, most Tibetans would prefer to be vegetarians, but given the altitude and landscape of Tibet this wasn't always possible. This is the reason yak became a staple. We had yak meat, yak butter, yak stir-fry, yak jerky, yak butter tea (a better name would be YUCK butter tea). Now that Tibet is more connected to other areas via train and better roads, they can get fruits/vegetables so our guide said many people are going back to being vegetarians. The interesting part of this is that the reason they depended mostly on yak is that they see killing and eating fish and fowl a waste. With a yak if you take the animal's life, it feeds many. Eating fish and fowl are seen as "taking a life for a handful of meat."

~ We were at the highest altitude we've ever been when at Drak Yerpa Monastery - 16023 feet (4885 meters)

~ Burials - we got a very quick explanation on what Tibetans do with the body after someone dies. So brief, and strange sounding that I had to do some Google research to make sure we'd heard our guide correctly. The highest level lamas are sort of mummified and buried in a "stupa" or type of crypt (understood). Monks are cremated (understood). Lay or "normal" people as our guide called them are hacked to pieces and fed to the vultures (what!). To make matters worse Kenny thought our guide said "given to butchers" not vultures, so he thought that meant they were then eaten by people - thus, my Google search. It gets worse....children and babies are tossed in the river so our guide said, "don't eat Tibetan fish." Um, OK pass the yak.

Watch out Tibet...here we come