The name Potala hails from Indian roots thousands of years ago, but the present day Potala Palace was rebuilt in 1642 by the fifth dalai lama, who unified the previously divided Tibet and created the centre of Tibetan government and religious life in Lhasa. It was also the palace of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader.
It's a magnificent structure standing tall atop a Lhasa hill and has commanding views over the entire city. It has two parts red and white, red at the very top devoted to religious affairs, and the lower white portion, which was for government administration. Since 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled and China fully reclaimed Tibet the white government part has been inactive.
Our tour starts at 1pm, but we enter the complex a few hours ahead to walk around the structure. As with other religious sites there are many people circling performing their devotions by prostrating themselves on the ground as they go. We notice two young dishevelled girls, one with a backpack playing religious prayers (I assume), also regularly falling prostrate, but they seem somehow different. On closer inspection you can see that they have notes in their hands and that local people stop to give them money, which they stash in the backpack. I can't help feeling that they are earning their living from this as people pay them to do prayers by proxy. Martin gives them a few notes and the look on their faces suggests they are not impressed by his paltry offering.
The Palace has three gates, the East gate for religious duties, the West gate for political and the South gate for riff-raff like us. We enter, showing our passports and our tickets that have our passport numbers on, through a security scanner checking for liquids, and then show the tickets again a few metres further on. In the courtyard we pose for photos and Chris unfurls the banner for an MS charity he's supporting and holds it up with Matt for a promotional picture. The guards fearing an uprising by the MS Peoples Front quickly disarm them and the banner is confiscated, to be collected later. Our crack troop of commandos regroups and plans its next assault: the climb to the Potala Palace itself.
It's a vertical climb of about 130m and it takes us the best part of an hour to complete. The views over city get better as we climb but while gasping for breath it can be the last thing on our minds. We can see that the wall structure is composed partly of straw and that it's still standing after a few hundred years is amazing.
Entering the Palace building through gates and we go through a variety of courtyards and rooms until we climb into the very top structure through stairs. For this we need yet another ticket and after this point we are not allowed to take photographs. There follows a maze of rooms and corridors with enormous golden statues and picture of Buddhas and other figures of significance to the Buddhist faith. In all we see about 27 rooms of the over 2000 in the Palace. Our local guide, Migmar, tells us that many of the rooms in the 'white palace' are now just empty or used for storage, while the red section is still used for religious matters and tended to by a small group of monks.
The climb down on the north side is less strenuous, but the wind that seems to have whipped up is quite cold so we don our jackets for the descent. Migmar told us to bring jackets and now we know why.
We are used to being rock stars with local people stopping to have their photos taken with us, but one monk seems particularly keen to be photographed with us, smiling all the time. I wonder if they get points for the number of foreigners they get snapped with.
Before leaving the palace complex, Christopher, the leader of the Peoples Liberation Front of ME, heads off to get his banner back.... Correction, he's the leader of the ME Peoples Liberation Front; the Peoples Liberation Front of ME are splitters! Anyway, Steve, Danny and I join him and we end up banging on the large doors of the South gate, which are now closed, to try to get in. All to no avail. Christopher and Steve head off to the East gate and eventually manage to get the banner back after some friendly exchanges and cake.
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By now it's 4pm and Danny and I find a restaurant for lunch near the hotel, which turns out to have rather decent internet connection. We return there after dinner to hang out like dudes to enjoy the wonders of unlicensed spectrum at 2.4 GHz.
Sent from my trusty rusty BlackBerry
1 comment:
At the Taj Mahal Simon was prevented taking in a small toy stuffed Zebra as the guards thought it might be advertising and using the TM as a backdrop. I expect Steve does the same with Barnoldswick Hall.
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