LHASA

What a beautiful and sad place Lhasa is ...... beautiful for it's stunning setting in the mountains at the 'Top Of The World' and sad for the policy of cultural genocide that the Chinese government has undertaken for the last 3 decades. The heart of Lhasa still clings to it's roots and history and many streets appear to be unchanged for centuries but outside of this small section of Lhasa the Chinese have embarked upon a search and destroy mission of anything remotely Tibetan. How the pilgrims who have walked from all across Tibet to worship at the Potala and The Jokhang can keep their faith amazes me. Many who circumambulate these places stop every second step, clap, chant and prostrate themselves ........... it has to be seen to be believed and is deeply, deeply, humbling.

Although the Chinese now outnumber the Tibetan population of Lhasa it still feels a place apart from the rest of China and whilst the Chinese people appear to believe the ridiculous and outrageous propoganda of it's government it would seem that many Tibetans do not. A worrying statistic here, however, is that (it is rumoured) there are more Tibetan members of the secret police here than there are Chinese members ...... the power of money I guess.

Something else that is slightly surreal is that we have experienced 'monks' listening to MP3 players, wearing (hopefully) fake Rolex watches whilst asking for 200RMB (about 14 pounds sterling) to be blessed by them. By this point we had had enough as it felt like we had been handing out money on a daily basis so we politely refused .....

Had an intersesting visit to the Sera monastery where I entered a chapel (no women allowed in this one) wherupon I was reeted by a monk of at least 65 - 5 years old listening to Linkin Park .... how bizarre!!!! Something else that has struck us is the wealth of the monasteries .... in the Johang (arguably the most important of the monasteries) we were quite literally walking on money that pilgrims were placing on the images and that had fallen off. Having read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche many years ago (which I found very inspiring) I was dissappointed to see "Living Buddhism" ....... perhaps the monks should be made to read it ...

However ... we have seen Chinas top pop trio in the flesh signing autographs outside the smallest record shop we have ever seen in Lhasa ...... excellent !!!!!!

Hooked up with a great Australian / Finnish couple called Carl and Tuuli for our trip down to the border with Nepal (having turned down a trip with 2 ladies who were just plain wierd)!!!