Lhasa

We made it to Tibet. Even though I've read a lot about this area, its
geography was intriguing to me. Desert surrounded some of the area
around the airport, and the climate seems really dry. Seeing how
Chinese/Tibetan farmers carve out an existence in the most
inhospitable conditions is still mind-blowing even after two weeks.
It's been raining rather faithfully each morning though.

In some other good news, I'm not dying of altitude sickness. Lhasa
rests at 11,800 feet above sea-level, but due to where we've been
travelling over the past few weeks, our gradual climb has let me
acclimate just fine. Only one of us in our entire group is showing any
symptoms and with another day of rest they'll be find.

Naturally we've been visiting the many famous temples and monasteries
of this historic city. Yesterday we went to the Jokhang temple in the
center of the city. It was founded in the 7th century by one of the
great kings of Tibet, Songsten Gampo. It was reportedly built in honor
of the Shakyamuni Buddha to house statues brought from China and Nepal
by the king's new wives (one of whom was Princess Wen-Cheng, legendary
in that her dowry sparked the tea-horse road).

It was interesting that we were still able to visit it, considering
that the monks who had self-immolated last week had done it at this
site. Tons of checkpoints had been set up and in addition to increased
police presence, several PLA squads had been posted around different
parts of the square and throughout the commercial district surrounding
the temple. All of them were in riot gear, with shotguns or staves
being carried. It was pretty eerie, especially when I noticed that at
least two out of each squad were carrying portable fire-extinguishers.

Security is tight across the entire city. A ban has been created on
all foreign journalists and our group has been given two guides that
are required to travel with us for most of our movements through the
TAR. Last night I managed to break free for a bit and along with two
others, I walked to the Potala palace, the traditional home of the
Dalai Lama until his departure in 1959. It's one of the most iconic
images of Lhasa/Tibet and I'm really glad I got a chance to see it as
it stands today.

Today we visited the Dregpu and Tsera monasteries. These institutions
once housed over 10,000 monks each before the PRC occupied this
region. Now they each have a little under 1,000. I'm relearning a lot
that I'd forgotten about Buddhism and picking up on a few new things.
Today we saw the monks of the Tsera monastery congregate to debate
scripture. It was interesting and encouraging to see that many of the
monks were within a few years of my age.

Being here really puts perspective on this turbulent time in Tibet's
history. This region is being heavily colonized by Han Chinese, and
only 200,000 out of the 600,000 living in Lhasa are Tibetan. The
landscape of Tibet is changing, and being on the ground really
punctuates this for me.

Hope everything is going well for those of you across the pond. I
can't believe that it's already been over two weeks. I'm not sure what
day of the week it is in most given moments.