The Potala Palace

An early morning walk around the old quarter after breakfast while we waiting for our time slot at the Potala Palace. Watched the rubbish being collected by a cart playing Mr Whippy type music to let the shop keepers know it was coming. Real 'Bring Out Your Dead' stuff.

Our timeslot for the Potala Palace grounds was 10:20, and we were allocated an 11:15 entrance to the Palace itself. Each group is given one hour inside which is timed, and if we are more than that we are fined, and if we are more than 10 minutes overdue our guide loses his licence. We had to surrender passports and go through the normal screening.

We climbed 150 stairs just to get to the Palace entrance, and from there it's 17 stories high, at one time the highest building in the world. The top red parts are made of pressed sticks as the foundations aren't strong enough to support more stones. It really is one of the most awe inspiring buildings in the world, but hasn't been functioning as a monastery since the Dalai Lama fled Tibet with his followers. Saw the temples, buddhas, prayer halls and thrones of the various Lamas. Seems that the 5th Dalai Lama was a bit of a lad. He spent the day meditating in the monastery, and the night meditating in the red light district. I'm pretty sure that the Potala Palace will be one of the trip's highlights.

After a group lunch we went to the Sera Monastery and saw a couple of things on my 'really want to see' list. First, the courtyard where the monks debate each other. The sitting monks pose questions and the standing monk answers, and asserts his correctness by clapping his hands - the more sure he is of a winning argument, the harder he claps. I think that we should introduce this at my work - the more you disagree with somebody, the harder you hit yourself.

Then we saw the dancing builders. They 'press' a new floor by dancing on it and stomping it down with sticks, all the time keep up the responsive singing. Kind of like Tibetan line dancing. On each press gang there is both a girl's team and a boy's team which take it in turns to outdo each other, and it seems it's far more successful at resulting marriages than any contrived TV show.

Well I think that I've now aclimatised to this altitude of 3600m, so tomorrow it must be time to go up to 5000m - yep that's 5km above sea level. Wish me luck.