Day 14: Jokhang and Off-Roading to Samye
This morning I awoke before dawn to the sounds of a group of women chanting Tibetan prayers outside our window. Hearing this for the first time is interesting, the cadence is not like anything you’d hear in the western world. It’s not quite as interesting the 9325th time, but eventually you learn to tune it out, or at worst, get some earplugs. Much love to the Tibetans for persistence though.
I made my way up to the roof to watch the sunrise and order us some breakfast, and found one of the innkeepers watering the stone floor. She claimed that they do this every morning to keep the place clean and cut down on dust. Interesting. Perhaps the best part of sitting on a rooftop in Old Lhasa at sunrise is watching all the locals’ dogs wake up start running around. While few people keep dogs as pets here, the ones that do seem to keep them on the roof for some reason.
Our guide swung by around 9 for a visit to Jokhang Temple. It’s only a couple blocks from the Shambhala so we set off on foot, passing the still-chanting women from earlier. En route we were quickly absorbed by a lively praying crowd of Tibetans. They walk clockwise around the temple a number of times before entering to pay homage to the various buddhas within. This, of course, placed us directly in the path of the droves of trinket vendors that lined the traditional prayer route. I found it an unfortunate contrast…profit versus worship. Many were going through their prayer ritual on the stone-lined square in front of the temple.
Inside was the main chamber with several buddha’s and stupas, which were being fiercely protected by a number of seriously domesticated looking house cats. Several rooms branched off from there, each containing a number of additional buddha’s, yak candles, and prayer books. The worshippers were directed through a specific gated path to each area of the structure where they would pour their offering of yak butter into the candle pool. More interesting architecture was up on the roof…the complete monks’ quarters from the original design.
After a phenomenally awful dining experience at the Lhasa Kitchen, we loaded our gear into the Land Cruiser and set out for Samye. This required a 4 hour drive southeast of Lhasa, half of which is paved. With a Land Cruiser that had seen better days and a borderline narcoleptic driver it wasn’t exactly a relaxing adventure. Rocks, dirt, sand, streams…we utilized a bit of everything as a driving surface. Upon our arrival in Samye, our guide realized that the Samye Guest House where we were supposed to stay was booked full, always a fun thing to hear after a 4 hour drive to the middle of nowhere with dusk rapidly approaching.
We backed the Land Cruiser carefully out of the guest house grounds and set out to find another place to stay. While contemplating going back we found a small family run guest house near in the village surrounding the monastary. The guest rooms weren’t bad but the bathroom was a fucking disaster. Seriously. Looked like the inside of the septic tank of a slaughterhouse. And I’ve seen some seriously bad bathrooms in my travels and have become pretty desensitized. We didn’t have much choice though since our driver was comatose and refused to go anywhere else. We each popped some precautionary Immodium that we scored from Michael the Australian back in Namche. Anything to try to prevent encounters with that bathroom.
The monastary itself was very interesting. The main building was framed by a series of stupas in different colors, all of which was enclosed by a large circular stone wall. Cows, goats, and yaks grazed in the open grasses between the buildings. We hung out here until sunset and then headed back.
Be sure to check the gallery for over 60 pictures from today.
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