Tibet Adventure - Day 324 Apr 2006
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Street Scene - Lhasa
River valley on outskirts of Lhasa
Sara monestry near Lhasa
Monday 24th. April Day 56 (Tibetan Experience - Day 3)
A glorious sunny day, but very cold. Lhatse is on a very flat plateau and the wind whips up the dust all the time. We turned off the main(!) road and followed another dirt road which hugged the side of the valley and river bed. The mountains were all around us and the plateau and river bed must have been over a mile wide in places. The road continued along the valley foe a couple of hours till we eventually came to a small village, the locals were very friendly and surprisingly did not object to us taking their photographs. We assumed that our visit was not a normal occurrence. Their was a multitude of village life going on and a surprising amount of heavy lorries passing which caused an almost continual dust cloud. At one point we saw five police cars passing - an amazing sight in what was a very isolated area! We crossed the river on a new bridge -the old one looked very narrow, and the very old one nearby had collapsed! Soon we came to "tarmac" and this lasted a whole hour into the city of Shigatse, the second largest Tibetan city. It's very modern but has retained a surprising Tibetan influence. We booked into another farmers hotel owned by the same family as yesterdays hotel, it seemed that they had sold all their land and decided to go into the hotel business. That afternoon we visited the Tashiumpo monastery, home to many of the Pancham Lamas. The Tibetans told us that the last Lama (No. 10) was murdered by the Chinese because he would not agree to them building a hydro elasticity plant on none of their holy lakes. No. 11 was chosen in the traditional Tibetan manner but he was imprisoned and the Chinese imposed their own choice. Amnesty International deem the young Tibetan lama as being the youngest political prisoner in the world - aged 17. The monastery is fairly intact but we could not see any visible evidence that it was being used as a genuine Buddhist monastery. It was really just a museum! That evening we sought out an internet café which was filled with young Chinese playing games on the net.
