Lhasa Things to Do

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Shortly after The Potala Palace, our tour group made way to Norbulingka Park, garden to the Summer Palace of the Dalai Lamas where they solved the political problems and held festive celebrations. Today, it has been turned into a park open to the public.

Performances used to be held at the open area infront of this building where the Dalai Lama watched from the small window above.

Norbulingka (Treasure Park in Tibetan) lies about one km southwest of the Potala Palace. With a gigantic land area of 360,000 square meters, the park is the largest man-made garden in Tibet. In fact, there is even a small zoo within the garden premises but due to time constraints, we gave it a miss.

The gardens offers great picnic spots and provided wonderful venue for theatre, dancing and festivals, particularly the Sho Dun or 'Yoghurt Festival', at the beginning of August.

To fully appreciate the beauty of the Norbulingka garden, we have keep in mind the hostile climate of the Tibetian plateau. Many of the flowering plants found in the gardens found in the areas are not originally available in Tibet. A typical tibetian will never have the chance to view these flowers in bloom and a large well planned garden is very much considered a sheer luxury enjoyed only by the Dalai Lamas.

The main clock in the Summer Palace is said to have stopped at the exact time when the 14th Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, India after the Chinese invasion and failed uprising in 1959. Do let me know the time when it stopped, I have cleaned forgotten about it.

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The Jokhang Temple is the first Buddhist temple in Tibet, located on Barkhor Square (a great shopping street not to be missed) in Lhasa. It was built during the reign of King Songsten Gampo (605-650 CE) to celebrate his marriage with Chinese Tang Dynasty Princess Wen Cheng, who was a Buddhist. For most Tibetans it is the most sacred and important temple in Tibet.

The lives of Tibetians revolved around Buddhism and many Tibetians believed in making long-distance prostrating pilgrimage of minimum 10,000 prostrations from their respective home village to Jokhang Temple once in their lifetime. An example of prostration can be seen in the video below:

Unfortunately, harsh tibetian climate and insufficient rest coupled with lack of food, water and medical care lead to a significant numbers of deaths on the journey. However, all is not lost for these ill-fated pilgrims. Future pilgrims passing by will extract a tooth from the remains and carry it with them as they perform their long-distance prostrating pilgrimage to Jokhang Temple. Once the pilgrim reach the temple, he / she will deposit the tooth on one of the main pillars supporting the temple signifying that the deceased pilgrim has fulfilled his / her pilgrimage to the holy temple.

What happen to the rest of the body? Nothing more was mentioned by the tour guide and the tour group was more than happy to leave it as that.

You can actually see the Potala Palace from the temple roof top platform

It's a pity that tourists were not allowed to take photos of the temple's interiors where they house the Buddha statues. I suppose you have to visit Tibet to see it for yourself.

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For full experience write up & photos, please visit my blog: http://www.aspirantsg.com/travel-holidays/potala-palace-tombs-of-past-dalai-lamas-lhasa-tibet/singapore or follow me on twitter for food reviews: https://twitter.com/AspirantSG

Built on Marpo Ri hill at 130 meters above the Lhasa valley, Potala palace is indisputable the grandest monumental structure in all of Tibet. The palace measures 400 metres east-west and 350 metres north-south with stone walls of 3 - 5 metres thick at the base and copper poured into its foundation to make it earthquakes proof. The 13 storey building contains over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and about 200,000 statues

The palace serves a number of functions:
1. Residence of the Dalai Lama and his large number of staffs
2. Represented the Tibetan government, where all state ceremonies were held
3. Hosted a school for religious training of monks and administrators
4. Home to the tombs of past Dalai Lamas and the most venerated statue, the Arya Lokeshvara inside the Phapka Lhakhang.

Today the Potala Palace has been converted into a museum by the Chinese government.
Security was very tight, tourists were made to undergo checks for weapons, flammable liquids etc and the worst thing is that all tourists were only given 1 hour to explore the entire massive building. The upwards climb was exhausting ....

A series of tolerable staircases, broken by intervals of gentle ascent, leading to the white palace.

The White Palace or Portrang Karpo (part of Potala Palace) is the living quarters of his holiness, the Dalai Lama.

The Red Palace or Potrang Marpo (another part of the Potala palace), is completely devoted to religious study and Buddhist prayer. Unfortunately, as a sign of respect to the religion, tourists were not allow to take photos inside the chapels.

Our guide named Xiao Gu was very versed in his knowledge and gave fantasic narrations of the palace history, the various buddha status, functions of the various rooms in palace as well as the lives and achievements of past Dalai Lamas. Surprisely, even with such detailed narrations, an hour proves to be just right.

The way down was a lot more relaxed. We went back for the beautiful night view of the palace few days later.

You may also like to check out my posts on other exciting travel destinations in Lhasa here: http://www.aspirantsg.com/travel-list-singapore

The summer palace of the 13th Dalai Lama is one of the four the interiors of which we were able to visit. The layout is similar to the other ones, containing both secular (Dalai Lama's private rooms) and religious (assembly hall, meditation chamber) rooms. The assembly hall holds a throne on which the Dalai Lama received both pilgrims and officials.

There is also a curious collection of the means of transportation that the 13th Dalai Lama owned, including buggies, palanquins, and bicycles. There was also a car, famously given by the British government as a present. Who singularly failed to take into account the fact that, firstly, Tibet had no petrol and, secondly, that getting petrol there was prohibitively expensive.

Where?

In the westen part of the Norbulingka park

3 more images

We did this monastery on our first exploring day after a hearty breakfast we walked with our tour guide and right when he opened the curtain to go in I heard the most beautiful voices praying in unison. It was absolutely compelling and peaceful.

Inside the Potala Palace, there are eight stupa-tomb chapels - each housing a three-tier stupa monument where the relics of the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, and the Thirteenth Dalai Lamas are buried (the stupa of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama stands separately from the others and you need to be with either a monk or a guide to access it). The stupa funeral was unique to high ranking lamas - even holy people were usually buried following the traditional practice of sky burial.

The stupas themselves are richly decorated with ornamental motifs, as well as amber, pearl, coral, agate, diamond and other precious stones, as well as gold foil and sandalwood.

Stupa of the 5th Dalai Lama was the first to be built and is still the largest, reaching to almost 50 feet. It holds mummified and perfumed body of the Fifth Dalai Lama, as well as Buddhist relics, including the thumb of Sakyamuni, the Supreme Buddha.

The principal centre of the Buddhist worship in Tibet, the Jokhang houses over 3,250 statues of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, guardians and historical figures, with some dating back to as far as the 7th Century and the reign of the King Sangtsen Gampo. Majority of these originate from India and Nepal, as well as Tibet itself. The most important of these is the image of the Sakyamuni Buddha at the age of 12, housed in the chapel of Jowo Sakyamuni. Another important image is the statue of Chenresing (or Avalokiteshvara), which is considered to be the second holiest after the Jowo Sakyamuni.

In addition, there are over 1,250 tangkhas (religious paintings), over 500 stupas and countless other religious objects. Pretty much all of the most important images, artefacts and chapels are located in the inner sanctum of the Jokhang.

The Red Palace was begun several years after the death of the great 5th Dalai Lama, originally to house the stupa chapel that would house his remains. Further stupa chapels were added in later years. In addition to these, there are numerous Buddha chapels and sutra halls. For somebody used to the Western European planning and building regulations, it's hard to believe that the entire Red Palace was completed only in about 4 years.

While the White Palace is the administrative part, the Red Palace is entirely devoted to religion and prayer, and incorporates the holiest locations in the Potala Palace - the Saint's Chapel and King Songtsen's cave.

There are 4 further substantial chapels (West, East, South and North), as well as Great West Hall.