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In the receptionhall of the Tibetan Hotel in Gyantse was an exhibition of traditional Tibetan costumes. The colourful dresses were richily decorated and embroidered. They told us that, these dresses were only used for special occasions. That's why we didn't see any Tibetan, walking in the streets in such a costume. That was a pity, but by this exhibition we could get any idea of the local traditional clothes anyway.
Everywhere in Tibet you can find the rectangular thangkas. These thangkas are religious paintings on cotton or linen, that can be rolled up. Red or yellow silk is used for the border and another piece of silk or brocade serves as a mount. The rolled thangkas can easy be transported by nomads and travelling Buddhist monks. Often the thngka have a depiction of the life of Buddha. You can buy new thangkas at the market, for example at Barkhor in Lhasa, but you can see also antique ones in the monasteries. The first day In Tibet on our way to Lhasa we saw a cavalcade of colourful horsemen, bearing a unrolled thangka on a standard with them. We visited the Drepung monastery a day before a annual festival. About twenty chanting monks came out of the monastery, bearing a huge rolled thangka like a long twisting serpent. The thangka has to be unrolled at the immense thangka wall just beside the...
At many places in Tibet near temples and chortens you can find wooden prayerwheels or manichorkors of smaller or very huge size, containing prayers and holy formulas. The Tibetans turn endlessly prayerwheels, the hand-held ones or these bigger ones, standing at holy places or in special halls. By spinning the wheels they can release several million prayers or mantras to the heavens We also saw Tibetans, burning herbs, juniper and other offerings for purification. We saw it at the Drepung monastery during the ceremony with the immense thangka, but also at the medicinal cave in Lhasa in a special burner.
In Lhasa at the Barkhor, but also in other places in Tibet we saw pilgrims with prayerwheels. They turn the prayerwheels with a turn of the wrist and keep it spinning around its axis. In the spinning prayerwheels are sacred formulas like OM MANI PADME HOM.At the same moment the pilgrims round the holy places clockwise. They told us, that the pilgrims believe, that they by their own circumambulation and the spinning of their prayerwheels evoke the movements of the planets in the heavens, the dance of the electrons around the nucleus and the recurring circle of life.
In all monasteries you can find butter lamps, burning perpetually before statues and images. The lamps are replenished by the dignitaires or villagers.In front of statues, thangkas and stupas in Tibet you will find vessels for reception of offerings from devotees, usually containing five different elements: water, flowerseeds, incense, tsampa and butter for the lamps. These five kinds of offerings stand for the five aspects of wisdom and the five senses, the dhyani-Buddhas.
On top of the temples, like at the Jokhang temple in Lhasa, are two ghazelles and the dharma wheel in between. This gilded wheel of law flanked by the ghazelles above the entrances to the sanctuaries is a rememberance of Buddha's first sermon, given in the park of the Ghazelles at Sernath near Benares.At the left side of the picture you can see the so called gyeltsen or victory standard with pages of the holy scripture inside.
In front of the Jokhang temple in Lhasa we saw a lot of postrating pilgrims. The devotees making a pilgrimage repeatedly measure out their length over the entire journey. They often wear handshoes to protect their hands. This mode of postration expresses the maximum devotion by exaggerating the difficulty of their journey.Tibetan Buddhists believe, that the making of one hundred prostrations is the first step to acquiring a vast number of merits and will bring a profound purification.
After the first two horsemen, which we saw on our way to Lhasa coming from the airport, the larger group of Tibetans on horses were approaching us at full trot.The men were wearing colourful clothing and red hats. The horses were adorned with multi-coloured strings. A pity, that nobody could tell or explain us the reason of this colourful cavalcade. The only thing we could recognize was, that they were bearing a thangka (a sacred painting on cloth) with them.
At our first day in Tibet on our way from the airport to Lhasa we met these colourfull horsemen. We didn't know where they came from or where they went to, but it felt as a nice welcome to Tibet.They told us, that the Tibetans are good horsemen. The Tibetan people in rural areas and the nomadic people mostly use horses as mean of transport.
The kata (a white scarf ) is offered in greeting. The kata gives a positive note to the start of any enterprise or relationship and indicates the good intentions of the person offering it. You might get a kata when leaving a hotel or restaurant, it means they wish you all the best and hope to see you back.Katas are also offered to statues of the Buddha, or to lamas or government. Here the offering of the kata imeans that the request is not one with bad toughts or other intensions.
Yak Hotel Lhasa
8 Reviews and 61 Opinions This is a supposedly 3 star hotel but why remains a mystery. We stayed there for 2 days on our...
Gyantse Hotel Gyangze
2 Reviews and 29 Opinions The hotel's official rating is ***, which did mean it was pretty basic - and so it was (it would not...
Kyichu Hotel (Jiqu Fandian) Lhasa
1 Review and 65 Opinions I stayed at this hotel in February 2007. The beds were hard, but that's normal in China. They had...
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