Day 6 - Aug 14, 2007 Tuesday

 Lhasa 拉薩 (3658M)

(click the hyperlink for the respective photo album)

At 9:00am, we still did not know when we could go to Potala Palace! 

In order to protect the palace, Potala Palace restricts the visits of tourist.  Only 2,300 tourists are allowed to visit the palace everyday.  During peak season like now, all people have to prebook the tickets at least 1 day in advance.  People have to queue for a ticket exchange and only if you have the ticket exchange you can get a ticket.  Our guide told us that all travel companies get the entrance tickets with 'dealers'.  The entrance tickets are RMB100 each originally which become a few times more in the dealer market.  We still did not know the time and thus our guide decided that we went to Jokhang Temple 大昭寺. 

Jokhang Temple 大昭寺 locates in cental Lhasa, right next to our hotel.  It attracts the most no. of worshippers amongst all the temples and monasteries in Lhasa.  You can see a lot of Tibetans, going all the way from who-knows-where.

King Songtsen Gampo 松贊干布 (617 – 650, the 33rd king of Tibet) was the leader of the Tubo 吐蕃 (or Tibetan) Kingdom.  In order to promote friendly relationships with the neighboring countries, he successively married Princess Bhrikuti 赤尊公主 of Nepal and Princess Wen Cheng 文成公主 of the Tang Dynasty. When the two wives arrived in Tibet, each brought a statue of Jowo Sakyamuni 釋迦牟尼等身像. To house the Buddha brought by Princess Wen Cheng, King Songtsem Gampo constructed the Little Jokhang. Jealous of her, Princess Burikuti asked Gampo to build a Jokhang for her as well. Therefore, in 647 the giant complex was built.

The Jokhang Temple was built on the former site of a lake. According to the legend, the lake site was chosen after many failed attempts to build a temple in the region. Prior to this, every time a temple was built, it would collapse. Confused by this phenomenon, Princess Bhrikuti turned to Wen Cheng for help. Being a learned woman, Wen Cheng told the Princess that the geography of Tibet was very much like a hag, with the lake at the heart. In order to build the temple, Wen Cheng advised they must demolish the hag by filling and leveling the lake using 1,000 sheep to carry soil from a mountain far away. When the temple was done, it was called Ra-Sa-Vphrul-Snang ('ra' meaning sheep and 'sa' meaning earth in Tibetan) to commemorate those sheep.

After Jokhang Temple, we walked along the famous Barkhor Street 帕廓街 (八角街) in clockwise direction. 

Our guide received a call and we headed for Potala Palace 布達拉宮 at around 12:00noon.

As said, there was restrictions for tourist visits, we had had some hard times, and we had to pretend that we were Taiwanese in order to get in!  After almost an hour (including the time we walked up the stairs!), we finally got in!

Potala Palace is really a great palace.  It has more than 2,000 rooms all together.  Originally built by King Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century, Potala Palace is located on the Red Hill of Lhasa, Tibet. Destroyed by lightning and war, Potala Palace had been rebuilt by the 5th  Dalai Lama in 1645. Since then, Potala Palace has become the seat of Dalai Lamas and also the political center of Tibet. The thirteenth Dalai Lama extended it to the present size, 117M (384 ft) in height and 360M (1,180 ft) in width, covering an area of more than 130, 000M² (about 32 acres). Mainly comprised by the White Palace (administerial building) and the Red Palace (religious building), Potala Palace is famous for its grand buildings, complicated constructions, devotional atmosphere and splendid artworks.

This night, we went to see some Tibetan show.  Costed us RMB160 p.p. 

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