June 6, 2012
Well, if you've been reading our posts you know that we have not posted anything of the past week. This is because we have not had any connection to the Internet while we have been traveling in Western Tibet and staying in small hotels or guest lodges. We created daily posts, but were not able to arrange and include photos, nor were we able to post daily entries. But now we're back online in Kathmandu, Nepal, and we will be catching up over the next several days.
Today we leave Lhasa and head east to Tsedang, located within the Yarlung Valley, the valley that is considered the cradle of Tibetan civilization...and our group looks refreshed and ready for more adventure!
We drive out of Lhasa, past the airport, and after a short while we stop at the home of someone our guide Nima knows. This is a rare opportunity for our group to see how Tibetan families live, and to see the traditional Tibetan home. The house sits on the main two-lane road out of Lhasa and is surrounded by a tall wall. As we pass through the exterior door, we come into a small courtyard, and in the courtyard are a loom on which we find wool fabric in process, and a solar heater for heating water in a pot or kettle. The idea is to aim the solar dish toward the sun so the rays of the sun are focused on the metal ring, and then a pot is place on the metal ring...the power of the sun does the rest!
The courtyard is connected to a modest sized livestock area in which we find the family dog and a very small calf. We also see their store of dung cakes that are used for heating...
The house is made of stone and mortar and is two-story. It is actually quite roomy...or at least it feels that way...we think it is larger than our home! It is adorned with the typical painted window trim and stamped metal embellishments around the edges of the roofs over windows and doors. The stairs connecting the upper level are on the outside of the house and lead to a porch on the front of the second level.
We tour the upstairs first and see the prayer room. Every Tibetan Buddhist home has a prayer room in which they have small statues of gods or thangka. In this home the prayer room was also used as a bedroom.
Also on the upper level is the store room where food and supplies are kept...including some dried meat hanging overhead.
The upper level also had a large room that looked like a living room with traditional Tibetan ornate cabinets for storage and comfortable seating. The room was very nicely decorated with religious-themed trim painted around the room just below the ceiling.
We had the opportunity to pause outside the upper level on the porch to ask some questions of the man of the house...nine family members live in this house, they have fields in which they grow mustard, barley, wheat and potatoes, etc.
Downstairs, the main room is what we would think of as a family room with comfortable seating and a television.
Adjacent to the family room is the kitchen, which is very small, not much bigger than a modest closet, in which there is a propane burner for cooking, a large chopping block, and some shelves holding supplies.
This was such a wonderful opportunity, and the group was most thankful to this family for opening their home to let us take a peek into their day to day lives.
On our drive, we come to a bend in the Tsongpo river that affords us some great views of this very wide and seemingly shallow river. Tomorrow we will take a ferry across to the far side (near these stupas) to reach the Samye Monastery, so for now it is a beautiful view...
We arrive at the Tsedang Hotel shortly after noon and have lunch at the hotel...we need to get fueled up before our afternoon of sightseeing!
This is our room at the Tsedang Hotel..and boy were these beds rock hard! And Tsedang looks like a war zone, the whole place is dug up and you can't get anywhere directly because they have decided to trench across the streets without warning...and the dust!
This map shows the highlighted route we will travel over the next days in Tibet...we are on the right-hand side at this point, and we'll be making our way across the map and down to the bottom left by the time we are finished...
Our first stop this afternoon is Yumbu Lakhang, where the first king of Tibet, Nyatri Tsampo, built his castle in the 2nd century B.C. It is also the place that the scriptures descended from the heavens...unfortunately they were written in Sanskrit and had to be translated... Yumbu Lakhang is considered the oldest building in Tibet, and it is perched on a tall, sharp hill overlooking the valley below. It is now a small (very small) monastery. Because the climb up to the fortress is so steep, the locals offer pony rides up and down...
Inside, we get to see the assembly room which looks so small compared to the other monasteries we've seen thus far, but it also feels more intimate.
Upstairs from the main assembly hall is a chapel that holds the scriptures...
It is customary at Yumbu Lakhang to string prayer flags on the ridge above and behind the fortress for good luck, so Patty and I string ours in the wind...And we make a new friend who insisted that we purchase more prayer flags...
This is a view of Yumbu Lakhang from the ridge where our prayer flags now flutter in the Tibet breezes...and the stupa that overlooks the valley...
As we make our way back down the steep descent, Nancy is our lone ranger...er, lone rider...yee haw!
Our next stop is the Traduk Temple which is on our way back to town and our hotel. This temple was built in the 7th century by the king Songtsen Gampo. As we enter the front doors to the temple we are greeted by two huge prayer wheels...
We hear singing and tamping, and we proceed upstairs toward the sounds. We emerge on the rooftop and find a small group of Tibetans repairing the roof...and they are doing so using the same tools and songs we saw back in Lhasa at the Crazy Yak restaurant (see our previous post from Lhasa). They sing a song as they work, and they hold in one hand a pole that has on its end something that looks like a toilet plunger with a flat bottom. As they sing, they tamp the ground with this tool in a rhythm with the song and also lightly stomp their feet to the same rhythm. Nancy picked up the extra plunger tool and gave it a try...and we all hope that there is not a leak in the spot that Nancy worked on...!
We finished our tour of the monastery and headed back for the ranch for dinner. Steve had a great idea for an after-dinner activity...a foot massage. The rest of the group all went along with the idea so off they went for an evening of indulgence...the picture of the massage event needs some explanation, for which there is certainly not enough room here, but let's just say the reviews we received the following morning were, well, varied...Ted: "They just pushed a button and six women appeared." Nancy: "They had all of these lovely little private rooms, each one with a fireplace." Ted: "There were women everywhere...!" Neil: "Steve just told us to lay back and relax." Dick: "I just watched..." needless to say, the recounting of the experience by each participant made for hours of laughter.
All in all, an exciting new city for our group, and another great day of touring Tibet.
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