Let Them Eat Cake

Afternoon and evening of June 3, 2012

After our morning at the nunnery, we stopped at our hotel for lunch, then we were off to visit the Drepung Monastery which is about 10 km from the heart of Lhasa and, of course, perched on the side of a steep hill. The monastery is the sixth largest of the "Yellow Hat" sect of Tibetan Buddhist monks, at one tme it was the largest monastery, housing 7,770 monks. It was built in the early 1400"s and today houses a few hundred monks.

As we climb nearly 1,000 feet up to the monastery we can see that a portion of it is undergoing restoration.

As we continue up the hill we see two very elderly Tibetan women also making their way up the hill. Along the path up the hill there are long rows of prayer wheels, and the women walk slowly past the wheels, spinning each one clockwise.

We make a special stop at the home of a nun who lives on the monastery grounds. She has been here 25 years, and she lives in a cave. She subsists off of the generosity of others, and she invites us into her humble home so we can see where and how she lives. It is a an extraordinarily unique experience.

Higher on the hill above the nun's cave is a holy place where images of gods are painted on large boulders, and prayer flags are strewn. Once each year, the monks bring out a centuries old thangka painted on silk that is so large it requires 50 monks to carry it, and it is displayed on the hillside and attracts thousands of locals who flock to see it.

Unbeknownst to us, today is the day before a big Tibetan Buddhist holiday, and therefore we find the monks are hard at work preparing.

We enter their main prayer hall and find them working on either end preparing food specialties. The central secction of the prayer hall is beautifully decorated...

Tomorrow the monks will distribute nearly 1,000 special cakes to the local people. We were fortunate to see the monks working to make the cakes. A few dozen monks line each side of a very long heavy cloth which they use to combine the barley and sugar and yak butter. Once the ingredients are combined, the monks form the batter into small cakes shaped like pointed domes and they hand them off to another monk who delivers them to a team of monks at a table where the cakes get painted red with colored yak butter. (Just an aside, yak butter has a very pungent order, like a very strong cheese, and we can only imagine what monasteries smelled like when yak butter was used in all of the oil candles that provided light throughout these sprawling complexes. It was only recently that most monasteries switched to vegetable oil.)

At the far end of this huge assembly hall is another team of monks who are using a similar mixing approach to prepare special noodles for tomorrow. As part of the holiday observance, the monks will eat no meat, so they will eat these noodles with vegetables.

With its location high on the side of a hill, the monastery has a commanding view of the valley below. We can also see an amazing web of prayer flags that have been spread out on the hillside a kilometer or two from the monastery.

As we made our way back down to the monastery entrance, we also spot a meditation hut much, much high on the hillside...we had to really zoom in to find it and take a photo...

We returned to our hotel and got ready for dinner. Tonight we are going to experience traditional Tibetan cuisine and see some traditional Tibetan dance. To get to the restaurant we take rickshaws...we thought traffic was scary from the relative safety of the bus, this really got us up close and personal with the craziness on the streets of Lhasa...

The dinner was held at the Original Crazy Yak Restaurant, and we had an opportunity to try a few of the classic Tibetan foods...like Yak Butter Tea (trust us, there is no reason for any of you reading this to try it), bamboo with yak, yak momos (yak meat in dumplings), and yak lung...do you see the pattern here? In Tibet, the yak is more than central to Tibetan eating habits.

After we fought the Chinese tourists for our rightful place in the buffet line, the dance program began...let's just say that the Tibetan beat is not easy to follow, and Tibetan singing is like bad traditional Japanese or Chinese singing...the dancers were enthusiastic, however, and put on a good show.

It was a very full day of seeing and learning...we saw both a nunnery and a monastery...we learned that yak butter is something to be avoided...and mostly we appreciated today's experience in Tibet...