Lhasa

We spent two days in Lhasa mainly sightseeing. Yesterday we visited the Potala palace, the residence of the Dalai Lama, which oldest parts date back to the 7th 20150411_092759century. The enormous palace has about 2000 rooms, many chapels, zillions of Buddha statues and the tombs of most Dalai Lamas since the fifth (who is enshrined in 3772 kg of gold). Later in the afternoon we’ve strolled throug downtown Lhasa and during dinner we were surprised and entertained with the rehearsals of an authentic Tibetan musical ensemble.

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Today we visited the largest monastery of Tibet that once hosted 10000 monks (now only 300). Ciprian and myself, having seen enough Buddhas for our lifetime upset our Tibetan guide by climbing up to the highest painting on the cliffs (~4000 m high) and getting down at the other side of the valley which took us about one and a half hour. In the afternoon we spent time in the national museum and 3 (!) hours buying Chinese SIM cards but hopefully I’ll now be able to update this site the coming period when we will travel to base camp.

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