The Magical Monastery Tour is coming to take you away - 4 October 2008

Today we visited the Potala Palace, which I mentioned yesterday. Traditionally this was the home of the Dalai Lama. Given that he fled the country in 1959, though, it's mostly a shell. The Chinese have converted it to a Museum, and it's now impossible to get a picture of the place that doesn't include a Chinese flag. Here's a shot from the same place as yesterday, only in the daytime:
It's quite impressive, even though we only saw a small subsection of it. The tomb of the 5th Dalai Lama is especially so, dwarfing the other tombs that we saw. What strikes you, though, is a sense of emptiness.

Afterwards, there was a bit of a mix-up regarding the prayer wheels that surround the palace. Some folks wanted to spin them, so while they went to do that a few of us just hung around the exit. The group that went to spin the prayer wheels got split up, and it took about 30 minutes to gather everyone up. It was a good opportunity to people watch (and be watched), though. Here's the beginning of the prayer wheels:
Each wheel contains a scroll (or scrolls) with a prayer on it. When you turn the wheel clockwise it is as though you've said the prayer, thereby accumulating karma. I'll resist the temptation to construct an extended metaphor comparing it to a video game...

Once we were all gathered up, we headed for Sera Monastery. Older editions of Lonely Planet talk about the debating monks, but like so many Tibetan cultural activities, that doesn't happen anymore. Again, like the Potala Palace, it's mostly a shell of what it used to be.

For lunch we had our first Yak burger - and it was outstanding. There's a running joke that we should take the "Yak, Yak, Yak" shirts that are sold and have a tailor stitch a circle-slash over the yak pictures.

To top it off, we went back to the Summit Cafe for dessert. Since we ate so much for lunch I ended up skipping dinner.