Oct 3-4: Slap-happy monks

Thursday morning Ayse and I got up semi-early to wait in line to get vouchers that confer upon us the privilege to buy tickets to visit Potala palace (the huge building on a hill that overlooks the city of Lhasa) on Friday. Quite simple... After picking up our paperwork, we take a walk (clockwise) around the palace grounds. It's surrounded by a wall with brass (?) prayer wheels that pilgrims spin (clockwise again) as they walk by on their walk arounf the palace. Some carry their own prayer wheels-on-a-stick that they spin as they walk (you guessed it, clockwise). Dizzy yet? If the altitude doesn't do it, this will!

In the afternoon we catch a local bus (lucky guess, mostly, that we got on the right one) to the Sera monastery a few km north of town. The highlight was the 3pm 'debating monks'. The debating courtyard fills with at least 200 red-robed monks. They pair off into a standing guy and a sitting one or two. We have no idea what kind of debate is going on. It seems more like an interrogation--standing guy seems to be in charge, talking pretty rapidly to the sitting guy. Standing guy punctuates his points every 10 seconds or so with a Major-league-baseball windup into a big hand clap in front of the sitting guy. We can't tell if the clap means 'wrong!' or 'time's up!' or 'ding! right answer!' or what. This is all going on in a hundred pairs at once in a cacophony of voices and slapping. They should run the presidential debates this way.

Friday we return to Potala palace with our ticket-buying-tickets, exchange them for tickets, and enter. The climb up about 10 stories worth of ramps and stairs to the main building entrance leaves us woozy and sweaty but it's worth it--we're finally inside the palace that's been hovering over us for 3 days since we arrived. Unfortunately photos are forbidden inside the building but it's full of shrines and huge golden tombs of the past Dalai Lama. Lots of pictures outside though. Thankfully it's partly cloudy which takes the edge off of the otherwise painfully bright midday sun.

Walking back down into town is a piece of cake after the climb up...time for a nap.

Footnote: Big thanks go out to Nate--due to the troubles we've been having with peteandayse.com vs. the People's Internet we've been reduced to emailing him blog entries which he then actually posts for us. Thanks Nate!