Monthly Archives: November 2016

Yamdrok Lake, one of the sacred lakes of Tibet. The color of the water was almost mesmerizing. 

At 4900m (16,000 ft.), this was the first of the high passes we navigated.  It looked like the shittiest parts of California to me.  One of the recurring disappointments of Tibet was that most of it was brown & dry … Continue reading →

Somewhere between Lhasa and Shigatse, we made a pit stop.  The facilities were…rudimentary. This cow was the town plumber, as far as I could tell.

The air in Tibet was frigid, but as arid as any desert.  The thin atmosphere meant the sun beat down brutally.  It was common for my skin to burn in the sunlight and my body to shiver in the shade. … Continue reading →

Starting in 1755, the Dalai Lamas would decamp from the Potala Palace to summer in the nearby park of Norbulingka Palace.   Visiting in autumn gave everything a hushed, haunted feeling. This boarded out building almost looks like it’s straight out … Continue reading →

Potala Palace has been the chief residence of the Dalai Lama since the 5th Dalai Lama began construction in 1645 atop an early palace erected by Songtsän Gampo (of course.) It is now a UNESCO world heritage site which puts … Continue reading →

We visited the famous Sera Monastery to see the monks engage in logical debate. It was forbidden to photograph, but inside the building to the left was a giant statue of embodying the Wisdom of Buddha.  The statue’s head inclines … Continue reading →

The side streets & markets of Lhasa were as bustling & lively as any in other developing parts of the world. They even had yak meat by the truckload. 

For lunch on Thanskgiving Day, I had yak dumplings and stirfried yak. For dinner I had chicken butter curry at an Indian restaurant.  Presumably, this is what the Indians ate at the first Thanksgiving.

The mighty Tibetan ruler Songtsän Gampo married a Nepali and a Chinese wife, each of whom brought Buddhism with them.  Jokhang Temple is the most sacred temple in all of Tibet.  It is home to the statue one of the … Continue reading →

From the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, watching the sunrises on the northern peaks of Tibet.

Before leaving Qinghai behind and heading up through the mountains into Tibet, we stopped at the natural resource-rich city of Golmud out by the Xinjian border.  Just long enough for me to take this horrible, horrible photo.

A mere month after tracking all the way out to Qinghai to see the lake, here I was whizzing by it on the train to Lhasa.