Last night, despite having the room to myself, it was a pretty restless sleep for me.

While I should have had a good 8 or even 9 hours sleep, I probably only wound up with maybe 4 hours of sleep.

I woke up a few times through the night as the mattress I’m sleeping on is the firmest and hardest one I’ve ever slept on.

Not a fan.   I miss my nice soft, plushy mattresses…

I know, first world problems.

Ah, whatever, I had some monasteries to explore!

My Group (Part 1)

At 8:30 I headed downstairs to the breakfast buffet and, as chance would have it, I ended up joining a man named Federico at a table who just so happens to be on the same tour as me.

Finally!   I met someone who’s going to be traveling with me!

Now, I just have to meet the other 10 people.

Federico was originally from Venezuela but ended up, in all places, Vancouver for 22 years before moving to Sweden a couple of years ago.

He’s been traveling overland through Japan and China for the last 3 months.

That’s what I love about meeting fellow travelers.   Each one has a different travel story.

Three months overland!   Sound like an adventure!

At 9am, we headed down to the lobby to meet our guide and the rest of our group.

Instead of 10 other people, there were only three.

Two men from Portugal, Lou and Samuel, who had only just met and Juan Carlos from Florida.

We would find out later from our guide that the other half of our group would be arriving later this afternoon as their flight into Lhasa yesterday had been cancelled and rebooked for later today.

Speaking of our guide…

Tenzin is a friendly Tibetan who speaks perfect English.

He’s been doing these tours since 1993 so more than 30 years.

I can only imagine how many hundreds of tours he’s done and how many thousands of people he’s met along the way.

Our driver, who speaks no English, is Karma.

Wow, what a name!

Anyway, at just after 9:30 this morning, we headed out to what would turn out to be an epic but very long day.

Drepung Monastery

The first monastery we’d be visiting, the Drepung Monastery, is about a half hour outside of the city.

Along the way, Tenzin talked about Tibet and it’s culture and anything else we wanted to know.

He said that in the summer time, when the mines are open, there are over 1 million people living here.

Out of that 1 million, there are only 43000 Tibetans.

That was a shockingly low number to hear.

Outside of the summer months, all the Chinese people go back home leaving only the Tibetans here.

He also said that tourism to Tibet has dropped dramatically the last few years for a couple of reasons.

One, to no one’s surprise, is because of the Covid epidemic but the other is surprisingly because of the Ukraine/Russia war.

Tibet imports alot of items, mostly food, from both countries and that supply chain has been reduced causing prices to skyrocket.

Everything becomes more expensive which, in turn, turns away tourists from visiting.

At 10am we had arrived at the Drepung Monastery.

It’s a 6km by 8km area whose name literally translates to “rice hill” because of the shape of the area.

What we were told would be a 2 hour walk through the different building of the Monastery ended up being almost four hours.

By the end we were all pretty wiped out as that was alot of walking.

We did learn and see alot though.

We passed by so many monuments to different buddhas and past Dalai Lamas and Tenzin had a story for each.

At 1:30 we headed back down to the entrance of the monastery and met Janet from Minnesota who had just finally arrived here in Lhasa.

She, along with 6 others from the UK who would soon also be arriving, came from Kathmandu except she chose to leave on a different route to arrive a bit earlier than the others so she could join us for part of this monastery.

Sadly, by the time she had arrived, we had already finished but at least she got to join us for lunch which was served from a kitchen at the steps to the monastery.

My Group (Part 2)

At 2:30, the 6 of us left for the other monastery we’d be visiting today – the Sera Monastery.

Along the way, Tenzin again talked about anything we wanted to know.

Turns out that, unlike mainland China, Alipay isn’t as prevalent here since most Tibetans can’t figure out the apps and they also don’t want the government to spy on them.

It’s a real concern as we found out that every tour bus, including our shuttle van, has two cameras installed – one from the tour company and the other from the police.

Big brother is watching!

We also learned that the Tibetan Permit we had to apply for which I thought was just a formality is only approved about 30-40% of the time.

That’s crazy!   Thank God I got approved because I’m pretty sure I booked all my flights before it was.

Another thing we learned was that there have been 14 Dalai Lamas but they are not allowed to speak of the current one as he’s in exile in India for leading the independence movement.   In fact, citizens can be jailed for 2 years if they do speak of him.

Oh, and Tibetans live very long lives to their 80s, 90s and even to 100 years old.

Because of the altitude, they have bigger hearts and livers.   They also don’t have air or water pollution here and don’t inject anything into their foods.

And the final thing I found interesting was that Tenzin said that he had to get a tattoo removed because in 2008 the government, for unexplained reasons, just decided to outlaw tattoos on anyone who operated tours.

No reason.   No explanation.

They just had to get them removed.

As you travel through this area, you easily forget that you’re in a communist country but then things like this remind you that you are.

Anyway, back to the travel story…

At 3pm we arrived at Sera Monastery but had some free time before the other 6 would be arriving from the airport.

While we waited for a half hour, we stopped in a coffee shop and I, being me, opted for a mocha caramel shake.

Yup, as far away from a coffee as you can get.

What can I say?   I’ve never been a coffee drinker.

On the plus side, all the money I’ve saved from not getting a daily coffee has probably paid for a trip here and there.

As we sat at the patio table I felt something liquidly hit my head.

Oh no!   Had a just been shit on by a bird?

Well, as it turns out, my initial fear and disgust was soon abetted as it turned out to be hail, little balls of snow, falling from the sky.

Huh, that was unexpected!

A hail storm in Tibet.

That was not on my bingo card.

Finally, after that slight scare turned bemusement, the other six were dropped off.

Ah yes, my 11 other travel partners for next week were finally all together in one place.

The six new people were 3 couples all from the UK.

They had met on a tour through Costa Rica 11 years ago and had stayed in touch ever since going on multiple trips together to various parts of the world.

How cool is that?

There was Ian and Corinne from York and two lesbian couples from Birmingham and Manchester.

Kate and Jane, the couple from Birmingham, have been together for 36 years and have been married for 20 when it became legal.

Angela and Lynda, from Manchester, have been married for 10 years themselves.

I’m telling you, gay couples are the couple that stay together.

It’s nice to see love in full bloom.

Sera Monastery

After we all introduced ourselves, we walked to the monastery which was right behind the shops we had just visited.

The Sera Monastery is known for their debating monks.

The form of debate is quite unique as they all crowd into courtyard each paired up.

One of the pair will sit in silence as the other will hover over him arguing his point loudly with intermittent slaps of their hands.

After filming a few different videos, the crowd of monks stopped what they were doing and huddled to face their teacher who led them in chanting.

Turns out we had just arrived in time to see the monks debating as we apparently saw the tail end of it.

Unlike the first monastery, this visit was only a scant hour which, honestly, was quite welcome.

It was 5pm and I was fading.

I’ve had a runny nose the last few days which, I believe, is a byproduct of taking the Diamox pills that help with altitude sickness.

Couple that with the ridiculous amount of walking we did this morning, the onsetting jetlag, the lack of sleep, and the altitude in general and, yeah, I was fading.

Okay, so dinner and then that’s it, right?

Right?

Arts and Crafts

Nope!

First, an unexpected trip to Nini Cultural Experience Hall in downtown Lhasa.

Now, I will say, as dismayed as I was at the time that this day just kept going and going, this was my favorite part of the day and I’m so glad we went there.

Over the next 2 hours the man running the shop, Wangchuk, brought us to three rooms.

The first was to learn about how incense was made and to actually make it ourselves.

We took a blend of 15 natural ingredients and some saffron water and kneaded it together with our hands (specifically only our ring finger) in a tiny bowl.

From there, we sculpted them into tiny little towers which were they able to pop into plastic togo plastic cups as a souvenir for ourselves.

Next, we went to the prayer flag room where, you guessed it, we made our own prayer flags.

First we were each given 5 different colored flags – blue for sky, white for cloud, red for fire, green for water, and yellow for earth.

Then we applied ink to a big stamp which we would press down onto the flags.

And mine, well, they sucked.

Too much ink.   Not enough ink.

Ugh, whatever, it looks more authentic, right?

Not like some 5 year old made it.

Right?   Right???

Anyway, it’s coming home with me.

Finally, in the last room, Wangchuk had us one by one give him our name and, using the phonetic sound of it, he wrote it in calligraphy on a scroll for each of us to take home with us as well.

Like I said, it was my favorite part of the day.

We were done by 7pm and, boy, was I hungry.

I couldn’t even complain about it though because the 6 late joiners had been up since 4am themselves and hadn’t eaten anything all day.

Welcome Dinner

At 7:45 we finally sat down to dinner which was a communal meal.

While waiting for the food to arrive, we were each escorted to another table where a lady from the tour company was waiting to process payment for the remaining 70% of the tour cost.

To my delight, I wasn’t charged the 150usd single supplement charge which, honestly, I have no idea what’s going on with it.

Am I going to have a room by myself the whole trip?   Is there going to be a mystery roommate waiting for my when I get back to the hotel tonight?

Did they just forget to charge?

I have no idea.   It truly is a mystery to me but a happy mystery nonetheless.

Soon dinner arrived as plate after plate was placed down in the center of our giant table of 12.

Oh, and it turns out that a whopping 6 of the 12 of us are vegetarian which meant more meat for us meat eaters.

I mean, I’m sorry guys but you chose your path and I chose mine and mine involves a lot of meat in my belly.

There was also a show put on by some singers and dancers while we ate which reminded me of the restaurants I visited in North Korea where they did the same kind of thing.

The dinner did drag on for a bit and by the end we all just wanted to get back to the hotel and go to bed.

Finally our wishes were granted and, by 9:30 a full 12 hours since the day started, I was back at the hotel.

And, wouldn’t you know it – no mystery roommate awaiting me.

This would normally be the time when I would write up the blog for the day and, honestly, I was already 2 days behind now but, man, like I said earlier, I was wiped out.

So, the blogs would have to wait until tomorrow or maybe even beyond.

Now, obviously you’re reading this blog now so I’ll do a little time travel for you and tell you that I actually wrote both yesterday’s blog and today’s blog back to back tomorrow morning before embarking on the day.

Now, speaking of tomorrow…

Tomorrow we’ll be starting at 9:45am and visiting the grand Potata Palace in the morning and then the Jokhang Temple and surrounding Bakor Street in the afternoon.

Let the adventures continue…