After a long day of walking around through a couple of different monasteries yesterday you’d think I’d sleep like a baby, right?

I bed to bed at midnight last night and had my alarm set for 8:00.

Yeah, I woke up at 5:30.

This kind of thing usually happens to me on my first week of travel where I have several days in a row where I don’t sleep so much and then one day I just crash.

Maybe it’s the jetjag although in reverse?

Maybe it’s just the excitement of traveling again or maybe it’s me acclimating to the higher altitude.

Who knows but I’m used to it.

Early morning blogging

Anyways, the bonus to me waking up at 5:30 was that I was finally able to catch up on my blogging.

I pumped out back to back blogs in a couple of hours this morning and, I won’t lie, I kind of gave a little fist bump into the air when it was all done.

I uploaded so many photos and videos that I had to refill my esim card.

I thought a 10GB esim would be plenty for my time in China but I didn’t take into account the great Chinese firewall that blocks certain sites.

Specifically, Flickr where I upload all my photos to, is blocked and I’ve been forced to use the data on my esim to upload all my media instead of the free wifi that I normally use.

So, yeah, I bought another 10GB for $13 and hopefully that’ll be enough for the last few days here in China.

At 8am I headed downstairs for breakfast and to catch up with some of the guys from my group and, before you knew it, it was time to start our next day of adventures.

Potala Palace

At 9:45 all 12 of us headed on our little bus into the city.

It was 7c this morning and a pretty overcast sky with even a prediction of rain later in the day.

At least I won’t get sunburnt today like I did yesterday.

Yeah, yeah, stop with the “you always get sunburnt, put on some damn lotion” reprimands!

I know, I know.

Sometimes I’m my own worse enemy!

Anyway, by 10am we had reached the Potala Park which is a sprawling area across the road from the majestic Potala Palace.

It’s a great viewing point for the palace and maybe people stop here to take their selfies.

Myself included, of course.

In the park, almost as an afront, there was a giant mural of Xi Jinping and to the side, the Monument to the Peace and Liberation of Tibet.

Just China’s reminder that “hey, you’re still part of us so don’t get any ideas, okay?”

We then crossed the street and took the long walk to the entrance of the palace around the corner.

As we walked in one direction, it seems everyone else was walking the other way.

These were all locals doing their 2km daily walk, almost like a pilgrimage, around the palace as their way of praying.

I also found a shop selling hats so I nabbed a wide brimmed on to protect me from any future attacks from the sun.

See?   I’m learning, I’m learning – albeit slowly.

Finally, at 11:30am, we were entering the palace.

We had our passports checked and then passed our bags through an xray machine.

Yup, they take security here in China pretty seriously.

After spending a half hour on the lower grounds we were faced with the daunting task of climbing the 328 steps over 550 feet (170m) to the top where the actual palace building stood.

Thankfully there were benches along the way cause, man, as been proven time and again, I’m not in the best shape.

But boy, add the altitude here to the equation and you get out of breath pretty quick.

I wasn’t the only one as we all took our time getting to the top and, eventually, after 40 minutes we all made it up there.

Tenzin gave us each an audio pack with headphone to hear him on this tour as there would be alot of different guides talking at the same time.

Sometimes I forget I’m on a tour and not just traveling independently like I normally do, but this definitely reminded me that, yup, I’m on a tour.

The Potala Palace was built in the 7th century and is now used for mostly office work.

There are three colored buildings and over 2000 rooms – white representing clouds, red representing fire, and orange representing the earth.

The white building in the palace is used for office work, the red for religion, and the orange for printing documents and prayer books.

As with the other religious places we’d visited yesterday, photos inside are forbidden and, in fact, Tenzin said there was a 30000 yuan ($6000) fine if you’re caught.

Food for the soul (and stomach)

At 1:30, after spending a couple of hours on the palace grounds, we exited the complex on the other side.

Tenzin said we were on our way to see locals dancing in the park across the street but I just wasn’t prepared for how it would affect me.

In the middle of the park were a few dozen people dancing to some beautiful Chinese music with a crowd of equal size watching on.

I snuck in a little past the crowd and found a place to sit down on the ground at the very front.

There I was, sitting with crossed legs watching this majestic display.

I love moments like this because it just causes me to relax, forget about everything, and to just reflect on life and what’s going on in the moment.

I’ve had many times like this over the course of my travels like that that one afternoon in Cordoba, watching the music and light water show in Bucharest, and witnessing the cutest little puppet show in Split.

So, yeah, that was definitely food for the soul.

Onto food for the stomach…

Today we had lunch at Snowland restaurant which was actually one of the restaurants I had marked on my map.

Since the tables only fit 6 people, they sat us at two tables next to each other.   The six vegetarians of the group were ushered to one table while us nasty meat eaters were shown to the other.

I ordered the grilled yak steak and a side of sauteed Chinese cabbage.

The steak was actually pretty good and tender considering it was a very thin cut which was obviously cooked all the way through.

On the plate, along with the steak were a side of fries and some vegetables.

As I ate the steak and fries and left the veggies to the side I questioned whether this would be an affront to my fellow vegetarians in the group as I literally ate everything but but the vegetables.

Nonetheless, that’s what I did.

To my credit though, I did eat the Chinese cabbage.

Jokhang Temple

After lunch we walked over to the nearby Jokhang Temple smack dab in the center of the city.

The trip through this temple was much shorter than everywhere else we’ve visiting as we were in and out in about an hour.

As we waited to enter we could see locals on the ground inside doing their prayer ritual of kneeling and then sliding themselves forward until they lay flat on the ground.

They would do this over and over again.

I will say, the religious rituals that the Buddhists do is quite fascinating and you certainly can’t question their faith to their religion.

Inside the temple were 486 prayer wheels and, of course, more displays of different Buddhas and their stories.

By 5:30 we were all done for the day and allowed to roam free as we saw fit.

Many people decided to just stay in the downtown area but, as with yesterday, I was pretty wiped out so I opted to grab a Didi (China’s version of Uber) back to the hotel.

I opened my hotel door and was met with something that hadn’t been in my room earlier – as portable electric heater.

Had someone else finally checked into my room?

Why was there a heater here?

As I explored more I noted that, nope, nobody else had checked in.

I pretty much surmised that housekeeping had seen that I had yanked the blanket off the 2nd bed last night because I was cold and thought “hey, that dude needs a space heater”.

Now, that’s customer service!

So, the plan was to just relax for a bit, take a little nap maybe, and then head out again for a late dinner around 9 or 10pm.

I ended up snoozing for an hour and, I gotta tell ya, that was just what I needed.

I was ready to head back out again…

Two missions

At 8:30 I hopped in another Didi over to the busy Beijing Street which was lined with shops.

I had two missions – find a new power bank for my phone and nab some hand cream for my poor, dry hands.

On the drive over I let out a sneeze and the driver handed me three packs of something with Chinese writing on it.

It was only until later when I got back to hotel and used Google Translate on it that I found out they were packs of Gan Mao Ling which is a traditional Chinese medicine herbal formula used for early stage cold and flu symptoms.

Now, that’s customer service!

And, yeah, to address the issue – I’ve had a runny nose for pretty much the entirety of my time here in Tibet.

I had the same issue in Cusco on my way to Machu Picchu and at the time I attributed it to the constant change in temperature from hot to cold.

Honestly, it’s probably just a side effect to the Diamox pills I’ve been taking to help with altitude sickness.

Anyway, off on my missions…

First, a power bank.

If you haven’t read about it, I had my two power banks confiscated at the Shanghai airport a few days ago because they weren’t the proper rating for plane travel here in China.

I managed to find a way to get them transported to my hotel here in Lhasa and it was supposed to take 3 days.

Well, today was day 3 and, shock of all shocks, they weren’t here yet.

I asked my online contact for the tour if she knew what was going on with them as she was the one who helped getting the delivery done.

Turns out they’ll be arriving tomorrow.

Well, guess who’s leaving Lhasa tomorrow?

Yeah… Guess I’m not getting those power banks after all…

Anyway, that’s why I was entering a little phone shop on a Tibetan street at 9 at night.

He spoke no English, I spoke no Tibetan or Chinese but I was still able to communicate my needs through pantomiming a box with a cord and then pointing at my phone.

Soon after I was the proud owner of a new power bank.

Yay, mission one accomplished.

Now, mission two was to get hand cream.

Yup, I’m an idiot.

I never pack hand cream for my trips and I always inevitably buy some on every single damn trip.

I don’t even use the stuff at home so I have a stockpile of foreign branded hand creams piling up back at home.

I entered a drug store and just showed the clerk a photo of a woman applying cream to her hand that I downloaded earlier from Google.

And that did the trick.

Mission two accomplished.

And another one to the pile.

A late dinner

There was a restaurant nearby I had marked on my map called Lhasa Namaste restaurant so I headed over there.

I got to the location and could see that the restaurant was on the second floor.

The question, though, was how the hell do I get up there?

Looks like I have another unplanned mission on my plate.

I walked around the building from one side to the other searching for the entrance and I just couldn’t for the life of me figure it out.

I finally just stopped two girls on the street and, using my best charades, pointed up at the neon signage and then did a shrug and a confused look while looking from side to side.

And that was all it took!

It actually helped that they were also going to that restaurant so I followed them inside a small shop selling herbs and, sure enough, in the back was a stairway leading upstairs.

The meal itself was a bit lackluster and wasn’t even close to the great lunch I had earlier.

I had the lamb ribs with a side of rice and, yeah, like I said, it wasn’t that great.

But you know what?   I had an adventure finding the damn place so it was all worth it.

By 10pm I was back at the hotel and after packing and starting on the Skelton outline for this blog, I was in bed by midnight.

Tomorrow we head on the road out of Lhasa heading east to Shigatse followed by Everest Base Camp the next day, and culminating with a push to the Nepalese border.

Things are about to get very exciting…