"A Single to Sydney, Please"

To Sydney ... and home again for Xmas

After an enjoyable few days relaxing in Melbourne, I took the train to Albury on the Victoria/NSW border, where I met Dave, one of the original cOzBus members. We drove to Canberra and did some sight-seeing in that rather strange city, before meeting Nat at Canberra airport on Friday night. Canberra is more like a university campus and a shopping mall stuck together, than a real city. It was originally designed by Walter Burley Griffin, a major 20th century American architect and it has a very American feel to it. It is composed of several suburbs that are interconnected by dual carriageways, so it's hard to get around without a car. The suburbs are small and self-contained, each with its own 'town centre' with shopping and commercial districts. It's not the sort of place I could see myself living but it was interesting to wander around a bit and observe its strangeness.

Dave, Nat and I spent a great night in a campsite on the edge of Canberra. We were no more than ten minutes' drive from the city centre, but we were already deep in the bush. It was a perfect night for camping - for once cold enough to use a sleeping bag - and we spent hours lying gazing at the stars and watching for 'sputniks'.

On Saturday we drove to Jindabyne to rendezvous with OzBus and to spend the last night with the gang. It wasn't very far to Jindabyne and OzBus wasn't due in until the evening, so in the afternoon we went to Mount Kosciuszko in the Snowy Mountains, which at a lofty 2,228 metres is Australia's highest peak. We had planned to make an assault on one of the 'Seven Summits', but the chair-lift stopped running at 4pm. We realised that we didn't have enough time to summit and make it back to the chair-lift before it ceased operation for the day, so we went only as far as the Kosciuszko lookout. We did however get to take some photographs of us playing in the snow in Australia in December. This really is unimpressive as continental peaks go: it's not particularly high and there's a chair-lift to within a couple of hundred metres of the summit, although I suppose real 'Seven Summiters' probably walk up instead of taking the chair-lift.

On Saturday evening we had our last OzBus dinner in Jindabyne followed by the OzBus awards ceremony, brilliantly compèred by Andy and Gordon. We had nominations in dozens of categories and none of the passengers or crew left without an award. In the steady rain, I retired around midnight to my tent, for my last night under canvas of 2007. As it was the last night, almost everyone upgraded, but, contrary to the end, I decided to sleep with the rain lashing against the flysheet.

On Sunday morning we bid farewell to Nat and Dave and had our last OzBus breakfast before wandering bleary-eyed on to the bus for the day's drive to Sydney. We stopped off in Canberra where we visited Parliament House. Most of us were only interested in the building's pies, coffee and toilets. Our general lack of enthusiasm and burnt-out state meant that plans to visit other sights in Canberra were abandoned. We climbed back on board and drove to Goulburn, where we had lunch and also said goodbye to Maz, who jumped off early to be picked up by her brother and his family.

The last couple of hours' drive to Sydney were quite sombre. We listened to Christmas songs and tried to come to terms with the fact that after twelve indescribably long weeks together we had finally reached the end of the road. OzBus 2 was no more. We got caught in some traffic on the edge of Sydney so it took us quite a while to reach the viewpoint - Macquerie's Point - where we posed for some group photos with the opera house and harbour bridge backdrop. It was hard to believe that we had arrived in Sydney in the middle of summer. It was like an Irish summer's day: grey with a steady drizzle.

After the group photos we all got back on board and were taken into Circular Quay, where we got off for some tearful goodbyes, although most of us would see each other again in the next few days. Andrew Kelleher from OzBus was there, wearing something of a hangdog expression. Certainly the bright and cheery Andrew who had seen us off in London twelve weeks earlier was missing. A couple of the passengers tried to express some of their displeasure and disappointment, but these attempts were rebuffed with a 'send me an email'. There was to be no post-mortem on the wet streets of Sydney this Sunday evening.

After dozens of goodbye hugs, I picked up my rucksack and my daypack and hopped into a taxi to my hotel. OzBus was over. Freedom.

29 12 2007 - 22:13 - macmac - OzBus| 482 comments - § ¶

What's Sumatra you, hey, gotta no respect

But it is indeed a great town. I couldn't quite put my finger on it and then it hit me this afternoon: what makes this place great is the fact that it's all set up for tourists and backpackers but there are almost no foreigners here. Indonesia's once healthy tourist industry has never quite recovered from the Bali bombings, so we have the place almost to ourselves.

This is my first blog entry from the southern hemisphere: Bukittinggi is at 0°18′ south and 100°23′ east. We crossed the equator yesterday afternoon about an hour or two before entering the town. The equator is so irrelevant to the Sumatrans that our guide Anto didn't bother mentioning it and there is no mark on the road at all - there's a business opportunity not being exploited. I'm not sure he even understood what the line on the globe we were talking about was.

From Melaka we caught a two-hour fast ferry across the straits, which was a little bit choppy. Then we drove for quite a number of hours to Pekanbaru, which is Indonesia's oil town. Actually the town and its hinterland reminded me quite a bit of Venezuela: oil wells, palm trees, rural shacks and a city that clearly has a lot of oil money. Indonesia is obviously much poorer than Malaysia. Actually the brief sojourn in Thailand and Malaysia was almost like being back in Europe. We're very definitely back in Asia now. The people are fantastic here: lots of 'hello mister, how are you' and smiling faces.

There was little to detain us in Pekanbaru, which was just as well, because we arrived late and left early in inimitable OzBus style. We have had a rare two-night stop here, which has been great. With a small splinter group I upgraded to the town's best hotel (Novotel) - well, you have to splurge when it's cheap. The OzBus hotels since we arrived in Indonesia have been below par; on the first night there was no running water in the room and the sheets had been used by a previous guest or two (I upgraded in Pekanbaru too).

Speaking of splinter groups, I'm less than three days back on OzBus and I'm getting off again! It was announced in Melaka that severe storms had largely washed out the roads south and east of Bukittinggi and therefore OzBus has been left with no option than to fly to Jakarta. Today's Guardian has the 'official' blog of one of the OzBus 1 passengers and the story there is that the roads were made impassable by an earthquake. All this is rather strange. This morning I walked into a travel agent and bought a bus ticket to Jakarta: 29 hours, bring it on! So it seems that the roads are impassable and/or fell into the Java Sea and yet they're good enough for a daily bus service to operate on them. Somebody's nose must be a couple of inches longer at this stage.

I could well be nuts (no news there then). The bus is possibly more expensive than flying. Twenty-nine hours! That deserves to be spelt out. But it's the old Continuity OzBus motto: 'can't fly, won't fly'. I will eventually have to fly from Bali to Darwin, but I want to try and continue overlanding as far as I can. Even Peter Moore had to fly from East Timor to Darwin, if memory serves. I'm not sure yet when I'll rejoin the bus but it could be somewhere in Java or on Bali. There are some interesting rail options from Jakarta across Java and the train seems to be quite quick.

Today I went on a tour of the area surrounding the town. With a small group I trekked through some jungle. We were in search of Rafflesia arnoldii, which is the world's biggest flower. It only flowers for a few days before it turns into a black, gooey mess. We were extremely lucky that our expert local guide managed to find one in flower. Then we drove into the mountains and got astonishing views of the shimmering blue Danau Maninjau lake. The countryside around here really is beautiful.

So it's back on cOzBus for me tomorrow morning. Maz, very wisely, has chosen to fly to Jakarta with OzBus, or OzAir as some of the passengers have started calling it. I shall talk to you from Java.

24 11 2007 - 11:41 - macmac - OzBus| 747 comments - § ¶

Shiny happy people speaking Lao

Maz and I arrived across the border into Laos on Wednesday afternoon and we've been enchanted with the place ever since. Everyone we've met has had a smile on their face. People are helpful and kind. It's even enjoyable to banter with the touts. It's a welcome relief for two weary travellers.

We travelled more than 5,000 km in five days overland, through Tibet, China and Laos. After leaving Chengdu we travelled continuously for three days and two nights. Our departure from Chengdu was on the overnight (18 hour) train to Kunming on Monday afternoon. Having visited Kunming en route to Vietnam four years ago I didn't think it was worth an overnight so we pressed on, taking the Tuesday night sleeper bus to Jinghong, in the south of Yunnan province. We crawled off the sleeper bus at 6am Wednesday, hopped into a taxi to change bus stations in Jinghong and boarded the 7am minibus departure for Mengla. At lunchtime in Mengla (referred to as 'a dire little town' by Lonely Planet) we decided we'd had enough of public transport so we scrambled together our remaining yuan and hired a taxi to cover the remaining hour to the border with Laos, at Mohan. Clearing immigration both sides took about an hour, after which we negotiated conveyance in a 'truck' to the first town of any size in Laos, where we gratefully accepted offers of hot showers and beds for the night from the first hotel we saw. The 'truck' in question, by the way, is the way the locals travel when they don't travel by bus. It's a flat-bed, light truck with a passenger compartment complete with two bench seats welded on. It's fine for a couple of hours but I wouldn't want to spend the whole day travelling in one.

So China was all a bit of a blur (even in the OzBus context). Actually that's the second time I've passed through China very quickly; I'll have to visit it properly sometime. The train from Lhasa to Chengdu was as comfortable a way to travel 3,360 km in two days as you'll get. I had mixed feelings about taking the train. I was interested to experience the 'engineering marvel' and 'monument to the Chinese people's ingenuity', but I couldn't have spent a week in Tibet without coming away with some idea of the Tibetan people's feelings about their new rail link with the 'motherland'. Most Tibetans fear for their future with four trainloads a day of Chinese tourists and immigrants arriving in Lhasa. The Dalai Lama has spoken of 'cultural genocide' resulting from the new rail connection.

There's no doubting that it's an impressive piece of engineering. It is the highest train in the world and at its highest point you pass through 5,072 metres. 120 km of bridges were built over the permafrost and sections of cooling pipes, and even mirrors to reflect the sunshine, were used to keep the boggy ground frozen. The trains were designed to limit the amount of walking that needs to be done in the thin air. At each berth or seat there is a socket to which a mask can be connected to provide oxygen for passengers. In the soft-sleeper carriages, each berth has an individual LCD TV, although I never found anything more interesting than 'Mr. Bean' being transmitted.

For the princely sum of 150 yankee dollars each Maz and I had soft-sleeper beds for the 46-hour trip. There are four beds to a compartment in 'soft-sleeper', but our only companion the entire journey was a Tibetan girl who was on her way to Chengdu for a holiday. She said that she worked for the police and as a result was able to travel around quite cheaply (something like 2 yuan for a soft-sleeper between Lhasa and Chengdu). She was educated in various places in China, having won some scholarships, so I think she'd probably be on the 'progess' side of the progress-versus-cultural-genocide railway debate, although I didn't like to ask. You know what they say about politics and religion.

The trip was quite pleasant. I love rail journeys and this one was smooth, on-time and without incident. Also, perhaps because we were heading for Sichuan, the food in the dining car was fiery hot. Over the two days I enjoyed some of the best Chinese food I've ever eaten - a pleasant change from the 'hang sangers' you usually get served when dining on the rails.

Based on some reading of Lonely Planet we decided to break the Tibet-Laos marathon in Chengdu and a very good choice it proved to be. Chengdu itself is quite a pleasant place, but what made our short visit great was staying at Sim's Cozy Guesthouse. What a wonderful place! Everything the traveller could possibly want: free train station pick-up, comfortable and cheap rooms, internet, travel agent, fab food, a bar, bike hire. As Lonely Planet says you know that the owners aren't in it for the money. Unfortunately, this is China and next year Sim's will be no more. There's a massive shopping mall being built right beside (and on top of) the guesthouse , so the government wants them out. You can't stand in the way of progress.

This was my third or fourth time to visit China and the pace at which it is developing is astonishing. Chengdu is essentially a first world city now. I'm afraid that, in their haste to modernise, the Chinese are wiping away much of what makes China unique. There's not much point travelling across the globe to see the same chainstores, shopping malls, officeblocks that you find everywhere else.

Sim's has a great location too. Right around the corner is the Wenshu Monastery, a very fine Zen Buddhist Temple and the streets around the temple are being developed into a dining, shopping and recreational area. It's all very nice, if a little twee, kind of Temple Bar with pagodas. The street that Sim's is on is one of the last to be developed, so you can get an idea of what the area was like before being modernised. The street is packed with interesting little businesses - barbers, restaurants, tailors, grocery shops - and full of people eating, working, playing Mahjong, shopping and just hanging out.

In theory, Laos has a communist government like China, but you can feel the difference as soon as you cross the border. There is an extremely relaxed feeling about the whole country. It's definitely more like Thailand than China, but it's less hectic than Thailand. After a couple of weeks we're finally free to choose for ourselves which websites to look at. In China many sites are blocked (the 'Great Firewall of China'): the BBC; all blogs using Blogger, blogspot.com, etc.; Wikipedia. Laos is so laid-back. I think it has to do with its small population - some 6.5 million. As a rule I prefer countries with small populations. The colonial French used to say: 'the Vietnamese plant rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Lao listen to it grow.'

We are in Luang Prabang for two nights. We haven't had two nights in the same place since Lhasa, so it's a rare treat. The town is the jewel in the crown of the Lao tourist industry. It boasts 32 temples, although there were 66 temples here before French colonisation. The town sits on a peninsula at the confluence of the Mekong and Khan rivers. It was also home to a royal palace which is now a museum.

It's a surprisingly prosperous place and I was amazed when I arrived yesterday by the number of tourists there are in town. The local economy appears to be doing very well. There are plenty of up-market eateries, shops and hotels. For now the locals seem to be doing alright from the tourist industry; there are very few beggars on the streets and the touts are completely laid-back and mellow in their approach. We had a lot of trouble finding accommodation, but after some ringing around we found a pretty decent place for 30 dollars a night. Not cheap, but pretty good quality.

I have just been chilling out here mostly, enjoying good food, great drinks and fast internet access. Things are not very expensive here, but you can end up spending a bit of money as there is plenty to do and buy. I bought a few souvenirs in the night market last night. This morning I spent a few hours doing the main sights. It's hot here (mid-thirties during the day) and it feels very hot after the biting cold of Tibet - just a week ago.

Tomorrow morning we start the long trek south to rejoin OzBus. It will take us 24 hours to reach Bangkok via Vientiane. We will hopefully have 36 hours in Bangkok, before we board another overnight train to Penang, where hopefully we'll find thirty-something OzBusers waiting for us. It's been fast-moving, hectic and hard work at times, but very rewarding also. The decision to part company with OzBus for three and a half weeks and strike out alone (just Maz and I, after Dave was struck down with a bug) through Nepal, Tibet, China and Laos was clearly the right one. We are true overlanders. We are cOzBus!

15 11 2007 - 14:53 - macmac - OzBus| 1002 comments - § ¶

Seven days in Tibet

Tibet. Where to start. What a truly amazing place! I think the week I spent travelling through Tibet was the highlight of the trip so far. I really enjoyed the few nights in Kathmandu. I didn't do any of the sights as I did all of them last time. I stayed most of the time in Thamel, the backpacker part of town, and enjoyed leisurely meals, exchanging stories and tips with other travellers and doing some great shopping. Having researched the Tibetan weather a little bit, I decided to stock up on cold weather gear, including a down-jacket, which in the end I didn't use.

Early on Saturday morning our little group assembled outside the offices of Richa Tours and met our Nepalese guide, who was to escort us to the border. There were eight of us altogether: Veronica and Luis from Mexico; Stefania and Riccardo from Italy; Paul from south London; Oisin from Galway in Ireland; myself and Maz from cOzBus. Dave was sick as a dog that morning in Kathmandu, so unfortunately he had to miss the trip completely. Bummer. cOzBus was down to two.

The trip to the town on the border took us about five hours, including a breakfast stop. We passed through some amazing scenery as the bus climbed higher and higher. It reminded me of the scenery from the Annapurna circuit, which I trekked four years earlier. About two km from the border itself, we had to get off the bus and walk, with all our luggage, as the queue of trucks waiting to cross the border meant that the bus couldn't go any further. The border is a crazy place. It's surprisingly busy, but the Friendship Bridge, as it's called, is extremely narrow, with barely enough room for two trucks to pass. This means huge queues on both sides. We hauled our gear up the steep hill and then sat eating in a small restaurant while our guide had us stamped out of Nepal (what a great way to go through immigration). Once the formalities were taken care of we walked across the bridge to the Tibetan side, where we met our guide for the next week. Luckily our guide was Tibetan and not Chinese. There was no way of checking this beforehand, but it is much better to have a Tibetan guide, as the Chinese guides in general know very little about the Tibetan monasteries, culture, etc. Our guide was soft-spoken and experienced. He reminded me of Graham Greene, who starred as Leonard Quinhagak, the native medicine man in the TV show 'Northern Exposure'.

Once through Chinese immigration we drove up the hill to the town of Zhangmu. We lost two and a quarter hours by crossing the border, as all of China (including Tibet) is eight hours ahead of GMT, so it was now mid-afternoon. We had to hang around Zhangmu until 10.30pm because the road to Nyalamu was closed for road works until then. This was our first sample of a Tibetan town and the Chinese influences were obvious. There seemed to be less squalor than on the Nepalese side of the border. Zhangmu was a busy place but not particularly nice or interesting, a typical, slightly seedy, border town. After checking out the views and visiting the small Buddhist temple, Maz and I retired to an internet cafe and enjoyed the first decent internet connection since Turkey, until it was time for us to be driven to Nyalamu.

We were travelling in two Toyota Land Cruisers, the eight of us plus two drivers and our guide. It took us about two hours to drive the 30 km or so to Nyalamu, over some unbelievably rough roads. Roadworks are underway and I doubt it will be long before there is smooth Tarmac the whole way to the border, but for now it's like driving on the moon! The road through Tibet to the Nepalese border is known as the Friendship Highway, but, in its early stages at least, it seemed to us that 'enmity dirt track' would be a better description. We bumped and rolled our way into Nyalamu at about 12.30am and went straight to bed, three to a room, in the cold and very basic hotel. It really was cold (maybe down around minus 10) and we each slept under a pile of three duvets in an effort to keep warm.

Nyalamu is at about 3,750 metres above sea level (compared to Kathmandu's 1,300 metres) but I had an OK sleep despite the cold and the altitude. The hotel was very basic so there were no showers to delay our pre-departure formalities on Sunday morning. We hit the road early, just as first light was arriving, and we drove out to cross over some high passes on the Tibetan Plateau. The first big pass of the day was Tong-la, which at 5,120 metres was a new altitude record for a lot of us. We made many stops (the altitude was making Oisin and me pee constantly and making us drink litres and litres of water - maybe it's an Irish thing?) for photos on the way. At each pass, multi-coloured Tibetan prayer flags were strewn across a 'gateway' structure that marked the highest point on the road. Despite the altitude and the absolute bleakness of the surroundings, we were met at each stop by local nomads who attempted to extract money or food from us. They were particularly fond of demanding money in return for posing for photos. It was quite sad to see people with no other way to earn a crust, depending on handouts from tourists. Our destination on Sunday was Lhatse. We stopped for lunch in a small town about half-way to Lhatse. Lunch itself wasn't great, as we were brought to one of the 'tourist only' places to which all tourists are taken, but the small town was interesting enough: nomads in town buying and selling wares; yak meat hung to cure in the sun; locals sitting around chatting.

Lhatse is 4,350 metres up, but we passed through 5,000 metres again in the afternoon on the way to it, when we crossed Gyatso-la pass (5,250 metres). I didn't feel great at this second pass, but felt much better when we descended to our hotel. The hotel was again basic - no running water this time! - but was quite pretty and clean. There wasn't much to do in the small town and I was starting to have 'second thoughts' about our Tibet trip at this stage. We had seen some pretty striking scenery (including Everest from the Tibetan side), but nothing cultural so far and the hotels were very basic and cold. We wandered into town as a group and had a great meal in a Chinese restaurant. We ordered a pile of dishes plus rice and all dug in with chopsticks. This set us back a mere two euro a head, with gallons of free tea.

A funny thing happened after lunch on Sunday. All morning the road from Nyalamu had been pretty decent, the terrible road from the previous night having given way to a reasonably flat and broad gravel road. Then, as soon as we left the small town where we had lunch, we were presented with a smooth, level black-top, complete with a yellow dotted line down the middle and side drains to take away rain, or, more likely, rubble from landslides. The Chinese sure know how to build roads; these were some of the best roads we had seen for weeks. So much for OzBus's talk of impassable roads and 'inclement' weather.

On Monday morning we left Lhatse, not too early, with the day's destination, Shigatse, not far away: one of the mythical 'short driving days'. Shigatse is Tibet's second largest city, or rather 'second village', and at 3,900 metres we were descending a bit, which could only help with our bid to acclimatise. The very modern, warm, comfortable hotel in Shigatse also promised a better night's sleep and some very welcome hot showers. After settling into the hotel, we spent the afternoon exploring the amazing Tashilhunpo Monastery. This is one of the four Yellow Hat (Gelugpa) sect monasteries in Tibet and was built in 1447 by Gedun Drupa, the first Dalai Lama. This is where the Tibet trip really got interesting for me. The monastery is the seat of the Panchen Lama, who is currently in Beijing, having been taken there by the Chinese, officially for his "safety". The monastery is very much a lived-in, fuctioning place with something like 600 monks in residence. At one time, before the Cultural Revolution, the monastery housed over 4,000 monks. We spent several hours wandering around the large complex examining the beautifully decorated chapels. Towards the end of our visit we were fortunate to get to watch the monks chanting in the main hall; a truly memorable experience.

We arose late on Tuesday and left the hotel about 10am. Our guide didn't think much of the hotel's food, so he brought us to a western place for a fairly decent breakfast. We had another short driving day from Shigatse to Gyantse. Because the day didn't involve too much driving, the guide suggested a couple of stops for us en route. First, one of the drivers brought us to his family's home for a visit. What a rare treat to visit a Tibetan home and farm. His mother gave us yak butter tea, a strange chickpea powder and - best of all - big piles of boiled spuds in their jackets. The yak butter tea was very strange, more like mushroom soup than tea. I quickly realised that it was best not to finish the cup of tea, as each empty cup was instantly refilled; Paul only realised this after he'd finished off four cups! Next stop en route was a traditional mill where the Tibetan staple tsampa (a kind of barley) was turned into flour using mills powered by water. Quite interesting. We stayed for a few photos and the chance to sample some tsampa, which tasted quite nice.

We arrived about lunchtime in Gyantse and settled into the Jian Zang Hotel, right in the centre. The hotel was pretty nice: hot showers, comfortable rooms. Our guide brought us to the town's main attraction: the Pelkhor Chode monastery, which dates from the 15th century and the highlight of which is the superb Kumbum Chorten (10,000 images Stupa), which has nine tiers and over 100 chapels. The top level also affords great views of the town and the Dzong (Old Fort) which sits on top of a peak near the town centre. Apparently there isn't much to see in the fort apart from Chinese propaganda, so I gave it a miss after capturing it in a few photos. The town of Gyantse itself is a great little place. It's supposed to be one of the most Tibetan (i.e. least Chinese) towns in Tibet and many people make the trip there just to see it for this reason. As we strolled around looking at the strange array of items for sale in the shops, the locals seemed very cheery and stopped to say hello. We passed groups of people working on some traditional looking houses who whistled as they worked; all very pleasant.

Wednesday morning brought with it an eary start for us. We were on the road to Lhasa at 6am. Instead of taking the main road, we took the old route and enjoyed the amazing colours and light at the Yamdrok-tso lake. This very photogenic body of water is a fabulous turquoise that contrasts with the golden colour of the barren mountains surrounding it. Maz and I agreed that it looked a lot like the colours of Scotland. Well worth getting out of bed at an ungodly hour to see.

Had I left Tibet at this stage, I would have been quite satisified with our visit, but the best was yet to come. It was a short drive from our viewpoint over Yamdrok-tso to wonderful Lhasa. Our initial impressions weren't too great as we drove through the modern Chinese part of town: brand new buildings lining a modern four-lane divided highway. With the fabulous peaks on all sides we could've been somewhere in Colorado, were it not for the telltale Chinese writing on the shopsigns. Things looked up dramatically as we entered the eastern, Tibetan part of town and pulled up at the interesting Hotel Flora, right in the heart of the small muslim quarter. With the rest of the day free I just wandered around the town centre soaking up the atmosphere. Lhasa is an unusual world capital, an overgrown village really. It's the spiritual heart of the Tibetan world. The focal point is the Barkhor circuit: a roughly square path around the streets that enclose the Jokhang Temple, which one follows in a clockwise direction. Doing 'the circuit' are hundreds of pilgrims who prostrate themselves every few metres. Also in the mix are shoppers and curious tourists, both groups examining the wares of the many stalls that line the route, selling jewellery, trinkets, prayer wheels and items of a more mundane nature. It's impossible not to get sucked in and carried along by the crowd for at least a lap or two. This really is one of the most exciting sights in the world, for me anyway. I also enjoyed some decadent western food in some of the well appointed cafes and restaurants.

On Thursday we had a late, lazy start. After breakfast we went with the guide to see the Jokhang Temple. The building which dates from 647 AD has a total area of 25,000 square metres. The place was full of pilgrims many of whom had travelled from the farthest corners of Tibet. In the main hall we were fortunate to witness the monks chanting. The best spectacle was the view from the temple's roof. Our privileged vantage point enabled us to see Barkhor Square and all the life it contained, as well as the pilgrims doing the Barkhor circuit. We stood there for quite a while soaking up the view. Next, we were taken to the Potala Palace, which is perhaps the best known Tibetan sight. The palace, which is an absolutely massive set of buildings perched high on a hill overlooking Lhasa, is the seat of the Dalai Lama. Comprising two buildings, the Red Palace and the White Palace, it was in the past home to the Tibet government, as well as winter residence of the Dalai Lamas. We spent two hours roaming around the complex. The highlight was seeing the chambers where the Dalai Lama used to receive foreign heads of state. The building is huge and there are some treasures to be seen, but the place is depressing and sad in some way. You can't help reflecting on the fact that it is an empty building. The large hall we passed through once contained chanting monks. The whole palace was once filled with people busying themselves with the business of running a country and administering a religion.

After the Potala, we had a quick lunch stop before making our way to the 15th century Sera monastery. This monastery is one of the three major monsateries of the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The highlight was watching the monks debating in the Debating Courtyard. The monks gather each afternoon, some sitting, some standing and debate for a couple of hours philosophical questions. Those sitting field the questions from those standing. It's quite a sight to watch the animated question-and-answer session.

The tour had officially another day to run in Lhasa, but Maz and I, being short of time as ever, decided to leave on Friday morning. Fortunately our guide managed to fit all of Lhasa's sights into Thursday's tours so we said goodbye to him and our little group went off to enjoy a last meal together and a couple of drinks in a 'music bar'. On Friday morning Maz and I boarded the new train at Lhasa station bound for Chengdu in China, a trip that took 46 hours altogether. More about the train trip and our few short days in China in the next instalment.

11 11 2007 - 09:54 - macmac - OzBus| 175 comments - § ¶