We slept in a cold room last night 15C the heater was not working and the air con was blowing a mixture of warm and cold air. Slept with my clothes on and woolen hat. The beds are hard mattresses but slept okay we were both tired. Had some boiled eggs for breakfast and we joined our tour party at 09:30 and we hopped on our mini bus and headed to Drepung Monastery which is the biggest in Lhasa and dated back to the 14th century.. We could take photos of the outside area of the monasteries but not allowed inside. Our guide was very informative and the tour was conducted at a slow pace due to the altitude. There were a lot of steps and I was there to help Penny up and down them. There were a lot of Buddhist mainly farmers and their families come to do their pilgrimage and there were 3 mini buses of tourists and we were the minority. So we were gawked at alot and alot of hellos. A lot of elderly people hunched over managing to climb the steps and praying at the individual Buddhas and offering money at each one. There was alot of money collected and it is used to help maintain the monasteries. There was alot of burning wicks which the people either put hunks of yak butter or had yak butter in liquid form in flasks. Once outside the monasteries the sun was very bright and it was warm around 6C, lovely. I even bought 4 bags of jelly beans off a vendor and they taste great. We had lunch at the monastery I was not hungry due to the breakfast and jelly beans Penny had a plate full of yak, veg and rice. I found the toilet it was interesting you had to watch where you were standing as there was a channel 12 inches apart and it was 3 foot deep passing through all the cubicles, you had to squat over the channel and drop anything which should not be in there and you were in trouble. Every minute couple of minutes a large volume of water passed through the channel. After lunch we departed to Sera Monastery a 30 minute drive away. The monastery was similar to Drepung but on a smaller scale. At 15:00 the monks had a debating session one standing and one sitting and alot of hand slapping, it would have been interesting to know what they were discussing. This goes on for 2 hours and there were hundreds of monks present.
We got back to our hotel and had to meet up at 18:30 for a meal with our tour party. So I had a siesta for an hour the altitude and walking around for 6 hours is taxing on the body. We walked for 20 minutes to this restaurant and had a lovely meal and got to know 4 of our travel mates as we dined. Chinese lady and her son who live in Australia, an American lady in her 40’s touring for a year and another American young lady who is teaching here in China. Strolled back to the hotel the streets were less congested. Got a new heater in our room and it is much warmer I am happy with that.
Maurice's Travel 