Two great monasteries

Drepung Monastery

Due to a miscommunication, we had to pay for our breakfast at the hotel. It was a simple Chinese breakfast of warm congee, steamed buns, bread rolls and hard-boiled egg. The steamed buns were tough on the outside and tasteless on the inside. It seems to be the way it is done in China outside of Cantonese areas and restaurants unlike the fluffy soft white ones that I’m used to. The hard-boiled egg went well with some soya sauce in a sandwich.

We were picked up at 0915 to go to the Drepung Monastery. This monastery is located outside Lhasa at the foot of Mount Gephel and is one of the three great monasteries of Tibet’s dominant sect, the Gelug.  I’ve seen pictures where a huge thangka hangs on the mountain-side nearby on special occasions. In the 1930s, writers remarked that there were around 7700 monks in residence.

It had an amazingly large and colourful assembly hall. Much of the beauty of the assembly hall came from the tapestries hanging from above. Outside, we were also fortunate enough to catch monks participating in a debating examination in the sunny courtyard.

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Sera Monastery

Back in central Lhasa, we took lunch at the Bright Pearl restaurant a few doors away from last night’s Holy City. We requested gongbao chicken which was quite nice.

Our next visit was to Sera Monastery on the edge of the city. Despite its much smaller size, it is one of the three great monasteries of the Gelug sect, along with the Drepung which we visited this morning.

We were met with a sand mandala in a chapel by the entrance. We continued to the main hall where a large assembly of monks were reciting scriptures.

Our guide said we had been extremely lucky. In his eight year career as a guide, he had never had guests see all three: debating, a sand mandala and a prayer assembly.  It was unfortunate that we couldn’t capture some of these experiences on camera.

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Norbulingka

We continued to Norbulingka located within the city. It has the largest man-made garden in Tibet. The most significant building was the summer palace of many Dalai Lamas until the current before his flight to Dharamsala.

I bought a pomelo on the way out of the Norbulingka. I also noticed this morning and now that our American fellow traveller, Denise, had been tipping and giving to beggars USD1 notes. We had a little chat about this and despite being very well travelled, she didn’t seem to understand that:

• USD1 was a lot of money here and could probably buy a few simple meals.
• It creates the wrong incentive for children and beggars to beg rather than develop a work ethic.
• It creates a problem for other travellers coming after us some children and beggars will start to pester foreigners with the expectation of high amounts not commensurate with local conditions.

Perhaps much of her travel has been guided like this and she is quite removed from the local realities. In our case, we are doing a tour because it isn’t possible legally to do it independently. It is possible to do it sneakily but requires a bit of extra time which we don’t have.

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Dinner and Cultural Show

After a rest at the hotel we were taken to the Mad Yak for dinner and cultural evening. There were two buffets, one Chinese and the other Tibetan. The former was OK while the latter was terrible. The momos had really thick tough pastry and the meat awfully gristly. Chang, the alcoholic beverate was like rice wine. Tibetan butter tea is like normal tea with cream (instead of milk) and salt (instead of sugar); it is certainly an acquired taste. [Edit: I didn’t acquire the taste even at the end of the trip.]

The cultural performances were alright, I suppose. I have no way of judging. The costumes were beautiful and the instruments didn’t look different from Chinese ones, not that I’m an expert on the subject.

Denise on the other hand was somewhat disgusted saying it was a tourist trap. I didn’t say much in response. I thought “Yes” but I don’t think you’re going to get an authentic cultural performance unless you happened to turn up at a festival day when the locals are doing it for themselves. The fact that we’re on a guided tour is itself a tourist trap. Perhaps she was more trapped than us because she probably paid several times the price we paid.

Then she started saying that the food was bad (which I kinda agreed but kept silent) and we could probably get better local food outside. Well, from my experience, in poorer parts of the world, good local food with good local ingredients (such as non-gristly meat) is actually hard to find. The best food is sometimes made in backpacker cafes where quality may be good but the flavour may not be authentic.

Anyway, Denise left early supposedly because of the smoking indoors.