Yaks

Oh, what a great day today was!! At last I did enjoy myself!

I am afraid that this entry will be rather short. Not because I keep my praises short but because I am feeling tired and there is a headache which will soon overcome me completely. Furthermore, Alex is waiting impatiently for me to go to dinner.

Today we visited Lhasa's most imposing attraction – the Potala Palace. This was once the seat of the Tibetan government and the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas. The construction is huge (13 storeys tall) and contains thousands of rooms. Its construction began during the reign of the 5th Dalai Lama in 1645 and took more than 50 years to complete

The tickets were obtained with difficulty (at least, this is what our guide told us), we had exactly 1 ½ hours to see the entire palace (the parts which were open to the public) and our passports were needed on entering. No pictures were allowed inside the palace (and not even out of the rooms' windows, which was really frustrating).

We had to climb thousands of stairs to get into the palace which, at 4000m, is no easy work. But the breathtaking view of the surrounding mountains made up for the effort. The palace impressed me, this time I really liked some of the statues and decorations. Huge tombs of massive gold of various Dalai Lamas catch your eye. Streams of pilgrims file through this religious maze to make offerings at the numerous chapels and shrines.

After the visit, we had lunch again in another local restaurant. This time I was more prepared to eat (I own that I was feeling really hungry as I had had a very light breakfast), especially because the place looked cleaner than the yesterday one. This time it was not a la carte, the menu was pre-established but I found some of the food to my liking. I managed to stick to vegetarian food – I had yak yoghurt, vegetarian dumplings, some strange beans and rice and yak soup (no meat, only the clear soup). The food was good and quite filling (I am not hungry even now).

After lunch, we made a short trip outside Lhasa. This trip was not included in our original schedule but we wanted to see more than Lhasa and, as we are in love with nature and the mountains, we managed to persuade our guide to alter the schedule. We felt like we were doing something forbidden as the travel agency did not know about the change (we paid the driver and guide a certain amount). The idea proved to be wonderful, the landscape was astounding, we drove to approximately 5000m. We saw beautiful snowed summits, picturesque Tibetan villages, blue skies. One of our purposes was to see the famous yaks and, maybe, even to touch them. Our wish was fulfilled – we saw plenty of yaks and took lots of pictures but, unfortunately, they were too wild to let us go very near and touch them, to my sheer disappointment. They are very cute and sweet, I saw some beautiful baby yaks very close, they made sweet noises. Richard, I am afraid that we would not be able to actually bring you a little yak and, also, there are no street cabinets here!! Maybe I can send you some yak pictures in compensation!! Hehe!

Despite the annoying headache and the sunburns on my shoulders and face (yes, I did it again!), I feel happy and relaxed. At last!