Thursday September 17, 2009
We did not start our touring until noon today because my sister teaches college classes online. She teaches 4 classes every Wednesday evening almost back to back over 4 hours back home. But with the time difference the class would start at 6:45AM Thursday morning here in Lhasa. So for the next 5 hours Mother and I had to sit quiet in the room as Anne taught her college classes.
We had moved to a new room last night and we took the oxygen canister from the original room to the new room. In the middle of one of the classes, our room door opened and the housekeeping lady rushed in and asked about the oxygen. It is comical because it is half English, half Tibetan and lots of hand movements to ask where we got the oxygen canister. I was trying to communicate with the housekeeping lady when we realized Anne was violently waving her arms trying to get our attention to tell us to shut up. Her students could hear the commotion in the room and wanted to know what was going on. She explained to her students that we were in Tibet. One student wanted to know if that was near Ireland. Nothing like public education is there?
Anne finished her last class at 11:30AM. By 11:32 we had shut down the computer and ran out the door to try this restaurant called Tashi I that Lonely Planet recommended. The guidebook gave high praise to this meal called a Bobi. So we tried a chicken Bobi, french fries, and cheesecake for lunch. It may have been the best food we had eaten in a long time. It is amazing to get so excited about eating something that you really don't know what it is but it was fantastic. We ordeded seconds. We ate everything in under 10 minutes because we had to rush back to the hotel to meet our guide at noon.
The day started out better than yesterday since Mother seems to be almost recovered from the altitude sickness. Anne actually did not have to visit the bathroom at all last night but she is sucking on the oxygen as soon as she gets up. Thank goodness we bought a bottle of Ibuprofin that had 1,000 pills. They are taking these to try to help with the headaches. Our guide promised that today would be an easy day and we would only be visiting just two monastaries. Is lying possible in the Tibetan language.
We drove outside of the city to the Norbunga Monastary. As we approached we could see it up on the hill. The van was slow going as it climbed up the hill to the monastary. Once we got out we could see a few stairs that were quite steep. As we started out Mother was concerned about the steps. The guide pointed up the hill and said the monastary is right there. So off we started. We got halfway up the stairs that disappeared around a corner and had to stop. A little further up we saw a prayer wheel and we stopped again. We got to the corner and lo and behold there were more steps heading up and disappearing around the corner. Guide promised that the monastary was just right around the corner. We should have asked which corner.
We kept climbing and stopping, climbing and stopping, climbing and stopping. We almost reached a point that Mother couldn't decide if it would hurt more to keep going up and trying to go back down all the steps we just came up. As we kept climbing up we could hear the monks praying and chanting. The guide said they were doing their morning prayers. When we finally reached what we thought was the entrance, the monks left the assembly hall since they had finished morning prayers. We got some great pictures of young and old monks.
As we started our tour of the monastary we had to climb yet some more steps. I thought my Mother could have killed the guide. I am glad that I purchased this ultra light weight backpack before the start of the trip. I carried 3 bottles of water with me and Mother and Anne have been drinking them. We finally got in the monastary and started walking between the different rooms. After we walked through a few rooms, we would come outside and have to walk up some more stairs to the next room. The guide was first and he would tell Mother that they are the last steps. He would walk up the stairs and stop and wait for us. Anne would come up next and would immediately see that there were more steps and then look over and see that the guide was laughing. Anne would wait for Mother to come up next who would see that there more stairs. As Mother fussed about the steps, the guide had to put his paper up to his mouth and bite down to keep from laughing in front of my mother. I brought up the rear and I just kept giving water to my Mother. This scene kept repeating itself enough times that Anne and I were starting to enjoy watching my Mother's reaction. We finished the tour finally and made it back to the van.
We next drove over to the other side of town to the mountains to Sera Monastary. Sera is one of the three most holiest monastaries in all of Tibet. It is famous for their debating monks. If the Dali Lama dies, the monks at Sera and two other monastaries meet to discuss how they will find the person who is his reincarnation and will be the next Dali Lama. As the van approached the base of the mountain we could see building built way up the mountain side
