A Note on the Maps.

Because you will not be able to find any maps of sufficient detail I attached two sets of unique maps which Cornelius and I concocted especially for this trip. The maps of the first set are of relatively low resolution and file size. I will reference these maps throughout the text. The second set contains large, high-resolution scans of the ONC (Operational Navigation Charts) we used as the foundation. These are large files that may open very slowly unless you have a fast computer. They can be printed at 750 dpi with a good color printer.

Lhasa

Map 2, Lhasa, Ganden, and Drepung (Click to enlarge) On the enlarged map you find Ganden east of Lhasa and Drepung a few kilometers west of Lhasa.

According to the original travel plan which Chinawinkel had proposed, we were to stay three days in Lhasa. When they agreed to organize a private trip for us, I added two days in order to visit Drepung and Ganden, but more importantly to be better acclimatized before we would be driven 2000 km up and down innumerable passes between 3000 m and 6000 m (Lhasa is around 3800 m, the airport and the Tsangpo valley are about 3400 m high).

When we arrived the younger people, except for Peter who suffered from diarrhea and Katrina who was fighting a virus and was frightened by the dark sacred Tibetan places, were in good enough shape to rent bicycles and explore the neighborhood. Barbara stayed at the guesthouse because of Katrina— and I was so knocked out by the altitude that I could barely drag myself to the roof of the Jokhang, the main temple of Tibet.... Because of that I have few pictures to show.

The one-and-a-half-hour ride from the airport to town took us along the Kyushu River.

 Pandemonium on arrival at the Banak Shöl Guesthouse. Embarrassingly our luggage was carried to our rooms by young Tibetan girls — but climbing the stairs with a heavy pack left one breathless. The girl in the center is about to shoulder my two-man tent, which I had brought for Peter and Cornelius who wanted to elope at the end of our trip on a trek to the Lapchi. Despite my warnings and begging Marianne arrived with three heavy sacks, which she could not possibly carry herself. So she always obligated someone else to do that for her....  

Peter in the bare room he shared with Cornelius and Katrina, who is hiding in her sleeping bag. Barbara and I were given a "de Luxe" room in the new Chinese part of the guesthouse — with a bathtub and an erratic supply of hot water in the afternoon. The others shared the grimy public showers....

Later Marc, Cornelius, Monique, Jeroen, and Peter (who took this picture) went to have tea in one of Cornelius' old haunts, while I was asleep.

 On the third day, after a walk through the first floor of the Jokhang, I retreated to its roof. The Potala is seen in the background through the holy juniper smoke burning in front of its entrance.  

The Deer on both sides of the Wheel of the Dharma and the gilded drums representing protective umbrellas crown all major Tibetan meditation halls.

Drepung

Drepung, Tibet's largest Monastery, seen from the village. Drepung, Ganden, and Sera are the three most important Gelug monasteries — belonging to the Dalai Lamas Yellow-Hat Sect. They once housed over 2000 monks each, were heavily destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and are now being restored— with Chinese money, ostensibly to attract hard-currency tourists. One good tourism does for Tibet.  

Monks emerging from the main prayer hall of Drepung. Like all Tibetan monks they wear red-brown robes and the yellow hats only on special occasions.

Ganden

The monastery of Ganden lies in a spectacular location at 4700 m two hours east of Lhasa. We visited there — save for Katrina and Cornelius, whose intestines were in uproar (contracted in the good restaurants of Kathmandu)— on the overcrowded public pilgrims bus. Our first high-altitude experience.  

A mythical place shrouded in clouds, which broke just when we arrived. Since Cornelius' and Marc's visit in 1989 about a third of the buildings had been rebuilt by Tibetans without Chinese money — only the hardy or Buddhist tourists get there.... A khorlam — circumambulation route leads around the round hill in back. We decided that we would circle the hill.  

Before we embarked on that hike, we had "breakfast" at the local "restaurant": saltless congee, a mutton-noodle soup, and Tibetan buttertea. Peter looks sheepish, because wouldn't try either, to save his already upset intestines.... In the end only Barbara, Monique, and I tried the butter tea.  

 On the Karla one passes a number of "shrines" hung with prayer flags, rock, a niche with an imprint of the hand, foot, or even the penis of a saintly man. The further one gets into the lonely hinterland the more numerous become these miraculous rungjung — self-created places of veneration of a nomadic people.  

 Below us stretched the many rivulets in the valley of the Kyuchu River. As the clouds lifted a constantly varying play of light and shadows unfolded.  

 The road we had come on lead past numerous villages....

 ...before it wound 2000 meters up the mountain side to the monastery.

 Watching the sun fly over the landscape...

 ... to finally reveal the distant snow-covered mountains to the northwest. The snowline lay around 6300 m during the month we were in Tibet, but because of the great altitude of 4500 m we were on, the mountains don't look that high. The much higher peaks of the Himalayan Range cannot be seen from Lhasa.  

 Rolf sitting at a rungjung lhato— a natural spirit place at the end of the khorlam — admired by an expectant dog.... Next to me is a prayer wheel — the drum is filled with paper covered with prayers. The bulbous object is an oven in which juniper bushes are burned, their smoke is the perfume of the Buddhas....  

 The monks had been chanting in this prayer hall on the roof of one reconstructed building. The ruins of bombed out housing in the background are a reminder of the terrible days of the Cultural Revolution. Ganden had been one of the strongholds of the monkish resistance to the communist secularization of Tibet. Surviving documents show that the heavy military equipment was Chinese, but the demolition was often carried out by radicalized Tibetans.... The square hole in the foreground is a partly roofed-over courtyard on the first floor used for circumabulations. 

 Soon a crowd of the youngest gathered around the strangers wanting with much mirth and gesticulations to look through their cameras. Peter, Marc, Monique, and Barbara.

 The kitchen where butter rice and tea are prepared for the monks. Very little vegetables are eaten and nearly no fresh greens — which have to be trucked in over 3000 km from China. I finally learned that air-dried mutton and yak meat (a kind of jerkies) provide the vitamins. 

With rapid perfectly coordinated movements these two boys printed sutra texts from wood blocks stacked along the wall. The thermos contains hot water for tea. We soon learned that one had to drink several liters a day to keep one's system functioning at the great altitude — and that the water had always to boiled first. Only Marianne drank untreated "spring" water.

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