Gyantse to Shigatse, Tibet – Tashilhunpo Monastery

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Travis

We drove about two hours from Gyantse to Shigatse, Shigatse is Tibet’s second largest city and the main attraction is Tashilhunpo Monastery.

thydzikgooglemap(http://sonyaandtravis.com/maps/gyantse-tibet-to-shigatse-tibet.xml)

Tashilhunpo Monastery

Tashilhunpo Monastery is very similar to previous Gelugpa (Yellow Hat sect) monasteries we had visited, the drawcard though was a large twenty-six metre high statue of Jampa (Maitreya), the Future Buddha. Housed in the Chapel of Jampa (Jamkhang Chenmo), the gilded statue is the largest in the world.

thydzikgooglemap(http://sonyaandtravis.com/maps/shigatse-tibet-tashilhunpo-monastery.xml,s)

Shigatse Dzong

Similar to the Gyantse Dzong, Shigatse Dzong sits on a hill overlooking the town. It strangely resembles the Potala Palace in Lhasa, only smaller, our guide shared a story in which the design of the Potala Palace was drawn on a banana leaf, and when it was transported to Shigatse for reproduction, it had shrank.

Lhasa to Gyantse – Yamdrok-tso and Gyantse monastery

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Travis

On the fourth day, now acclimatised to the high altitude, we left Lhasa and headed towards the Nepal border. The day’s sights would include Yamdrok-tso lake, two mountain passes, Kamba-la pass and Karo-la pass, and the day-end destination town of Gyantse.

thydzikgooglemap(http://sonyaandtravis.com/maps/lhasa-tibet-to-gyantse-tibet.xml)

Yamdrok-tso lake

Yamdrok-tso lake is interspersed between the mountains and we seemed to be following it for the majority of our journey from Lhasa to Gyantse. The beautiful scenery was a nice change from the three-days of monasteries and Buddha statues.

Mountain passes

A pass is a track or road over a mountain used to get to the other side, the tip or highest point of the track is known as the pass. We had already experiences a few ‘minor’ passes in Kyrgyzstan and the ‘major’ Tanggu La Pass at 5072 metres on the train to Lhasa. Passes are fun, they provide amazing views, and may even break your personal-best highest elevation. In Tibet the passes are marked by prayer flags, locals selling knick-knacks and sometimes an elevation marker or small chorten. The passes we went through were Kamba-la pass at 4700 metre, Karo-la pass at 4960 metres and Simu-la pass at 4280 metres. They were not snow covered, which was a surprise as this had been the case for the lower elevated passes in Kyrgyzstan.

Gyantse

Gyantse monastery – very similar to the many previous monasteries we had visited, for an unusually small fee we were permitted to take photos, below are photos the Buddha books (books with literature of all things relating to Buddhism, the usual Buddha statues and protector statues.

Gyantse Kumbum (100,000 Buddha images) – a large chorten (or stupa), which is usually a large circular shaped building that tapers up, the architecture has specific Buddhist meaning, as well as the structure in general. What made the Kumbum so unique was as its named suggested, the hundreds of Buddha images found in the many small rooms circulating the chorten. Each room was filled with beautiful Buddhist murals and a statue of a Buddha or a protector. After about the first two floors, having entered all the rooms so far and made an effort to study the murals, we started to skip a few as it was starting to take a little while and the themes were very similar. At the top we had a view of the courtyard where our guide was patiently sitting, now we understood why he elected to wait for us, as explaining all the murals and statues would have been tiresome.

Gyantse Dzong – the Gyantse skyline included the Gyantse Dzong, a fort-like structure sitting on the city’s overshadowing mountains, unfortunately, it didn’t seem open to tourists.

thydzikgooglemap(http://sonyaandtravis.com/maps/gyantse-tibet.xml,s)

Xining, Qinghai to Lhasa, Tibet railway, China

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Travis

From Xining we caught a train to Lhasa, Tibet province in China, we chose the hard-sleeper, and even though it was the most we had paid at 500 Yuan (plus 200 Yuan booking fee), it was the worst seats we had, with six bunks per room. Naturally, we were left with the middle beds that were so low you couldn’t even sit upright. Fortunately, this then meant we would spend most of our time outside the room which meant we spent a lot of time looking at the beautiful scenery. The train to Lhasa is the world’s highest elevated train, reaching 5072 metres above sea level over the Tanggu La Pass.

thydzikgooglemap(http://sonyaandtravis.com/maps/xining-china-to-lhasa-tibet-china.xml)

Tanggu La Pass

When of the requirements when entering Tibet is all foreigners must have a guide, because of this we booked our first multi-day tour with Tibet Highland Tours. We booked a nine day tour of Lhasa, then Everest Base Camp to Nepal border for 10,650 Yuan (the majority of this cost was the cost of the four-wheel-drive driving as around one thousand kilometres from Lhasa to the Nepal border.

On arrival at the Lhasa train station we were greeted by the Chinese SWAT and police who made sure that our guide was there to meet us (we learnt that the entry and exit were the main formalities, travelling around Lhasa could be unaccompanied). We met our Tibetan guide Demdah who gifted us with traditional white silk scarfs (Khata), and introduced us to our driver before heading to our hotel.

The below photos were the best we could take from our train’s dirty window.

Urumqi, China

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Travis

We caught a soft-sleeper train from Kashgar to Urumqi, a full day of travelling, as we had a room to ourselves the time went by fairly quickly.

thydzikgooglemap(http://sonyaandtravis.com/maps/kashgar-china-to-urumqi-china.xml)

Urumqi is a large gateway city connecting Central Asia to China, we didn’t spend too much time in the city, but did enjoy the People’s Park with leafy surrounds, pond and the pavilion in traditional Chinese architecture was a nice change from the Islamic architecture we were now used to.

The highlight was a day trip to Tian Chi (Heavenly Lake).

Sonya and Travis

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