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Return to Lhasa
I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following is from my 2008 trip to India, Nepal, and Tibet and is about Tibet.
We arrived in Lhasa. We briefly stopped at the Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama’s traditional summer palace. It’s under major construction — it didn’t look pretty, with scaffolding and plastic sheeting. It’s closed to tours. I’m doubtful I’ll ever visit Tibet again, so it’s a pity I didn’t get to explore the Norbulingka.
We stopped at a travel agency and Gyantzing got my plane ticket, to my vast relief. The office was a large, white-tiled room with a few women behind a countertop that stretched out forever. Strangely, they did not take credit or debit cards — only cash — so I paid with almost all my yuan. I felt grateful toward Gyantzing for getting that problem out of the way so calmly and uncomplainingly. He said that since this isn’t tourist season, it was easy to get a ticket.
It seemed weird that I went to Tibet without a return ticket to Kathmandu. But that fits in with all the other weirdness on this trip. The Buddhist pilgrimage in India and Nepal last year went so smoothly and involved amazing meditation experiences; in contrast, this trip has been kind of a mess. The trips have thus been comparable to my mental states.