Day 23:

The night was not gone well as my daughter didn’t feel well and we all had disturbed sleep, she specifically had some kind of stomach upset which made the matter worse. Nam Tso involved almost 10 hours up and down journey from Lhasa and means hitting an altitude of 4500 meters. So we decided to drop it off and rather decided to take rest for the day. We still had to travel more than 500km crossing the Himalayas over friendship highway to Kathmandu, so we didn’t want to take any chance in Lhasa. But instead of not sitting in hotel for entire day, we thought of visiting the old Lhasa town, the Barkhor, the Jokhang Temple and finally had a sumptuous lunch in Lhasa Kitchen with Nepalese and Indian Cuisine, our break from Chinese Noodles after a long time. Barkhor Bazaar was a lively combination of shops, pilgrim circuits and ethnic melting pot, it runs around the Jokhang and other structures and always remain busy. Jokhang is considered as Tibet’s most sacred temple, built in 7th Century by King Songsten Gampo, when he moved his capital to Lhasa. He had a Nepalese wife and Jokhang was originally built by Nepalese craftsmen to house a Buddha image brought by the Nepalese queen. In year 2000, this was also included in UNESCO World Heritage site in addition to Potala Palace.

After a nice stroll in Lhasa old town we were back to hotel and took an early dinner for sleep and ready for last few days of exciting journey through Friendship highway to Nepal.

Mother and Kid:

You would still find religious sites all around Lhasa:

Makye Ame , famous Coffee House where Dalai Lama used to come and relax, gone are those days:

The Prayer Flags:

Old Lhasa is still so beautiful:

The shops are quite interesting in Old Lhasa:

The colorful windows:

Jokhang Temple, Lhasa:

Enlightening the soul, inside the temple:

Bustling Old Lhasa:

Every 50 meters you would find yourself scanned in X-Ray along with your bags, typical security system of Old Lhasa, note it in background:

Old Lhasa:

Another lovely Kid, played lot of hide and seek before I could click her:

 

You can find the wide roads and modern transport even in older part of city, it’s changing, changing very fast:

 

Both direction you would find Beijing:

 

Lhasa Kitchen, gave us a break after a month long Chinese Food, you would get good Indian and Nepali Dishes here:

 

Old Lhasa City Center:

 

Tibetan Family:

 

Potala Palace:

 

We would start the final leg of journey from Lhasa to Kathmandu through Friendship Highway in 2014..

 

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Next: Day 24/Part 1