Personal04 Jan 2009 09:45 am

Shigatse

Not my most memorable place, other than for the fabulous Tashilhunpo monastery, Shigatse is about 250km southwest of Lhasa and Tibet’s second largest town.

Arriving there in time for lunch we quickly abandoned that thought (the restaurant was cold and the food simply awful) and wandered the streets to find a brilliantly bustling market with vendors selling anything imaginable. Sweets anyone? We also had a walk through the ‘old town’ which featured more traditional style houses with narrow streets.

DSC03227  DSC03231 DSC03228

The best thing about the place was the monastery which we visited in the morning of the next day. Simply magnificent it lies at the foot of another mountain and was packed with hundreds of pilgrims. The coulours were so vibrant, the golden roofs glistening in the morning sunshine and the smell of the burning incense together were just perfect. needless to say I took endless amounts of photographs of which I will only post a few … those of you interested in a 4 hour slideshow (with commentary) … watch this space!

DSC03251 DSC03276 DSC03288

 

Took numerous amounts of pictures of the different buildings, monks and pilgrims filing in and out of different places to worship. The people walking up the hill carrying yellow bags, which are filled with Yak butter, use the butter to refill the candle holders in the temples to ensure that the lights are constantly burning. The entrances and the temples themselves are meticulously hand painted with pictures of Buddha, stories of how the temples were built, the wheel of Dharma and pictures of the afterlife. The deep reddish/ ochre colours of the buildings, the gold of the roofs and the deep blues of the sky were breathtaking. This truly is one of the most photogenic places on earth.

 

DSC03313 DSC03308  DSC03300

Feed on comments to this Post

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.