Inside the Sera Temple, a few miles north of Lhasa.  The robes of temple monks are arranged on the floor.  When I first arrived in Tibet, the tour guide said pictures were not allowed inside the temples, and I assumed this was for respectable religious reasons.  As it turns out, pictures are indeed allowed - at a huge cost.  Even in remote temples, rooms have signs posted stating the price to take a picture there, with monks strategically positioned to monitor tourist activity.  So it became a game with me, to see if I could get away with taking pictures unnoticed, and I was never caught.  Considering the overpriced costs of touring Tibet, I felt no guilt.

Rock paintings just outside the temple.  Such paintings appear along mountainsides in Tibet, sometimes seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

On the mountainside behind the temple is an area where Tibetan sky burial rituals take place.  In a sky burial, the dead are chopped up and fed to vultures.  It may not seem “civilized”, but this is an extremely harsh environment; the ground is basically rock, wood to burn for cremation is scarce, and such a burial is seen as ecologically sound.

A woman lights candles outside the Jokhang, one of the holiest temples in Tibet.  Out of respect for its status, I did not take pictures inside; however, a young monk who saw a camera flash accused me of taking a picture and nearly had me removed from the temple  It was an unbelievable sight, the monk yelling and wagging his finger at me, while I argued back and others around me told him I had done nothing.  The woman whose camera caused the flash showed the monk her receipt to take pictures, but he paid it no mind; instead, he proceeded to falsly accuse another member of our tour group.  He was a very poor example of a monk; he even started another scene as I left the temple.  Arguing with a monk was not the way I wanted to remember one of the holiest shrines in all Buddhism.

The golden roof of the Jokhang.  The temple, only a mile from the Potala Palace, is over 1,300 years old; while it took some damage during the Cultural Revolution, many pieces of Tibetan artwork inside are originals.

A view from the roof of worshipers lying prostrate before the temple.  The temple is surrounded by a pilgrimage route called the Barkhor; worshipers proceed in a clockwise direction around the holy path that is basically a marketplace.  Serious worshipers lie prostrate, stand, take a single step, and then lie prostrate once again, all the way around the long path.

Many shops around the Barkhor tend to be repetitive - prayer wheels, handmade jewelry - but this shop was a bit different.  On sale were horse blankets and saddles.

Spices and dry goods available in the Barkhor market.

The entrance to the Barkhor area in front of the Jokhang Temple, which at this point is a very muddy plaza hopefully about to undergo construction.  A couple of days later when I visited the Barkhor, the area was swarming with police, the temple was closed, and I had to be accompanied by a tour guide - because it was the Dalai Lama’s birthday.  To be truthful, I had a poor time in Lhasa.  While the rest of China I have visited and lived in over the past few years is free and open - unlike the images portrayed in the Western press - Lhasa is every American’s nightmare of China come true, with its heavy police presence and restricted movements imposed upon tourists.