Lost Horizons
Continued...
Chapters 4 and 5
4 - Fellowship of the Ringha
The lobby of the Banyan Tree Ringha is a two-storey original Tibetan house. In fact, all the lodges situated here are original houses, bought over, taken apart piece by piece, and then reassembled at the desired location. Every plank of wood still contains a faintly-written number, showing the order in which they were placed. Once again, not a single nail or adhesive was used, although the foundation columns were reinforced with concrete. The sunlight is able to permeate the roof, topped with sealant to ensure that water doesn’t leak in.
These Tibetan houses were bought from the owners, who then build modern houses on their land once these houses are removed. Each owner’s name is cast in stone outside the lodge, and ours belonged to ‘Buchok’. In Tibet, the houses are never cleaned, and it is common for the ground floor to have been home to livestock. Now this 325 square metre property (including the courtyard), houses a dining table with four chairs, coffee table, sofa, two tatamis, a fireplace, minibar with oxygen bottle, a TV lounge, and a king-sized bed. This is upstairs…Meanwhile the ground floor contains two single beds and a bathroom.
The top and bottom floors have equal areas. Now guess the size of the bathroom.
Tibetans traditionally don’t eat fish, so all fish on the menu was air flown. The dead are not buried nor cremated, but chopped up and thrown into the river. The wealthier villagers bring the chopped bodies to the hilltops and feed them to the eagles. Thus fishing for food is rare, as most Tibetans hold the belief that eating fish would be tantamount to eating their own relatives.
5 - The Wayward Cloud
Having arrived under cover of darkness on the first night, I was unable to appreciate much scenery, but the second morning saw cloudy mists floating close to our lodge, just out of reach.
A day tour brought us to the songzanlingshi, a monastery built in 1649, during the reign of the fifth Dalai Lama. It was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and rebuilt in 1985, based on the memories of several old monks who could still recall the layout of the monastery. The highlight of this is the 18-metre-high, 3-storey Buddha statue. It’s home to 600 monks of the yellow-hat sect, one of four sects (yellow, red, black and white). Seems like a pretty cool setting for a 4-way factitious struggle…and also seems taken right from this tune:
“Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight…”
The yellows are the only ones who are not allowed to marry. The drums were made of virgin’s skins, but after the revolution, all that is left of the gory past is the pictures on the walls that depict flutes carved from femurs, and wine in skull goblets. 3 different personalities hold power; the Dalai Lama, the abbot chosen by the Dalai Lama, and the abbot chosen by the Beijing government. Since the fifth Dalai Lama till the fourteenth today, they have held not just religious, but also political power, hence the intervention from Beijing. (Balance of power?)
The napah lake is a seasonal lake, ie. It floods during the monsoon, and nomads will take their livestock there when in season. I tried my hand at archery there, at 13 arrows for 10 yuan. The bow was a simple one, much like the one I created out of chopsticks, though this one handled better.
A trip to the old town was rather uneventful, as it was really warm in the afternoon, and the old town did not have many attractions. It contained shops that catered to tourists, but they sold only a limited variety of goods; agate and other stones fashioned into bulky, garish bracelets and other jewelry (it was not subtle at all), knives and other ornamental swords (no passing customs), shawls and headdresses, and herbs of all kinds (including starfish, seahorses other dubious animal parts.
To be continued
Chapters 4 and 5
4 - Fellowship of the Ringha
The lobby of the Banyan Tree Ringha is a two-storey original Tibetan house. In fact, all the lodges situated here are original houses, bought over, taken apart piece by piece, and then reassembled at the desired location. Every plank of wood still contains a faintly-written number, showing the order in which they were placed. Once again, not a single nail or adhesive was used, although the foundation columns were reinforced with concrete. The sunlight is able to permeate the roof, topped with sealant to ensure that water doesn’t leak in.
These Tibetan houses were bought from the owners, who then build modern houses on their land once these houses are removed. Each owner’s name is cast in stone outside the lodge, and ours belonged to ‘Buchok’. In Tibet, the houses are never cleaned, and it is common for the ground floor to have been home to livestock. Now this 325 square metre property (including the courtyard), houses a dining table with four chairs, coffee table, sofa, two tatamis, a fireplace, minibar with oxygen bottle, a TV lounge, and a king-sized bed. This is upstairs…Meanwhile the ground floor contains two single beds and a bathroom.
The top and bottom floors have equal areas. Now guess the size of the bathroom.
Tibetans traditionally don’t eat fish, so all fish on the menu was air flown. The dead are not buried nor cremated, but chopped up and thrown into the river. The wealthier villagers bring the chopped bodies to the hilltops and feed them to the eagles. Thus fishing for food is rare, as most Tibetans hold the belief that eating fish would be tantamount to eating their own relatives.
5 - The Wayward Cloud
Having arrived under cover of darkness on the first night, I was unable to appreciate much scenery, but the second morning saw cloudy mists floating close to our lodge, just out of reach.
A day tour brought us to the songzanlingshi, a monastery built in 1649, during the reign of the fifth Dalai Lama. It was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and rebuilt in 1985, based on the memories of several old monks who could still recall the layout of the monastery. The highlight of this is the 18-metre-high, 3-storey Buddha statue. It’s home to 600 monks of the yellow-hat sect, one of four sects (yellow, red, black and white). Seems like a pretty cool setting for a 4-way factitious struggle…and also seems taken right from this tune:
“Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight…”
The yellows are the only ones who are not allowed to marry. The drums were made of virgin’s skins, but after the revolution, all that is left of the gory past is the pictures on the walls that depict flutes carved from femurs, and wine in skull goblets. 3 different personalities hold power; the Dalai Lama, the abbot chosen by the Dalai Lama, and the abbot chosen by the Beijing government. Since the fifth Dalai Lama till the fourteenth today, they have held not just religious, but also political power, hence the intervention from Beijing. (Balance of power?)
The napah lake is a seasonal lake, ie. It floods during the monsoon, and nomads will take their livestock there when in season. I tried my hand at archery there, at 13 arrows for 10 yuan. The bow was a simple one, much like the one I created out of chopsticks, though this one handled better.
A trip to the old town was rather uneventful, as it was really warm in the afternoon, and the old town did not have many attractions. It contained shops that catered to tourists, but they sold only a limited variety of goods; agate and other stones fashioned into bulky, garish bracelets and other jewelry (it was not subtle at all), knives and other ornamental swords (no passing customs), shawls and headdresses, and herbs of all kinds (including starfish, seahorses other dubious animal parts.
To be continued