When the mystical and exotic Lhasa became earth under the feet, there was slight disappointment.
It is not the medieval land of inscrutable and otherworldly lamas and sages practicing levitation and astral travel that came into the view. Wide roads, advertisement billboards, shopping malls, modern restaurants, bars and even massage parlors announced that the old fantasy had taken shape as a modern city.
Only in a small area around the Jokhang Temple could I see signs of Tibet of the past that probably existed in other parts of the city too.
The simple piety of thousands of Tibetans, each prostrating hundreds of times before the temple, chanting, turning prayer wheels and waving prayer flags were overwhelming. The courtyard of the ancient temple teemed with worshippers. The commerce around the temple was on a scale no less than around any big temple in India.
Nehru, in his attempt to discover India, had wondered whether the piety of millions of ordinary villagers that moved them to the Kumbh mela was the wellspring of the Indian civilization through ages. It could only be truer in Tibet where all life has always revolved around religion.
The Potala Palace, the traditional seat of the Dalai Lamas, would take one's breath away. The 1,300-year-old, 13-storey palace stood up at the center of the city, and gleamed like the frozen laughter of Buddha. It is built into a high hill, a complex agglomeration of imposing structures with cavernous passageways, rising above the city and contemplating the world around it and the mountains in the distance.
