Life at Namtso Lake

The shore of mystical Namtso Lake


Two women appear in the distance…

Carrying a green bundle they casually walk onto the frozen lake.

One carves a hole in the ice, the other unfolds the bundle...

The bundle is spreads on the frozen surface...

With brush and detergent they get ready to scrub…

Louis tests the ice...

Getting water from the hole in the ice they scrub and rinse…

A moment of rest...

Scrub… Scrub… Scrub…

A third lady joins for a rinse…

Suddenly and silently two more females approach...

Rubbing shoulders they walk past Kim and Louis...

...and float across the frozen lake…

Text and Photos Coyright©2008 M.Della Marina

4700m High On Nam-Tso Lake

Looking at the photo-record of a journey to the highest salt lake in the world I am compelled to say: “What luck… I am really lucky …” For surely it was my lucky button that introduced me into Louis and Kim’s plan for a day trip to the lake. They agreed to let me share their rented four-wheel drive and driver…

If we never meet again, this day at Namtso Lake will remain forever recorded into the archives of eternity.

If someone asked me what I thought of Namtso lake, I would have to say that it cannot be express in words, it has to be experienced.

If my life had been a preordained spiritual quest, my Nirvana would be achieved on the wintry shores of icy Namtso Lake quicker than as one of 10.000 monks in a mountain monastery.

The malignant spirits that during the Bon era of Tibetan religion, haunted every part of Tibet, must have shun the shores of Namtso Lake. Those shores did not echo memories of shamanistic song and dance to protect the Lake’s community from evil spells…

Even as events took place, it seemed as if time stood still… Its pristine solitude predated the dawn of gods and man…

Perhaps the few tents of a nomad’s encampment will give place to a future tourist village.

Perhaps where heaps of yak-dung, stand drying for use as fuel, hotels will rise…

Whispering Prayer flags will be silent pictures on a nostalgic wall…

Mani stones replaced by neon signs and billboards.

Text and Photos Coyright©2008 M.Della Marina

Around the Barkhor and Jokhan Temple

Perhaps the giddy atmosphere is what creates the magnetism of the Barkhor area and Jokhang Temple. A place where an unsuspecting visitor cannot tell whether the spectacle unfolding from dawn to dusk is religious fervor or the town’s fair…

The crowded square in front of the Jokhang Temple is a formidable attraction. At 1300 years age, Jokhang Temple is Tibet’s holiest religious structure.

It was built by King Songtsen Gumpo above a pool one of his foreign wives, the Chinese princess Wenchen believed was a witch’s heart.

Since then the temple has been home to Buddha Sakyamuni’s pure gold statue, said to have been sculpted in India during the time of Buddha and brought to Tibet by the newly wed princess Wenchen… Perhaps to validate Buddhism in the Land of Snow.

In the Barkhor square, Tibetans, Chinese, Westerners, monks, nomads, pilgrims, travelers, men, women, believer or non-believers, rub shoulders in ceaseless shifting

The walls and narrow lanes surrounding the Jokhang temple are lined with gift stalls. Hawkers and buyers engage in bubbly haggling for hand-held prayer wheels, prayer flags, juniper incense, Tibet T-shirts, Tibetan turquoise and coral jewelry, even yak butter…

I asked a European young man standing beside me, what occasion would give life to so much buzzing action. He replied that this was normal, everyday Barkhor activity.

Looking to the crowd moving in a clockwise procession, He asked me if I had walked the KORA, the pilgrim’s circuit around the Jokhang,

No, I had not walked the kora yet. “You should” he said to me. “Walk the kora 108 times, it will help you reach Nirvana…” “Have you done it?” I asked. “O, yes twice 108!” he answered rejoining the procession.

Notes From a Heretic's Journal

With the completion of my walk around the Potala Palace, former residence of Dalai Lamas, returned my skeptical speculations… I could be accused of heresy by pious Tibetans, Buddhists and Tibet supporters but to me “facts or myths” are as valid as one’s perception of them.


Tibet’s s customs and traditions are without doubt imperative to Tibetans, to Buddhists, to the world’s heritage, indeed what greater loss if they were not preserved.


Yet viewing the sumptuous Potala from the street below rushed my thoughts to the Christian Vatican. In a cynical twist I perceived the search for reincarnated Dalai Lamas with as much credulity as that of the Christian Virgin Birth.

Even if Tibetan Buddhism stepped from great philosophy of wisdom and compassion conceived under a tree, into the realm of organized politico-religion, its concepts are to believers as valid as my own disbeliefs are to me. As such I honor, respected them, and think in all fairness, like rivers to the sea should be free to take their own course…


We, common folk need the awe and inspiration provided by lofty demigods, noble princes and religious leaders that in return get the best of the earthly pie. We humbly live in poverty while they accumulate the wealth of centuries, reside in sumptuous palaces on the highest hills and lead luxurious and pompous lives…

Splendid riches and even looted treasures abound in elite palaces, but what excuses wealthy churches, temples and monasteries when their philosophical founders preached simplicity and detachment?


Perhaps Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the fourteenth and present Dalai Lama knows. Clad in a simple monk’s robe he stated that in a future self-governing Tibet, he would refrain from political leadership. Yet as a private citizen, without interest in Tibetan Government or religious hierarchical positions, the Tibetan people could turn to him as an honest, neutral arbiter of Tibetan affairs.

Om Mani Peme Hung

It’s almost guaranteed to feel as one with the cosmos in Lhasa, especially at dawn when the city streets are deserted and the lingering darkness hovers like a protective cloak. Walking along the silent Beijing Dong Lu I acknowledged an extraordinary freedom, as of having no connection with the rest of the world or to the rest of my life, before and after this moment...

Before sunrise I stood at the foot of Marpo Hill, site of the monumental Potala Palace. In dimness the enormous structure looked like a forbidding fortress and I made a regrettable decision: “Not Today…. Today, I will not ascend the steep steps of the thirteen stories-high, one- thousand- room Potala. I will climb tomorrow!”

After circumambulating the Palace I would take time out, adjust to the high altitude while exploring non-religious-political Lhasa. Perhaps in a low-brow pursuit of the shopping mall to purchase a new pair of socks, or catch “happy-hour” at the Dunya Pub and Restaurant…

That postponement however, placed the essential visit to the Potala Palace on hold, suspended in the unpredictable realm of a tomorrow that has yet to come!

I walked the length of Marpo Hill and turned right. In the breaking darkness a long row of bronze prayers-wheels along the wall became visible and soon I was not alone. Along the road people started to appear. First a man and then a woman, then gradually those first people grew into a crowd spinning prayer wheels and reciting mantras…

I too, seized by devotional fervor pushed the handles that spin the prayer wheels, whispering… “Om Mani Peme Hung…Om Mani Peme Hung… Om Jewel of the Lotus Om…Om Jewel of the Lotus Om…”

The bronze spinning cylinders engraved with mantras, contain papers or parchments inscribed with sacred texts and invocations. Each spin of the prayer-wheel is equivalent to reading the prayers enclosed within. The sounds emitted by wheels in motion signify the flight of prayers towards the four winds.

To dissolve like a prayer into the four winds is what must be like to experience the Buddha’s state of super consciousness; to exist in a state of non-existence is what I would aspire to, perhaps in another lifetime, another reincarnation…

Flight to Lhasa

I am so lucky… I kept reminding myself… I am so lucky… Here I am, boarding Air China Flight CA4401 to the Holy City of Lhasa, capital of Tibet, (Xizang. for the Chinese,) Western Treasure House... Roof of the World… Land of Snow…

How could it be? How did it happen? Is it really happening…? Surely some lucky star guides my path…

Was I worried about high altitude sickness? Not really. Only a hundred years before had I not traveled with Garry to La Paz, Bolivia? Though sleepless the entire first night and diminished appetite I had not suffered other ailments. Neither did Garry.

Lhasa’s elevation (I meditated), at 3630-m. towers by 53-m. above La Paz at 3577. 53-m could be a significant difference or nothing at all…


I looked out of the aircraft window as it approached the mysterious Tibetan Plateau. Four hours and thirty minutes flight over tawny landscapes of barren mountains, over some of the highest peaks in the world covered by ice and snow. Today I would land in yesterday’s forbidden kingdom with only one Tibetan phrase to my knowledge: Tashi De Le… How are you…

The high altitude did not make me sick, but by the time I boarded the seedy airport-bus and reached the city center I was in a mad mood… The mad mood perhaps caused by the effects of high altitude was unexpected and very unpleasant, yet beyond my control.

At the Lhasa bus station I viewed with anger the several dozen drivers of bicycle-rickshaws competing for a handful of Chinese and Tibetan travelers and one lone tourist…me! “Rickshaw Warriors…” I reflected callously…

The room I had booked at the Guest House was spacious and relatively clean but its odor did not appeal to me, neither did the bed or the TV. The bathroom was damp and the water from rusty plumbing, cold, (conditions I would normally take for granted considering the economical rate). The reception was staffed by very young girls, only one spoke English. And by one unfriendly man who might have been the manager or owner… Perhaps his mood was as mad as mine…

I asked for a city map, and directions to the train station, I wanted to leave Lhasa immediately… Walking out of the guest house (which really wasn’t that bad) I became aware that the insidious odor was not unique to the guest house room, but was the distinctive odor of Lhasa, The odor of yak, of cloth woven of yak wool… of yak butter. The yak butter Tibetans use generously for cooking, buttering the tea, and burning in the votive candles…

Around the corner from the Johkan temple and Barkor area I discovered a small hotel owned by a pleasant English-speaking Tibetan born and raised in Dharamsala. The room he offered was crammed with musty furniture, the dip in the mattress deep, the exposed plumbing pipes green and the water cold, but my mood was mellowing, I was regaining the euphoria of being in Tibet…
The rice, yogurt and yak-meat curry I ate for an early dinner was excellent, but couldn’t say so of the Bo Chak, the salty brew made with yak butter and tea. That would be an acquired taste!

On the way back to the hotel, in an outdoor equipment shop I bought a sleeping bag and went to bed

It was as dark as nigh the next morning when I woke at 5am. By 6am armed with my humble digital camera, I shook awake the night-watchman comfortably curled in the reception’s window sill, when he opened the massive wooden door, I slipped out with the eagerness of a caged animal… In the darkness before sunrise I walked toward the Potala Palace.