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.