Tibet Post #2: Norbulingka and Sunsets

Our second day in Lhasa was my least favorite. That's because I was struggling a bit from the altitude, I think, my adrenaline high at having survived two days on a train and one in Lhasa was wearing off, and my stomach hurt, and I just felt pretty shitty overall. (Hey, I never said it was a vacation!) Top that off with a morning spent walking around Norbulingka, which isn't the world's most exciting scenic area, although there is a lot of history in there, like the first radio in Tibet, and the first western toilets and chairs. Man, that Dalai Lama knows how to party!! And, um, arrange flowers.

Full set here.

After that we went to the Tibet Museum, which was pretty dang neat but, had I been more awake, might have been elevated to the status of fascinating. 

After the museum, we at lunch, where I ate yak eyeball.  (Yes, really). Then we walked around the Sera Monastery for a little while. That was fun and very nice, but again, I was dragging ass by that point (having eaten too much for lunch and fallen into a small food coma. Maybe yak eyeballs are used as sleep aids in Tibet.). I have a lot of pics from Sera, but I haven't uploaded them yet; you'll have to wait for later :-)

Now rewind one day to the first day we got to Lhasa. After we'd finished sightseeing for the day, I brought my tripod out to Potala Square (across the street from the palace) at the center of town. I was struck by the layout of the square because it is exactly the same as Tiananmen Square, except with the Potala Palace at the north end instead of the Forbidden City, crossing Beijing Lu instead of Chang'an Dong Dajie, with some other monument at the south end instead of the Monument to the People's heroes. Interesting. Anyway, Dan and I stayed there for quite awhile, and I took some amazing sunset pics:

You can see that the sun was setting behind a hill with a communications tower on it ... Dan and I made endless fun of this fact, as if the silhouette of a communications tower has some mystical beauty in it ... when really it's probably a crass symbol of modernity. But its proximity did enable me to call Tim and Laurel, our friends in town for a grueling bike ride from Lhasa to Kathmandu, and set up dinner. Hm, paradoxes.