Gyantse

On our way back to Lhasa, we spent the night in Gyantse. We stayed at the only hotel that had rooms, and it was pretty gross. That evening we went to bed early so we wouldn't have to look at the water stains anymore. We also tried out our unused oxygen canisters, but it was pretty unexciting, especially since we were 1,000 meters lower than Everest and we'd recovered from any altitude sickness we'd had.






The hotel was a low point, but Gyantse wasn't all a bust. There are a lot of monasteries and temples in Tibet, and after awhile you start to get temple fatigue--everything looks the same. But the Palcho Monastery is special.

The monastery has a famous kumbum, which is a three-dimensional mandala, with 75 chapels. Each chapel contains centuries-old murals of Buddhist deities. We got there right when the monastery opened, so we were able to explore the kumbum by ourselves, climbing tier after tier and peeking in different rooms (although we ran out of time and didn't get to see all 75). It's not quite as impressive as Qomolongma, but as far as humanmade things go, it was pretty swell.

The kumbum.



Chapel doors.



Murals inside a chapel.



Artwork above a chapel door.



Palcho Monastery.