In Search of Magic: The Potala Palace

5 flights, 10 cities, altitude differences from 300 to 5,300 meters in three days, cosmic landscapes, legendary monasteries and caves of the greatest yogis — we continue our journey through Tibet.

Potala (emphasis should be placed on the last syllable). A mysterious structure on top of a hill.

Whenever you are looking for information about Tibet, you are the first to find this palace.

So we got there already at the very end of our journey through Tibet. The sight of this building exudes power and something unearthly. But modern life has not spared this place either.

The potala was built by King Songtsen Gampo, the founder of Buddhism in Tibet.

In the place where he used to meditate, the first building first appeared in 637, and when the king decided to make Lhasa his capital, a palace was erected here. After the engagement with the Chinese Princess Wen Cheng, the palace was expanded to 999 rooms, walls and towers were erected and a bypass canal was dug. In the second half of the VIII century, lightning struck the palace and the wooden buildings burned down, then due to internecine wars, the palace collapsed. The palace in its modern form began to be built in 1645 on the initiative of the fifth Dalai Lama. In 1648, the White Palace (Potrang Karpo) was completed, and the Potala began to be used as the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas. The red part of the palace (Potrang Marpo) was completed between 1690 and 1694. The name of the palace comes, apparently, from the legendary Potala Mountain, where the Bodhisattva Chenresi (Avalokiteshvara) lives, whose incarnation on earth is the Dalai Lama.

The palace is located at an altitude of 3700 m on the Red Hill (Marpo Ri) in the middle of the Lhasa Valley. The height of the palace is 113.7 meters with thirteen floors.

The thickness of the walls is about two meters.

Potala is located almost in the very center of Lhasa, among the busy streets and avenues.

The road to the palace. One of the central streets of Lhasa.

To get to the territory of the palace, you have to go through metal detectors, however, as in all large monasteries and attractions.

People making bark.

Drums with mantras Om mani peme hung.

Here, local merchants persistently offer you to buy rosaries and other souvenirs from them.

Since we came to Tibet during the Saga-Dawa celebration, several thousand Tibetans performed kora around the palace. It is quite difficult for a European to do this in the scorching sun and at such a height.

To get inside, you need to buy two tickets. The total cost of the visit is about 1100 rubles (200 yuan). One ticket allows you to enter the inner territory of the palace, where you are given exactly 30 minutes to climb up, and the second ticket — directly to the palace itself.

Walking up in 30 minutes is not an easy task, even after two weeks of acclimatization.

Inside the palace there are many rooms, former government offices, meditation halls (gomp) and chambers of the Dalai Lamas in all their incarnations.

Entrance to the palace.

We expected to see a miracle, but we saw crowds of Chinese, large fees for indoor photography (from 300 to 700 rubles for our money) for each room (and there are dozens of them) and "emptiness".

Earlier, the majestic Potala lost its energy.

Inside it is "empty", it does not catch and does not surprise.

It has long since become an ordinary museum, where you are carried by a stream through all the rooms and carried away beyond its limits.

Prayer flags in the courtyard.

Benches for recreation.

A residential house inside the palace.

It was the most uninteresting excursion of all.

I was struck only by the view of Lhasa and Norbulinka, or the Garden of the Nagas, as the Lhassans call it.

View of the palace from the park.

Norbulinka is a Precious Park, the summer residence of the Dalai Lamas, founded in 1754 by the seventh Dalai Lama.

This is the largest artificial park in Tibet, it covers an area of 36 acres. In fact, it used to be the summer "dacha" of the Dalai Lamas. Now the park is a center of entertainment and recreation.

This is a wonderful and, most importantly, cool place surrounded by a pond with carp and turtles.

Everyone is walking around in a relaxed way, someone is meditating, someone is doing kora, someone is just having a snack.

On the island in the center of the lake, you can go on an excursion to another palace — the summer residence of the Dalai Lamas. However, you will have to pay a decent amount for photographing again.

There is also a huge playground with exercise equipment in the park. As we understood, it is sponsored by the Chinese sports lottery, and there are such sites in almost all cities of Tibet.

They are free, and anyone can spend time there. Simulators are very different, and it's not even always clear how to handle them. We had to observe the locals to figure out what these simulators are for — for stretching legs, for arm muscles, or just a treadmill in front of us.

White people are rare here. Locals came up and took pictures with us. In general, Tibetans are very sociable. They easily make contact and try to explain themselves in a mixture of all the languages they know — Tibetan, Chinese and sometimes English.

Photo: Ekaterina Ageeva / Text: Sergey Martynov