Bowtie - Canada

We had to be up early again and on the road by 6:30am due to construction. We only got about half an hour our of Lhatse when the truck had a major break down. This time it was really bad. Probably due to driving for so long on the messed up tire. The entire bearings in the front driver wheel had broken apart. The wheel was actually wiggling back and forth. Our driver struggled for an hour and a half with primitive tools and some spare parts to try and fix it. Dozens of pairs of monk boots. He just kept taking more and more pieces off, we were afraid it would never be able go back together. He finally realized he was not going to be able to fix it. He tried his cell phone but there was no reception where we were. There was little traffic coming on the road because it was closed for construction. We were stranded in the middle of no where!

We were lucky an SUV finally came by.Our driver was way up on a hill trying to get a signal for his cell phone. He yelled at us to flag the truck down. It turned out to be a Chinese military police vehicle. The driver ran down the hill to speak to them. Next thing we knew we were told to pile into the military land cruiser. We grabbed our important bags and left the rest in the broken down truck. We wondered if we would ever see our driver or our stuff again! They were going to drop us off in Shigatse about 3 hours away. We had no idea if our driver was going to come and get us later and how and where he would find us, as we couldn't communicate anything with him or the police other than we would go to Shigatse. We felt pretty important and a bit nervous at the same time having the military police take us to our next destination. They were quite stern and official looking with their green military suits. The driver was quite young, the passenger a middle aged man with extra stripes on his jacket shoulders.

It was a much nicer and smoother ride in the a brand new truck, although all four of us were shoved in the back seat like sardines. At one time Jack's entire right leg went numb from being so squished. We were dropped off at the monastery in Shigatse. We thanked the men, the younger one gave us a smile.

We made our way over to a restaurant to get something to eat, we were all very hungry Hairy goats. I phoned the owner of the agency to let him know what had happened, he wasn't very concerned and didn't seem to understand. "Oh yeah, we will get the driver to get the tire fixed" he said. He seemed to think we were still complaining about the previous tire problem from the day before. I had to tell him again, the whole wheel bearings are gone, the driver is in the middle of no where, with no cell phone, he finally seemed to get the picture. He told us to go enjoy the monastery and phone again when we were done.

This is the Tashilhunpo Monastery. It is one of the great Gelugpa institutions founded in 1447. The first Dalai Lama was named here and is enshrined within the monastery. It is one of the few monasteries within Tibet that remained relatively undamaged during the cultural revolution.

The monastery has many impressive chapels. One of them houses the worlds largest gilded statue. It is a 26 meter image of Jampa, the Future Buddha. It took 900 artists 4 years to complete, which occurred in 1914. Each finger is over 1 meter long. Over 300kg of gold went into the coating. It is also studded with many precious stones. You can barely crank your head back far when you get in the building to see the Buddha's head.

We have seen so many impressive Buddhas already in Southeast Asia and China, but nothing was like this, it literally takes your breath away Jack and our driver on a rest break. The size of it and the way the Buddha looms over you and looks down at you is very eery. We walked through many other chapels. There was also a small kora with pilgrims walking around it.

We happened to come across a set of large closed doors to an assembly hall. There were about a dozen monks standing outside of it. They suddenly broke into a chant that got more intense and loud. The door opened up and they went inside. We didn't think we were allowed in, but one of the monks motioned for us to follow. We were in for a real treat.