The Potala Palace was the highlight of Tibet, the highlight of Lhasa, and one of the great highlights of my travels. It will be difficult for me to describe it and our visit there. The information from our local Tibetan guide was extremely extensive, complicated, and confusing. For that reason, this post on my visit will probably be the same.

It was my understanding, from our Tibetan guide, that the white portion was built by a Tibetan king for his use as the traditional seat of Tibetan government. The white palace was built up starting in 1645 from foundations of an earlier structure that was built here in the 7th century. The red portion was built by the Dalai Lama with the intention of spiritual usage and was built in the late 1600’s. This was the winter palace of the Dalai Lama from either the 7th century or from 1649 to 1959. Either way, it’s been a museum ever since 1959.

Some of dimensions and particulars of the Potala Palace are that it’s 13 stories high. It sits on the Red Hill rising to about 980 feet above the valley floor. The entire building measures some 1300 feet by 1150 feet. It’s huge. The walls are massive, like ten feet thick, and wider at the bottom than at the top. It’s all built on and into Red Hill. The palace contains over 1,000 rooms. No photos were allowed inside the palace but we were allowed to take photos outside the palace and on the roofs of the palace.

The next photo is a door near where we entered the palace. Even a simple door just oozed history and mystique.

We did a lot of walking, climbed a lot of stairs, and also went up and down a lot of ladders or steep, ladder-like stairways. Most of the steps were uneven heights. Many steps were both very narrow and very high. All the rooms had very high thresholds at the doors. The majority of the palace was very dark. We needed to use our flashlights frequently to see where to step and walk. Watching where you step, however, leaves one’s head vulnerable to getting knocked into a beam or door on occasion (ouch!). Most of the hallways were very narrow, like seven feet wide. The walls in different parts of the temple could be from one to three stories high. There was a whole lot of incense and yak butter candles being burned throughout the temple. Some areas were extremely smoky and I could almost feel it as well as smell it. We also had a lot of people passing us most of the time. Some hallways were extremely crowded. Many people were tourists but many more were pilgrims along with a few caretakers and monks. People passing us went from infants in their mother’s arms to many very old people. Many people were chanting and humming. Some of the Chinese tour guides spoke very loudly. We heard quite a few phones ringing, both cell phones and palace phones. We started on the north side and worked our way to the top and then back down again to the bottom. At any given time, I had no idea where we were in the palace.

The palace’s more than a thousand rooms are all connected by a crazy wild maze of hallways. The rooms contain all sorts of stuff. There are tons (literally) of Buddhist scriptures, written in Sanskrit. Many rooms are stacked from the floor to the ceiling with scriptures and who know how deep they are stacked as it was too dark to tell, even with a flashlight. Many rooms house statues. The palace might have 200,000 statues. Room after room housed statues of Dalai lamas, Buddha’s, Panchen lamas, and others. The thousands of statues are made of gold, silver, bronze, wood, and who knows what else. Many statues were adorned with jewels of all types, sorts, and sizes. There were also many stupas, which are tombs of the Buddha or Dalai lamas. Stupas too were made of gold, silver, bronze, and wood and adorned with jewels. Some tombs had bodies in them while others just had relics in them. Some walls and ceilings were covered with paintings, such as the life story of Buddha. Many wall and ceiling paintings told of Tibetan history and religion. Many other walls and ceilings were covered with tapestries, murals, and painted scrolls. These too were very colorful and told stories. Some tombs were big such as the Dalai Lama V’s tomb which was three stories high. Some tapestries were also several rooms high. We also saw sculptures, canopies, curtains, carpets, porcelain, jade, gold and silver objects, and lots and lots of documents. There were no bare walls or ceilings or posts. Every surface except the floor was painted or covered with something. When we were near a window, much of what we could see was very bright and colorful. Most of the time, it was a very dark palace.

Buddhism is evidently a very complicated religion. Many rooms in the palace seemed to house statues of the same people as were in the last room. Our guide described each one as being different. Other rooms were for compassion Buddha’s, the hall of the grandest path, the Mandela centers (how to practice meditation), and the hall of Eleven-faced Avalokiteshvara, but it all blended together to me.

The pilgrims that we passed inside the palace all had prayer shawls, yak butter for candles, and money. In each room or chapel, the pilgrims would stop one or more times, say something or chant, dab their prayer shawl or their head against a post or statue, put some yak butter into the candle holder, and put money into one or two places. Then they would go to the next room and repeat the whole process. There was money all over the palace. Much of the money was in piles in front of major statues or stupas, but money was stuffed all over in cracks in the wall, into the chicken wire that was protecting the paintings, in wood carvings, statues, and everywhere. Most of the money was bills representing very small amounts of Tibetan money. I did, however, see a U.S. $100 dollar bill stuck in front of a statue. The Tibetan pilgrims that we passed appeared to be peasants from the mountains or outlying areas. They had many layers of clothing on, most of which was very dirty. All of the pilgrims appeared to be on a mission. They had very interesting faces, hair, sizes, and shapes. Many pilgrims seemed very surprised at the sight of us.

The next series of photos were all taken from different places on the rooftops.

The last series of photos start with a view from the palace roof looking back towards the street. You can see that there is a lot of palace grounds that are hidden from view from the street. The last two photos are exiting the palace through streets going down and towards the front of the palace.