Zhangzhung

https://tinyurl.com/lr8hpo5 (c) 2017

Unconquerable snow mountains; mirror-clear lakes; circulating Buddhist mantras, and a soul facing lifestyle. From the past to the future, Tibet has been and will remain a land of mysteries. Today in Tibet, the busy streets of Barkhor and the magnificent palace of Potala seem like an echo from a distant shadow. Songtsen Gampo united dozens of tribes and built the Tibetan empire in the 7th century, while Buddhism came into Tibet, alone with the Tibetan writing system which is adopted from Sanskrit, and henceforth the Tibetan bibliographical history began. Yet for the centuries before Buddhism, Tibet’s civilization seemed lost, and the key to unlock the black hole of time lies in the vast land of Ngari.

Incense

http://pic.jyb.cn/gnjy/201612/t20161210_688609.html (c) 2017

Most Tibetans don’t eat fish, thus most rivers in Tibet are full of fish, except for one, as fishes were blocked from entering the river a hundreds of years ago to prevent the waterwheels from killing the fishes.

Horce Racing Festivals

https://tinyurl.com/l5bgp7a (c) 2017

Being closely bonded to nomad cultures like the Mongolians and Tanguts for centuries, Tibetans like riding and racing horses, especially herders from Qinghai and Sichuan. Every year there are many horse racing festivals at different times scattered around the Tibetan areas, and they each are from distinctive

Epic of King Gesar

https://tinyurl.com/mpjl4fl (c) 2017

Epic of King Gesar is an epic cycle from the 12th century about how a mythical character from heaven-King Gesar, comes to the realm of human, and eliminates demons and spreads Buddhism and Tibetan culture. The epic is well known in Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, and China,

Ache Lhamo

https://tinyurl.com/hmkhnrh (c) 2017

If there is anything that Tibetan love more than Buddhism, that has to be dancing. Throughout Tibet, hundreds of different dance forms can be found and a lot of them are old and preserved very well.

Gang Rinpoche

https://tinyurl.com/kcdnwcf (c) 2017

Gang Rinpoche means treasure in the snow in Tibetan, and the mountain is also known as Kailash or Kailas. Gang Rinpoche is 6,638 meters or 21,778 feet high and is the second tallest and the main peak of the Gangdise range in the Ngari area.

The Markam Salt Pans

https://tinyurl.com/l6ptd8p (c) 2017

By the Lancang river at the southeastern Tibet, there are one of the oldest and most primal salt pans in the world- the Markam salt pans. The salt pans of Markam use to be the one of the most important sources of table salt to provide the Tibetan area, and it is a remarkable site of tradings on the tea-horse road.

Namtso

https://tinyurl.com/hmkhnrh (c) 2017

Namtso is the second largest lake in Tibet and one of the three holy lakes in Tibetan Buddhism and the divine lake in Tibetan native religion, Bon. Namtso means the celestial lake in Tibetan, and rightfully so as it sits at the altitude of over 4700 meters or 15,500 feet. Namtso is home to many plateau animals that are regionally unique, and it also covers a huge amount of minerals, but what makes it so special is its cultural significance.

The Tea Horse Road

https://tinyurl.com/hmx5vy3 (c) 2017
Memorial statues of Chamadao tea merchants in Ya’an Sichuan

Civilizations depend on roads to connect, and a ancient road through Southwestern China, Tibet, Northeastern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bengal, and Myanmar has been fusing cultures for centuries. The Tibetan Plateau is too harsh for most vegetables to grow, and Tibetan people’s consumption of vitamin relies greatly on tea, and tea also help them to digest the heavy meat that they eat daily, so you may find in Tibet that as long as there is a table, there is a table of Tibetans drinking tea.

Jokhang

https://tinyurl.com/hqxrgk5 (c) 2017 the Jowo Rinpoche statue in the Jokhang

The Jokhang is a a Tibetan Buddhist temple, or the Tibetan Buddhist temple, as it is considered the paramount institution in Tibetan Buddhism. Locating at the center of the city of Lhasa, it is significant not only for its religious value yet also for its peerless significance in Tibetan politics, civil life, and architectural history. The monastery is believed to be built since the seventh century under the regime of Songtsen Gampo, who is believed to had filled a lake in order to build the monastery.

Norbulingka

http://www.lytibet.cn/line/sd/ (c) 2017

The Dalai Lama lives in the Potala during winter, and the summer palace is Norbulingka, a royal garden two kilometers west of the Potala in Lhasa. Norbulingka is a park-like complex serve as the Dalai Lama’s residence and office. Norbulingka in Tibetan mean the garden of treasures, and it is indeed a treasured garden with over one hundred plants including rare species from the northern and southern Himalayas, and over 30,000 cultural relics of ancient Tibetan history are preserved here.

The Potala Palace

    Back in middle school, one of my teacher said that if someone sells the Potala Palace (to whom?), that person would have enough money to feed everyone in China for half a year. Some years later when I stood at the foot of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, I did not bother taking pictures, because some places are at their best in pictures and some just can’t be contained by any two-dimensional surface, one being the Potala.

The Potala was a royal palace originally built under the order of Songtsen Gampo