Lhasa and the Valley

Ten days at altitude, in the cold and the very hard light.

December 2011

A wide braided river running between pale sandbanks, dust haze over the hills

The Potala Palace on its hill above an empty square — the Dalai Lama’s winter palace, and still the spiritual centre of Tibet through fifty years of his exile

The Chinese monument raised on the square directly opposite, a competing spire staring back at anyone looking out from the palace, people walking past it into the low winter sun

Black and white: juniper smoke rising by a white stupa below the monastery buildings — Juniper heaped into the burners outside the temples until the smoke stands over the walls — an offering that purifies the ground and carries the prayers up with it.

Black and white: incense smoke from a white burner between tall prayer poles by a monastery wall — Juniper heaped into the burners outside the temples until the smoke stands over the walls — an offering that purifies the ground and carries the prayers up with it.

Monks debating in a gravel courtyard under bare trees, one mid-clap standing over the others

Black and white: a line of pilgrims walking a sunlit path between bare trees, long shadows

Looking down on the square from the temple roof, people prostrating on boards across the flagstones

South over the pass to Samye. The river runs out into sandflats wide enough to lose the far bank, and nothing moves on it.

A bare tree on the shore of a still blue river, dry mountains along the far side

The monastery village spread across the valley floor, brown mountains rising behind

Two gilded figures in yellow hats inside a dim chapel, draped with white offering scarves

A dark assembly hall with banners hanging from the beams, light coming in along a clerestory

Faded prayer flags strung between bare trees on a sandy riverbank

A flag on a pole over a whitewashed village house with a painted wooden door, power lines overhead

Cattle tied up in a whitewashed yard, one brown and shaggy, looking at the camera — Village work: the cattle in the yard, a parabolic mirror trained on a kettle to keep the water off freezing, polytunnels on the dry ground below the ridge.

A parabolic solar cooker propped against a wall with a kettle at its focus — Village work: the cattle in the yard, a parabolic mirror trained on a kettle to keep the water off freezing, polytunnels on the dry ground below the ridge.