It’s a shame that I rarely go to the Potala palace though I live in the vicinity of the palace,  being a local Tibetan as well as a Buddhist follower, I should go very often to the magnificent Potala to worship.  Last week I had the honor to accompany two of our upper inspection-team members to visit Potala palace, the world cultural heritage.  Usually Potala is a must for tourists from other places when they come to Tibet autonomous region.  Because it is restricted strictly on the number of the visitors, I thought Potala palace is only open to less than 1000 visitors a day in the morning. So it’s very hard to get a ticket in this hot traveling season,  but we had a book before, so we didn’t meet any problems.

   I took them to the gate and then at the entrance I asked for a young tour conductor,   you need to pay three hundred yuan and she told me that tour conductor is permitted to go into the Palace for one time in a day,  the Tibetan young tour guide wasn’t very professional,  and she is unlike other older guide having loud voice and eloquent,  she led us all the way,  the first stop was the white palace, (the Potala is mainly consist of two parts, while palace and red Palace, we can see from the different colors of the walls),  the white palace has seven floors, in the past,  grand living Buddha lived there,  red palace is more attractive, there are many stupa of Dalailama of successive generations.   And very soon we got to the exit,   nowdays many rooms or many parts of the Potala are not open to the public, so it took us probably one hour and a half to got to the exit,   and on that day there were really a lot of inner visitors and foreign visitors.

   Potala is the center of the Lasa city, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region,  and the local government doesn’t allow the buildings in the city especially in the neighourhood of Lhasa center to be taller than Potala, so people would have a feeling that Lhasa’s buildings are very short,  but I think this is a characteristic of Tibet.

   People know that Tibet is a land where most people believe in traditional Tibetan Buddhism,   actually in the moring local people like to walk clockwise around the Potala palace for worship and for exercising.

   If you have a chance, please come to Tibet, the mysterious land on the roof of the world,

 I took many pictures, but visitors are not allowed to take pictures in the inside rooms, so only a few outside photos are snaped.