dalai lama Archivos - viajesalpasado.com - The travel magazine with History

Gyantse: the strength of the brave with no luck

From the valley of Nyang-chu, the once mighty fortress of Gyantse seems a maiden defiled, a half-finished decoration. Once up, with the plateau at our feet as far as the eye can see, one fully understands the strategic value of this crossroads between China and India where the Tibetans fought in 1904 the last battle before limping before the British invasion.

byRicardo Coarasa

14 March, 2011

Tibet: in the bowels of the Potala

Top of the buttresses that support the Potala to plunge into the heart of the former winter palace of the Dalai Lama is like crossing the drawbridge of one of those castles of Amadis of Gaul that lit the holy madness of Don Quixote our universal.

byRicardo Coarasa

14 February, 2011

Norbulingka: the Dalai Lama's "driving school"

The summer palace of the highest spiritual authority of Buddhism, the "Jewel Park", is the antithesis of the city-fortress of the Potala. In the walled garden outside the current Dalai Lama Lhasa, Tenzin Gyatso, learned to drive in two and a Dodge Austin as his predecessor did bring in pieces across the Himalayas to the astonishment of people who lived at anchor in the Middle Ages.

byRicardo Coarasa

7 February, 2011

Will: «celestial» burials and the Spanish child-lama

The monk said a cliff above 4.000 meters, east of Sera monastery, where there is evident a rustic stone house. Tibetans, account, carry their dead at dawn to solitary cliffs like this to butcher them with an ax. The vultures and crows do the rest. In the land of no snow cemeteries.

byRicardo Coarasa

24 January, 2011

The world's cheapest menu

Travel to Tibet and do not visit a Buddhist monastery is like being in Port Aventura and not the Dragon Khan ride or go to 'Lucio' for the first time and not asking about broken eggs. The advantage of a few days in Lhasa before entering the Himalayas, as well as gradually acclimate to the altitude, that makes no nonsense- is that in the vicinity of the capital of Tibet is located three of the most important: Drepung, Will there Ganden.

byRicardo Coarasa

17 January, 2011

The birthday party is not Tibet

The Chinese effort to celebrate in style on the establishment of the Lhasa Tibet Autonomous Region is, for the native population, something like the non-birthday of Alice in Wonderland. Pure paradox: a party where balloons only (Chinas banderolas, floats, an imposing stand in front of the Potala, slogans everywhere) and a cake with candles without blowing.

byRicardo Coarasa

10 January, 2011

The odyssey of the toilet in Lhasa

At a glance, first thing that strikes is that the Barkhor kora is, while spiritual journey, a succession of street stalls, something like "golden mile" of Lhasa. A few feet of the pilgrims who wear their rosaries, of the monks who kneel extending his arms on the bare ground, merchants trading with tourists the price of souvenirs.

byRicardo Coarasa

27 December, 2010

The «English Court» of the Forbidden City

The soul of a city lurks sometimes capriciously. The traveler may pass by without noticing it and, condemned as being a fugitive stays, wrong conclusions.

byRicardo Coarasa

20 December, 2010

The first encounter with Everest

No matter early in the morning when you're chasing a dream. Today I woke up in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital. Are the six o'clock. Within four hours I get on a plane to Lhasa, across the highest mountain range on earth, Himalaya.

byRicardo Coarasa

8 December, 2010

Lhasa: the ancient Forbidden City in Tibet

"I have for the most happy who ever lived the days when, miserable with my pack on shoulder, wandered over hill and dale in the wonderful land of snow ". Sometimes, one sentence is enough to cross half the world in search of a dream landscapes. The traveler, while flying from Kathmandu to Lhasa, Tibet's capital, continues to spin these words of Alexandra David-Neel, the first European woman who managed to enter the Forbidden City, disguised as a beggar, in the distant 1924.

byRicardo Coarasa

30 September, 2010

“A possible life”: The scar left by memory	9,25/10
On the road: the “American Dream” of the underworld	8,60/10
“Bangkok”: the adventures of a westerner among prostitutes, bars, massages and excesses	5,50/10