After the sumptuous lunch we carried our full bellies

over Barkhor Square and through hundreds of praying and prostrating Tibetans. Barkhor square is a famous shopping street where one shop after another displays any kind of spiritual instrument and accessories, jewelry, decorations and religious statues or Thangkas (roll-paintings) of nearly every deity of tibetan buddhism. A few decades ago Barkhor street was also a residential area of Lhasa but due to restructure programs by the chinese government the inhabitants had to leave their flats to make room to merchants mainly from “homeland China” (= central Han-China). The square is not only frequented by thousands of tourists from all over the world every day but mainly by pilgrims from all corners of Tibet who walk or prostrate clockwise past the shops, cafes, prayer wheels and prayer flags to circuit the next UNESCO world heritage site in Lhasa: the famous Jokhang temple, the most sacred place in all of Tibet.

The Jokhang temple is dedicated to Buddha Shakyamuni (the historical Buddha Gautama) and houses his most precious statue – the “Jowo Rinpoche”. We dived into the spiritual atmosphere of this holy monument and marvelled at masterpieces of Tibetan Thangka Art, statues of different saints and other representatives of the Tibetan pantheon and discovered elaborately decorated golden rooftops, halls, typical steep stairways and wooden carvings all over the place. In every corner we found precious pieces of art and the whole temple was sparkling with a mystcial divine atmosphere. The main hall also included the throne of the 14^th Dalai Lama which stays empty until today.