A park between Potala Palace and Lhasa River that housed Dalai Lama's summer residence from March to October. The park is big but the residence is not palatial. Dalai stayed inside Potala Palace from November to February.
The clocks inside Dalai's summer residence stopped at 9:00. It was 9pm that Dalai left that summer residence for India in 1959 and never returned. The residence is now maintained as a museum, with everything kept as it was.
We met a cheerful curator monk who explained some remarkable insights to us. Haitao spent a long time going through the carpet designs. They were thick lambs wool carpet without any protective covering to cushion the tourists shoes. Xiao Lu, our Lhasa expat friend from Beijing, made it his mission to chase this up through the local govt ranks.
Unlike Potala Palace, the summer residence comes with modern amenities, porcelain toilets and bathtubs (no photos allowed inside). Bulky radios presented by Indian PM Nehru, and beautiful hanging lampshades.
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