Retail Therapy on the Roof of the World

It's quite a shock the system to return to the low altitudes of Beijing after the lofty heights of Lhasa. To a city of steaming humidity after Tibet's clear dry air, and to streets filled with the bustle of modern life and without Buddhist faithful streaming around the temples on pilgrimages.

Fortunately, I did not return empty-handed. The shopping isn't bad on the Roof of the World.

I engaged in some desultory bargaining with the stallholders in the Barkhor market that surrounds the Jokhang temple in the heart of Lhasa.

However, I was disappointed to notice scant difference between the vast majority of goods on offer in Lhasa and those trinkets hawked by Tibetans on Beijing street corners. These similarities prompted me to seek further afield.

I did not have to go far to find the Dropenling Handicraft Development Center in the Muslim quarter of town, hidden down winding alleys behind the temple.  In a courtyard behind the mosque was a store that took my breath away. Like a child in a sweet shop I fingered soft new rugs of Tibetan wool in muted colours. I pressed my cheek against thick wollen throws in greys and creams.

Everything is made by Tibetan artisans as part of a non-profit initiative. I did some serious damage to my bank balance, and at the same time felt a little better about my self-indulgence in the knowledge that my cash was contributing a little back into this fragile economy and helping to preserve handicrafts in danger of being subsumed by the race to modernise. Now that may sound too good to be true.

But I choose to think that this is indeed the case. And once my hoard arrives -- shipped via the new railway linking Lhasa to the rest of China -- I shall think of Lhasa every time I step out of bed and onto my new blue chequerboard Wangden carpet woven in a remote Tibetan valley.

Comments

[D Duhon]

But there's more air down here at sea level. Your lungs probably got stronger though at the higher elevations.

Don
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