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tour, had been twice around the bazaar and was now on her way back to the group bus. ‘You gotta go clockwise,’ she said, pointing to a queue of people walking from right to left in front of the temple. ‘Just follow them.’
    Barbara was being followed by a determined group of Tibetan Khampa ladies haggling profusely. It was their livelihood and they knew how to haggle to perfection. Bracelets, necklaces, prayer wheels, rings, brooches and useless trinkets were being pulled out of bags and thrust under Barbara’s nose. She really had no chance.
    â€˜Only one thousand. I like you. Six hundred. You how much? Holy silver. Holy, holy! Five hundred. You how much? Very cheap. One hundred. You how much?! You special price. Seventy-five.’
    The sound of the prayer flags flapping above in the wind was momentarily drowned by a crescendo of the haggling chorus as Barbara climbed onto the tour bus. She could not be permitted to be out of reach or they would lose the close on their sales.
    The Khampas rushed around to the side of the bus and knocked fervently on the window by Barbara’s seat. It was a pleasure to watch professional sales people at work. With the engine revving and the driver waving the girls to move away Barbara finally gave in at, ‘OK. For you fifty.’
    The driver shook his head. All the Tibetans knew it was only worth five, but Barbara would never know and would be happy to show off her bargain from the bazaar over dinner parties back home.
    The Khampa girls returned from the scene of their sale giggling at the fun of it all. Another tourist ripped off and happy. Some more money for the family.
    Khampa women have a joie de vivre as strong as the pride of their fierce husbands. Beautiful rounded faces with sparkling eyes above rosy cheeks smile out at every foreigner. Strings of turquoise beads are woven into the hair and occasionally crowned by a centre piece of coral or amber. A scowl at a Chinaman, a smile to a foreigner: the Khampa girls love to flirt. Gold-capped teeth flash from their inviting smiles but they know that they are safe – no one would wish to pick trouble with their Khampa husbands.
    I followed the direction in which Barbara had pointed and found myself on the edge of the square at the opening to the Jokhang temple. Deep behind the whitewashed walls of the opening passage, red painted pillars, the width of stout men, support a balcony draped in yak-hair cloth. Two gilded deer and a Dharma wheel shine down from over the balcony on all who pass beneath. But your attention is not held by any of the interesting structural technicalities or adornments of the building, instead it is focused on the people who crowd the forecourt.
    The granite paving stones are worn to a polish that no hotel Housekeeper could ever produce. Apart from a lapse during the Cultural Revolution, every day for hundreds of years has seen many thousands of prostrations over these slabs. With hands first clasped together in front of the head, the chest and the waist, each prostrater then lies flat down on the ground with arms outstretched in the direction of the temple.
    Merit is what Buddhism is all about. At least that is what I had gathered so far from my meagre research into the subject. I had found most books on Buddhism terribly difficult to digest – all those incomprehensible names and anatomically impossible beings. I could guess that the Eleven-Headed One-Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara would not be a Bodhisattva to take on at table tennis, but I had yet to consider any of the more complex ideologies of Buddhism.
    Without going into tiresome detail and very long names, the simple formula to follow is that the more merit you have gained during this lifetime, the better your chance of being reincarnated as something higher than an earwig in the next. If you are really pious and score high numbers of merit points, you could come back as a human being again and if you earn just those