Read Online The Hotel on the Roof of the World by Alec le Sueur - Free Book Online Page B

few more points you could come back as a rich nobleman or a high lama, instead of having to be a down-trodden peasant again. It’s a bit like collecting Air Miles.
    Hitting the jackpot, in terms of merit, would be to score so many points that you could leave the endless cycle of rebirths and achieve nirvana. Once you have reached this Buddhist’s bingo there are no more worries about who or what you are going to come back to.
    With this clear incentive to keep prostrating, some manage to keep going for over a thousand per day. Others stick to the holy number of 108 prostrations which is quite difficult enough. To ease the pain of sliding outstretched across the granite, special gloves fashioned in the shape of small clogs are often worn. Aprons can be used to protect clothing from wearing out and women prostrating will often tie their long dresses close around their ankles if they are going in for a lengthy session.
    Around the temple entrance is also where the first-time visitor to Tibet has his initial encounter with an unfamiliar odour: yak butter. Or the more fragrant variety: rancid yak butter. It is brought into the temple by devout pilgrims who carry blocks of the yellow grease in yak-bladder bags. They scoop the butter out by the spoonful into each of the stone and silver vessels of yak butter which burn in the holy chambers of the temple. Yak butter is not an easy odour to forget. It clings to every person in the Barkhor, to every item sold on the stalls, to every piece of clothing. Even when you think that you have left Tibet far behind, the smell of yak butter will still be lingering in your suitcases, waiting to hit you when you open them to pack for next year’s holiday.
    Fortunately, two holy incense burners are within a few yards of the temple entrance, and a step towards them brings the very pleasing fragrance of a blend of burning juniper and a finely scented artemisia. Piles of dried herbs and small bundles of wood collected from high in the hills around Lhasa are offered for sale to those who did not bring their own supplies for the burners.
    Starting from the entrance to the Jokhang temple the market street continues clockwise in a half-mile perimeter circuit right around the temple and back to the entrance again. By no small coincidence the market street is also a holy walk. Every temple, monastery, holy mountain, holy lake and holy entity is surrounded by a holy walk known as a kora , and by walking this kora in a clockwise direction you gain merit. All these merit points keep adding to your running total of merit to give you a better chance for a good reincarnation next time around. The beauty of the Barkhor bazaar is that you can gain merit and do your shopping at the same time.
    A ramshackle collection of metal stalls lines each side of the street selling a mixture of imports, antiques, fakes and forgeries. Trinkets from Kathmandu and nylon clothes from China share stands with Tibetan rugs and traditional jewellery. Bulky silver rings studded with beads of red coral or turquoise, heavy-set earrings of gold, old Indian coins made into brooches and any amount of religious paraphernalia are all on offer for sale.
    The word ‘antique’ is used for anything which dates from pre-1959, when the Dalai Lama went into exile. Customs laws are strict in China and they declare that anything that is ‘antique’ or a ‘cultural relic’ cannot be removed from the country.
    â€˜Holy Turquoise!’ called out a Khampa girl, thrusting a piece of blue plastic in my face and then running off down the street giggling to her friends. I followed, caught up in the clockwise stream of bodies that flows continually around the Barkhor. Only the most ignorant tourist and a few belligerent Chinese attempt to walk against the flow.
    Just past the Jokhang entrance on the main Barkhor street I was attacked by a small child. A boy of no more than five years of age grabbed my right leg and clung