other and I think the place and religion lost a lot of its respect there and then. We all started wondering why the Monastery didn’t give something back, we had noticed how many of the monks had mobile phones, Nike trainers the odd new mountain bike and so on, Anna had even seen one with an ipod - it seemed that as usual it’s the poorest of people who give and don’t seem to get a fare share back.

We all had mixed feelings as we were whisked off to the Potala Place, there was a million things racing round your mind. We were early for the Potala Palace which has a typically Chinese odd ticketing system! The palace was under renovation, Eric was still excitedly telling us about how much money the Chinese had given to this renovation and what a state it had been in, eeerrr well that’s down to the Chinese isn’t it?! Due to the renovation we had to enter on the left hand side of the

building, it is massive there is no way I can explain how huge it is, it is remarkably impressive, unlike the Chinese monument thingy there are building on the other side of the road to it, we guessed that had been built just to remind the Tibetans who ruled the roost! So this was the last home of the Dalai Lama before he had to go into exile in India, wow what an impressive home, after climbing another mountain of steps we needed to catch our breath before entering the main palaces, it is divided up into two sections the Red Palace and the White Palace. Again this place was incredibly impressive but it does seem like its lost its spirit, it feels like it should be bustling with life and you can almost imagine what it would have been like in its time but now its just more or less a museum. As I have a leaflet next to me I will impress you with some Potala Palace details it’s total height is 117 metres which is built on 13 storeys, the length of the Palace 400 metres and the breath is 350 metres and the whole