the rest of A,Tour,of,the,Lhagyari,Palace

　　 It was sunset before my vehicle fi nally bumped and jolted to a stop before the great ruin of Lhagyari Palace.
　　From the Yumbulagang of the Yarlung Valley to the Potala Palace of Lhasa, and further on to the relics of the Lhagyari Palace that was now in front of me… all of them represent the imposing manner of the ancient Emperors. The Lhagyari Palace sits on a steep cliff of 30 meters high. The spot looks like a bare soil land, and the road up the mountain is so vertical that fi lls my heart with fear.
　　
　　Nowadays, most structures attached to the Palace have been damaged or reconstructed into civilian residence. The internal construction, on the contrary, is well preserved since the people who have lived there have all moved away under the Urgent Rescue program. The wall of the palace is stone and 15 meters high, but today only the east, south, and a part of the west side remain. The bricks are regular in size with yellow mud for mortar. Having been scraped and plastered carefully, they look plain and clean. Entering through the wall, I came to the big area of 3, 200 square meters covered with white and blue grails on the ground, which had been elaborately sorted. In the center of the square, the patterns of Eight Tibetan Auspicious Symbols, such as the lotus, are inserted. Today, the design is not distinct, but if you observe with your heart, you can still fi nd the symbols one by one. The new palace, Ganden Lhatse, the main part of the existing construction inside the wall, is not yet open to the public in order to preserve it. It is said that the whole complex used to be composed of a series of architectural units, i.e. the palace, warehouse, stable and tunnels. Originally it had fi ve storeys, now only three survive. Even so, we are still able to appreciate the luxury and delicacy of the palace as the king’s abode from its beautifully designed carving on the front gate.
　　It’s not easy to imagine that such a deserted place with broken walls and bricks had once embraced such a bright and prosperous past, let alone closely associated with the previously powerful Lhagyari Kingdom. According to The Qusum Chronicle on Cultural Relics, as the Tubo Kingdom collapsed, a royal family having Guge as its center came into being in Ngari. Ezun Tsenpo, head of the lineal descendants of the royal family of Tubo, who had originally lived in the region of Yarlung, returned from up Ngari and set up a small regime about the 12th century A.D. The regime was named the Kingdom of Yarlung J o-og in history. The sovereign built a monastery named Gyari and set up a palace as well to assert local dominion. Afterwards, descendants of this line of the Tubo royal family had Gyari as their name and endowed it with the character Lha (meaning God in Tibetan) at the beginning, so forming the family of Lhagyari. As time went on, the family became the governing group unifying religion with politics in the Yarlung Valley. The king was known as the Lhagyari Ruling Lama. The location of their palace was here where all these broken walls and piles of bricks had been.
　　Although Tibetan regimes changed one by one after the 12th century, such as the Sagya Kingdom, Phagdru Kingdom, Gelug Sect in power, the Kingdom of Lhagyari was preserved in comparative unity in politics and administration as the rulers were lineal descendants of the royal family of Tubo. However, in the beginning of the 18th century, the Lhagyari Ruling Lama had helped Dzungar Mongols invade Tibet and played a shameful role in the war between Dzungar Mongols and the Qing Dynasty (the troops of Qing were sent to Tibet to fight against Dzungar Mongols and drive them out). So the Tibet Gaxag government punished the sovereign severely after the war. From then on, the ruling power of Lhagyari slowly declined. Qusum had always been called Lhagyari Dzong during the Lhagyari Kingdom. In November 1965, as approved by the State Council, the county of Lhagyari was renamed Qusum and this is used until now.
　　
　　
　　 The Sealed Grottos in Lo Village
　　The Lhagyari stands a holy mountain named Lhari. Every year, the king would send his confidants to pay it homage. In some special years, the king would even do it in person and hold a ceremonial sacrifice on the mountain. It is said that the first syllable “Lha” of Lhagyari came out of the name of the holy mountain, so we can see how important it had been for the Kingdom.
　　On the way from Qusum to Mt. Lhari, there are grottos in the Village of Lo. My expedition began there.
　　Overlooking the village on the mountain pass, I found Lo is but a leaf latent in the thick bare soil land. If the passengers are careless, it is easy to miss it on the way. Nobody would believe that the village lies in such a hidden valley. A large stretch of the road in Lo forms the letter“Z”. It turns abruptly where the bare soil land begins. A large part of the road has been excavated, even in the forest. The cliffs on both sides are as high as five meters. Across the soil-formed cliff and around a few curves, the hidden historic village of Lo appeared before my eyes.
　　Lo is very small. A brook divides it in two. In a cold winter, the brook is frozen into a huge ice block on which children can go skating – an expensive sport costing so much in the inland. For thousands of years, the brook water from high cliffs has excavated the soil land on both sides. In those cliffs, there are a number of caves, large or small, such as the Grottos in the Village of Lo.
　　There are grottos in the northeast, north and south of the village. In those cliffs, there are more than a hundred caves of various sizes. My tour started from the northeast where there is a monastery - on top of which is a big cave two storey’s high. The ground layer has traces of soot. On the wall there are square or rectangular niches, which had been used to hold lights. The upper one is a Buddha hole. The original clay Buddha on its rectangle surface has disappeared long ago, only leaving the colorful patterns all over the ceiling, circled with check lace of red, blue and white. In the middle of the ceiling, white and blue lotuses are painted. Such patterns also appear in some other shrines at Guge in Ngari.
　　I looked over all the grottos in the north and northeast of the village, f inding them not particularly special. In the south, however, there is a bigger one called Drapu Lagu,(meaning “cow’s nose” in Tibetan). The Qusum Chronicle on Cultural Relics describes it thus: “The cave was excavated from the front of the conglomerate cliff by metal tools on three sides and the ceiling, and all of the caves are plastered and painted white for paintings or molded statues - but now, most of them have been damaged and fragmented. On two sides of the background mural are painted Flying Apsaras. The fairies wear a corolla, their silk belts flowing all over the fi gure, fl ying in the sky. The images are stained and incomplete, although, their gestures remain clear and lively.” The Chronicle also says that, “According to the analysis on the model, style and content of the Grottos in Village Lo, it is believed that they embody the artistic features of the Buddhist caves in the 11th to 14th century, and many of its characteristics resemble those of the Mogao Grottos in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, so they are considered to have been built during the period mentioned above.”
　　
　　 Siu Hotspring
　　It was getting dark. Seeing a fascia Siu Hotspring in front of me, I asked myself, “Why not go and have a bath? I may continue my Ngari trip tomorrow.” The distance from the Village of Siu to the spring is no more than three kilometers in a direct line, only an hour’s walk, but if you get there by modern transport, the zigzagging road is as long as 20 kilometers, almost an hour’s drive, and it winds here and there, easily causing altitude sickness.
　　In winter, the surroundings of the Siu Hotspring present an air of solemnity. It freezes wherever there is water, including the stream under it. As the warm water pours out of the exit, vapor freezes into transparent ice right away in no more than half a meter. The local villagers have built houses in Tibetan style under or to the left of the well, to form the hot spring resort.
　　Siu Hotspring is also called the Crow Spring. It is said that there was a respected monk, whose food container for was stolen away by a crow. The monk chased the crow for a long hard way until it came here. Seeing the spring steaming, he put his feet in and after a while, his foot ache disappeared. The effect of the spring is magic; therefore, it was named as such afterwards. There are two basins in the hot spring. The process is to soak your feet at fi rst in the lower basin, then swim all around in the upper one. The spring flows from the stone hole upon the inner wall, where it forms a thick layer of white deposit due to a high mineral content.
　　The second day I went to a cliff no more than three kilometers away from the Siu Hotspring, where there are two caves like the Lo Grottos. Under the cliff is another village. The most striking structure in it is a small temple in the centre of the village. At the temple gate, an old man introduced me to the village in fl uent Chinese. He said, “This is Gyerigom Village, the temple is Gyerigom Monastery. It is said that it was the fi rst monastery in Lhoka built by the King of Lhagyari, so in the past they would send people here to add oil to the fi re and burning incense for Buddha.”The first monastery built by the King of Lhagyari! I felt joy at these words. In this way, I realized that the caves I had found before must be the Grottos of Lhari. The answer is certain. It is really as the saying has it: “the butcher looked for his knife and it was in his mouth”.
　　The grottoes in the cliff face along the road to the hot spring are clearly visible. A few passengers were hanging around; wild pigeons have taken the grottos as their base camp. When I came close, they frightened me with a sudden fl uttering of wings. The inside of the two caves, through joined to each other they were not at the same level. From the traces of smoke on the ceiling, it can be concluded that the lower one might have been a monk’s residence. The upper one should have been shrines, because the fi gures of two masters can be identifi ed from the vague frescos on the wall.
　　The Grottos of Lhari are scattered much more widely than those of Lo. According to an old man, besides the caves in the village, there are some about fi ve kilometers away within an hour’s walk. The Holy Mountain of Lhari stands in the distance, right behind these grottos.
　　Back in my car and driving forward, I found many more sites: the old manor of the Lhagyari Kingdom, the Monastery of Dromger Quide in Lhuntse with its Tubo frescos, the Holy Mt. Zari (one of the biggest holy mountains in Tibet) and so on. All await my further exploration some day.