CRI reporters' trip to Tibet: Day seven (2)

11:23, August 26, 2009  

CRI Reporter Julianne Page learns some of the finer points of wool spinning from an expert. (Photo: CRI Online)

Next we visited a typical Tibetan neighborhood and walked around admiring the prayer wheels, traditional architecture and unique style. It was here I received a call from Beyond Beijing's "Today show" to chat about our trip so far. As you can imagine, there was no shortage of things to talk about.

Next we headed an hour away, to Jiang zi County. Our destination was a small mill used to create barley flour.

Barley is one of the staple crops in Tibet and Jiang zi County contains the most abundant, and most famous, of these. Barley seeds from Jiang zi are transported from here to be planted and grown all over Tibet.

Three flour mills were grinding harvested barley into flour when we visited. I was informed that this barley would be sold locally. It was interesting to see the process and extremely dusty inside the mill.

After patting the excess flour off our clothes we were invited to try Tzamba, a staple food in this part of the world. Barley flour is mixed with butter tea or some other type of liquid, such as barley wine or beer, and then rolled into a ball. The taste was initially a little dry and, not surprisingly, doughy but after the second bite it didn't seem so bad.

Next stop was 'The Pala Manor', an old residence and I mean old, most of the musky rooms left me gasping for air and forced me out. Nearby we stopped by a current day residence, apart from the flies hovering over what I was told was dried milk, the visitors' room was very appealing and the decorative roof was eye catching.

The castle above the city of Gyangtse was our next stop. From what I was told this used to be the old government headquarters and the lower parts were previously used as a courthouse and taxation office. The view looking down on the city of Gyangste was wonderful.

We arrived at our new hotel for the evening but we're not getting too comfortable as tomorrow we leave for the capital city, Lhasa, via Yamdro yumtso Lake, one of the famous holy lakes in Tibet.

Source: CRI online
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