The Pala Manor in Tibet

Pala Manor is ten minutes driving from Gyangtse. As the best-preserved manor in Tibet, Pala will show you the lifestyle of wealthy landed family who once lived here. The former owner was a Bhutanese chief moved to Tibet with his family where in due course he became a local official. At the time of the Tibet Democratic Reform in 1959 he left Tibet along with the Dalai Lama to live in exile. The Pala Manor we see today still has 57 houses on an estate of 5000 square metres. The maze of rooms is richly decorated with exquisitely carved beams and painted rafters.

 
The Pala Manor we see today still has fifty-seven houses on an estate with an area of approximately 5000 square metres (1.24 acres). The main building is a three-storey structure that includes a scripture hall, reception hall, and bedrooms. In addition to the lobby used for playing the Chinese game of Majiang there are many other reception halls. The maze of rooms is richly decorated with exquisitely carved beams and painted rafters.

One will be genuinely amazed by what can beThe house in Pala Manor seen on display here, for many of the original contents of the reception rooms and bedrooms remain on show. Among the items there are an ox horn that would be filled with Qingke (a highland barley wine), fine porcelain bowls for containing ghee, an ivory Majiang set as well as precious fur clothes, glass cups, tins of biscuits and whiskey imported from Britain. The sun-room walls are hung with tiger and deer skins and further evidence of the wealth of the former owner are such things as a gold saddle and two gramophones that were manufactured in Great Britain. The other recreation rooms include a modern gymnasium with facilities for table tennis, badminton and other physical training equipment including ice-skates.

Yumbu Lhakhang Palace may have been the oldest structure in Tibet

Yumbu Lhakhang Palace is located on the Tashi Tsere Hill, about 5 km to the southeast of Nedong County of Lhoka. Yumbu means female deer, because the Tashi Tsere Hill appears like a female deer, and Lhakang means holy palace. The Yumbu Lhakang is the first palace in Tibet and was built by Nyechi Tsanpu, the first Tibetan King in 2 century B.C. according to the legend. Enshrined inside the Palace are statues of the Three Periods of Buddhas, statues of successive kings such as Nyechi Tsanpu, Lha Thothori Nyantsen, Rebajian, Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Detsan. About 400m to the northeast of the Tashi Tsere Hill, there is a famous spring named the Gar Spring which flows in a ceaseless stream for the whole year.

During the reign of the 28th King Lha Thothori Nyantsen in the fifth century, a golden Stupa, a jewel (and/or a form to the manufacture of dough-Stupas) and a Sutra, that no one could read, felt from the sky on the roof of the building. A voice called from the sky said:”In five generations one who understand the meaning will come.”
Later, Yumbu Lhakhang Palace became the summer palace of the 33rd king Songtsen Gampo and Princess Wencheng in the Tang Dynasty. After Songtsen Gampo had transferred his seat to Lhasa, Yumbu Lhakhang Palace became a Chapel and under the reign of the 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, a monastery of the Yellow Sect.

The Yumbu Lhakhang palace may have been the oldest structure in Tibet before being mostly destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. In the 1960s, the Yumbu Lhakhang was rebuilt and beautifully redecorated. The Yumbu Lkakhang is revered by pilgrims as the location of the first appearance of Buddhism in Tibet.