Potala Palace, Tibet

I would give a very great deal to be able to see this place in person but as it is I must be very thankful for this postcard, which arrived almost entirely unscathed through the postal service.

The magnificent building you can see is the Potala Palace built by the fifth Dalai Lama.  The White Palace was completed in 1648 and the Red Palace in 1694 but, before these, there was already a palace known as Potala, and earlier still there are legends of a sacred cave used in meditation by Emperor Songsten Gampo. The finished building has 13 storeys and is 117 metres high.

It almost goes without saying that it inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Tibetan books

Sent from Ukraine but with an image from Tibet, called "Books on Shelves".  I was so fascinated by books that look so very different that I had to do some research.

Classical Tibetan books are printed on both sides of long strips of paper.  The sheets are placed one on top of each other, tied between wood or card covers, and wrapped in a cloth.    A strip of material which has the title of the book is hung from the cloth cover at the narrow end so that it can easily be identified on a shelf.

The books are printed from wood blocks.  The letters are marked on the wood by transfer and the wood around is carved away.  The printers brush ink on the letters, put a piece of paper over the them, smooth with a soft brush, remove the paper and leave to dry.  Labour intensive to say the least.  More information can be found here.

The Kashag Historical Archives of Tibet, containing many of these classical books, have been nominated to be included on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

This is a post for Postcard Friday, which is hosted by Beth Niquette at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Norbulingka

This card was sent from China but strangely, the information on the back is in Spanish.  It shows the summer residence of the Dalai Lama, before he left Tibet.  The card calls the palace Norpulingkha but after a fruitless search for that name, I found that everywhere else spells it Norbulinka. 

I'm not sure if the card was sent directly from the Syhanghai Expo, but it certainly has been stamped with a mark that has Shanghai World Expo and 22 Arab Countries on it.  I don't know the significance of that, sadly.

The Norbulinka residence is part of the Potala Palace historic ensemble, according to the UNESCO World heritage List, the other buildings being the Red Palace, the White Palace (together making up the Potala Palace) and the Jokhang Temple Monastery.

Tibet

Postmarked from Briefzentrum 24, dated 30 May 2008. With my limited knowledge of German, that means from the letter centre 24. Does that mean they are doing away with town names on postmarks in Germany? What a shame if so!

PAN 125 © Tushita/Alessandra Meniconzi/ Tibet Image Bank "Harvest".

The card is from the Tibet Image Bank, and produced by Tushita, an environmentally aware company in Germany.