618 meter Thangka and Gautama Temple

Day 6 - Tibetan Medical Museum and Gautama Temple

exercising
outside the Tibetan  Medical Museum

How appropriate to have people exercising outside the Medical Museum.  Notice the lovely blue skies which were absent in Chengdu.  The highlight of the museum was a 618 meter long thangka (Tibetan sacred scroll) which documented Tibetan history.  It was completed in 1997 and 400  Tibetan artists and handcrafters were involved in the making of this.  It was quite impressive.
Again, no photos were allowed.  But, this image off the web...

618 meter thangka

The purpose of the museum is to collect, preserve, display and research the culture of Tibetan medicine, traditional culture and history.
We were the only group looking at the thangka and one of the few people in the museum.

Gautama Temple is famous for frescoes and relics.  It's architectural style is similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing.  It was quiet.  I wondered why some sites were insanely crowded and others like this one, were ghost town like.  

The mound shpaed stupa typically houses the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns.

 Back to Xining - for dinner and a walk.    The Chinese like to light up their buildings at night - they must use an enormous amount of electricity.

So far, I haven't been enthralled with the trip although I enjoyed Xining.  At this point, I am hoping that all this will be worth it -   the highlight being  Lhasa, Tibet.