Potala Palace is perched upon a Red Mountain in the centre of Lhasa Valley, at an altitude of 3,700m, built in 637 by Songtsen Gampo. It is regarded as the greatest monumental structure in Tibet. Once the world's tallest (from 1653 - 1889). After the fourteenth Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 the central government turned the Palace into a state museum of historic relics and opened it to the public. Before then Potala palace was beyond the reach of the ordinary Tibetans. They were only allowed to worship at the square at the foot of the hill.

The 1000-room Palace is actually ‘two palaces’: A red one at the top and a white one below it. The red palace is mainly for religious purposes; it has chapels, shrines and prayer halls. It also contains sacred scriptures, outstanding murals, and the gold covered stupa tombs of eight Dalai Lamas. The white palace was used for secular functions. Its facilities included bureaucratic offices, monk dormitories, a seminary, and the Dalai Lama's living quarters, apparently never photographed and flanked by chinese secret police (btw I managed to get a shot of the last Dalai Lamas living quarter). Which ever office, dormitory you enter you see three stairways in the form of steep ladders, access to the middle ladder is cordoned off - its only the Dalai Lama who is allowed to use the middle one, although I had the privilege to climb up the middle ladder on several occasions.