Travel around the Lhasa city known as Linka in Tibetan / Tibet treking
As the spring slowly goes by, the summer is coming towards us and the weather in Tibet is getting much warmer and comfortable. The mountain and trees are turning into more green. Many of the local residents in Lhasa are beginning to travel around the Lhasa city known as Linka in Tibetan. Since the Covid is still spreading in mainland China and around the world, the Tibetans don’t have chance to travel outside Lhasa so the Linka which means summer picnic is becoming popular especially for the last two years during this pandemic.
Lots of families, relatives and friends gather together and go to picnic places which are not far from Lhasa city. There are several nice destinations of picnic places around Lhasa city which are Tadong village which is on the way to the airport at the distance of around 30km distance. Xie village which is to the east side of Lhasa city at the distance of around 15km and Penam village which is to the further east side of Lhasa city at the distance of around 37km. The most beautiful picnic place among them is the Penam village as the valley of the Penam village is dominated by beautiful Tibetan traditional houses, beautiful green barley fields and rapeseed, beautiful green pasture lands and a big nomad camps.
During your trip to Tibet, instead of visiting lots of monasteries and temples, you can add one day travel around the Lhasa city to have picnic with the local Tibetans. You can experience to talk with local people, get to know more about Tibetan culture and you can experience how to milk the Yak, how to make butter tea, how to make Yogurt etc. At the same time, you can have around 4-5 hours trekking in the valley and at the same time, if you like to ride horses or Yaks, you can also experience that.
If you are going to have a Tibet trekking in your trip program, a day travel around the Lhasa city is very important as you can go to a little high altitude than Lhasa city and you can do a half day hiking in the mountain so having this much activity can help you to acclaimatize to the high altitude and it will definitely help you to get used to the altitude and make sure that you will not have a problem of altitude during your Tibet trekking.
There are also many other places that you can travel around the Lhasa city. Example, you can take a day trip to Tsurphu monastery and on the way, there is also a very beautiful picnic place and you can enjoy having picnic with local Tibetans. There you can experience the packed local Tibetan traditional food. The tradition of Tibetans when they have picnic is that they prepare a lot of food for the picnic and make all the food ready from home. Usually, they bring lots of steamed Yak meat, steamed Potatoes, breads, Yogurd, milk, tea, butter, Tsampa etc. If you go to any kinds of picnic places without taking your own food, don’t worry that you will get lunch easily as those Tibetans will invite you to their places and offer you meals with them.
There is another good place to travel around the Lhasa city which is a day trip to Ganden monastery or Darkyepa monastery and on the way, you can also find several different kinds of picnic places and one of the picnic places underneath the Ganden monastery is kind of popular picnic place for local people in Lhasa as this picnic has a very nice stream river and in the river, the children can play by sailing boats in the river and they can sail from here to there.
