Lhasa, Tibet

Jokhang Square, the first destination or drop-off for most tourists

Lhasa sometimes spelled Lasa, is the administrative capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China. Lhasa is located at the foot of Mount Gephel.



Lhasa is rightly one of the most featured and dreamt-about cities in the world. This is not only because of its remoteness, its high altitude at 3,650 meters (11,975 feet) means limited accessibility, but also because of its impressive heritage of over a thousand years of cultural and spiritual history that has helped to create the romantic and mysterious Tibetan religion.

Sho Dun Festival

Traditionally, the city is the seat of the Dalai Lama and the capital of Tibet, and is one of the highest capitals in the world. It is the location of the Potala and Norbulingka palaces (both are included as World Heritage Sites), and in Tibetan Buddhism is regarded as the holiest centre in Tibet. The city is home to 257,400 people as of the 2004 census estimate.

Potala

Lhasa literally means "place of the gods", although ancient Tibetan documents and inscriptions demonstrate that the place was called Rasa, which means "goat's place", until the early 7th century.

Norbulinka

The city is part of a township-level prefecture, the Lhasa Prefecture consisting of 7 small counties: Lhünzhub County, Damxung County, Nyêmo County, Qüxü County, Doilungdêqên County, Dagzê County and Maizhokunggar County.

Differing from the inland cities and other places in Tibet, Lhasa is unique with an allure all of its own. In the Tibetan language, Lhasa means the Holy Land or the Buddha Land. It is the center of Tibet's politics, economy and culture. The city has also been appointed as one of the 24 historical and cultural cities of China. The splendor and grandeur of the Potala Palace in Lhasa remains a world-famous symbol of the enigmatic power of politics and religion in this region.


Lasha and the prefecture covers an area of close to 30,000 km2 (12,000 sq mi). It has a central area of 544 km2 (210 sq mi) and a total population of 500,000; 250,000 of its people live in the urban area. Lhasa is home to the Tibetan, Han, and Hui peoples, as well as several other ethnic groups, but overall the Tibetan ethnic group makes up a majority of the total population.

Lhasa Valley in Tibet

Located at the bottom of a small basin surrounded by mountains, Lhasa has an elevation of 3,650 metres (12,000 ft) and lies in the centre of the Tibetan Plateau with the surrounding mountains rising to 5,500 metres (18,000 ft). The Kyi River (or Kyi Chu), a tributary of the Yarlung Zangbo River), runs through the city. The city stands by the Lhasa River known to local Tibetans as the "merry blue waves,", which flows through the snow-covered peaks and gullies of the Nyainqêntanglha mountains, extending 315 km (196 mi). The river empties into the Yarlung Zangbo River at Qüxü, forming an area of great scenic beauty.


With its flat land and mild weather, Lhasa is free of both freezing winters and unbearably hot summers, having an annual average daily temperature of 8 °C (43 °F). It enjoys 3,000 hours of sunlight annually and is sometimes called the "sunlit city" by Tibetans.

Lhasa has an annual precipitation of 500 millimetres (20 in) with rain falling mainly in July, August and September. The rainy season is widely regarded the "best" of the year as rains come mostly at night and Lhasa is sunny during the daytime.

*Temperature - Daily average (January) -1.2oC, 29.8oF; (July) 16.4oC, 61.5oF
*Precipitation - Daily average (January) 0.5 mm, 0.02 inches; (July) 129.7 mm, 5.11 inches.

Depending on how the status of Tibet before 1950 is interpreted, Lhasa could be regarded as the highest national capital at that time, surpassing La Paz, Bolivia, which currently holds that distinction.

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Leptis Magna

Leptis Magna also known as Lectis Magna (or Lepcis Magna as it is sometimes spelled), also called Lpqy or Neapolis, was a prominent city of the Roman Empire. Its ruins are located in Al Khums, Libya, 130 km east of Tripoli, on the coast where the Wadi Lebda meets the sea. The site is one of the most spectacular and unspoiled Roman ruins in the Mediterranean.


Lepcis Magna or Leptis Magna is an ancient city along the Mediterranean Sea, located near the modern-day city of Al Khums in Libya. The city began as a trading port for the ancient people of Phoenicia around 1000 BC and then became part of the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis. Lepcis was the most easterly of the three cities that gave the North African region of Tripolitania its name.


The city appears to have been founded by Phoenician colonists sometime around 1100 BC, although it did not achieve prominence until Carthage became a major power in the Mediterranean Sea in the 4th century BC. It nominally remained part of Carthage's dominions until the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC and then became part of the Roman Republic, although from about 200 BC onward, it was for all intents and purposes an independent city.


Leptis Magna remained as such until the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when the city and the surrounding area were formally incorporated into the empire as part of the province of Africa. It soon became one of the leading cities of Roman Africa and a major trading post. It was located on a natural harbor protected by islands along the North African coast, began as a Phoenician trading post. In the 6th century BC Carthage became the dominant Phoenician colony and gradually took control of other Phoenician areas in North Africa, including Lepcis Magna. In 202 BC the Romans defeated Carthage in the Second Punic War. Emperor Trajan made Lepcis a colonia, a Roman colony with full Roman citizenship rights for the city’s population, in AD 109. The first Roman senator from Lepcis Magna began to serve in the early 2nd century.


Late in the 1st century BC, a quarry was opened at Ras el-Hammam south of Lepcis Magna that yielded an exceptionally fine, hard limestone used to build most of the town’s later structures. In AD 120 the people of Lepcis Magna built an aqueduct to carry water. In later years they also completed luxurious baths on the model of the imperial baths in Rome, a large circus or racetrack, and other public buildings.

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Lapland

The Province of Lapland is one of the Provinces of Finland. The municipalities in the province cooperate in a Regional Council, which also makes it the Region of Lapland. It borders the Province of Oulu and the Region of North Ostrobothnia in the south. It also borders to the Gulf of Bothnia, Norrbotten County in Sweden, Finnmark County and Troms County in Norway and to Murmansk Oblast in Russia. In some parts of the world, particularly Britain and Finland itself, it is considered the traditional home of Santa Claus (Joulupukki).

You can choose a trip to Lapland with many different and intriguing sides. Accommodation available ranges from superior hotels to lean-to shelters in the heart of Lapland’s nature.


Finnish Lapland is one of the remotest places in the world or at the centre of all activity – it depends which way you look at it. It is, however, important to know that Lapland is easy to reach from any part of the globe.

Choose how you want to travel to Lapland. You can get here by plane, train, bus, and of course by car. When at the holiday destination you can easily travel from one place to another using the local SkiBus, hire car or even a taxi.


The Lapland road networks are in excellent condition and timetables are easily made to suit your own plans. You should also remember that Laplanders will always gladly point you in the right direction. Don’t be shy, just ask!

Or here are websites for you about how to get to Lapland:
- nova arctic dot com
- Lapland Official website

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Lalibela

Rock-Hewn Churches, Lalibela

Lalibela is a town in northern Ethiopia. Lalibela is one of Ethiopia's holiest cities, second only to Aksum, and is a center of pilgrimage for much of the country. Unlike Aksum, the population of Lalibela is almost completely Ethiopian Orthodox Christian. Lalibela was intended to be a New Jerusalem in response to the capture of Jerusalem by Muslims, and many of its historic buildings take their name and layout from buildings in Jerusalem.

Located in the Semien Wollo Zone of the Amhara ethnic division, or kilil at 2,500 meters above sea level, Lalibela has a latitude and longitude of 12°02′N 39°02′E. Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, the town has an estimated total population of 14,668 of whom 7,049 were males and 7,619 were females. The 1994 national census recorded its population to be 8,484 of whom 3,709 were males and 4,775 were females.


Lalibela is often referred to as Africa's Petra or the new Jerusalem because of its numerous, hardly credible churches hewn into solid rock some 800 years ago. Craftsmen initially dug vertical trenches into the red volcanic rock leaving a solid rock in the middle which was then chiseled out from the inside to create a freestanding church inside a well of solid rock. At left is shown Bet Giorgios, shaped like a Greek cross. 13 of these churches exist in the town and various others lie in the surrounding hills.

The interior of each church are each quite different, some with elaborate wall murals, others quite simple, all with remarkable wall paintings done in Byzantine style, all with ancient illuminated manuscripts and priests holding their ceremonial staffs suitably adorned with a cross. Carved into the outer walls of some of the churches live ancient monks, like the man on the right, who spend their lives reading and chanting the scriptures.

During the reign of Saint Gebre Mesqel Lalibela (a member of the Zagwe Dynasty, who ruled Ethiopia in the late 12th century and early 13th century) the current town of Lalibela was known as Roha. The saintly king was given this name due to a swarm of bees said to have surrounded him at his birth, which his mother took as a sign of his future reign as Emperor of Ethiopia. The names of several places in the modern town and the general layout of the monolithic churches themselves are said to mimic names and patterns observed by Lalibela during the time he spent in Jerusalem and the Holy Land as a youth.

Lalibela is said to have seen Jerusalem and then attempted to build a new Jerusalem as his capital in response to the capture of old Jerusalem by Muslims in 1187. As such, many features have Biblical names - even the town's river is known as the River Jordan. It remained the capital of Ethiopia from the late 12th century and into the 13th century.

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The Karakoram Highway is the highest paved international road in the world. It connects China and Pakistan across the Karakoram mountain range, through the Khunjerab Pass, at an altitude of 4,693 m/15,397 ft. as confirmed by both SRTM and multiple GPS readings. It connects China's Xinjiang region with Pakistan's Northern Areas and also serves as a popular tourist attraction. It is also referred to as National Highway 35 or N35. Due to its high elevation and the difficult conditions in which it was constructed, it is also referred to as the "Ninth Wonder of the World."


The Karakorum Highway was build to connect Pakistan and China with a paved road. Pakistani and Chinese worker worked together. The Chinese men building the bridges and the Pakistani making the road. The Karakoram Highway, also known as the Friendship Highway in China, was built by the governments of Pakistan and China, and was completed in 1986, after 20 years of construction. 810 Pakistani and 82 Chinese workers lost their lives, mostly in landslides and falls, while building the highway. The route of the KKH traces one of the many paths of the ancient Silk Road.


On the Pakistani side, the road was constructed by FWO (Frontier Works Organization), employing the Pakistan Army Corps of Engineers. Presently, the Engineer-in-Chief branch of the Pakistani Army is working on a project documenting the history of the highway. It is being written by Brigadier (Retired) Muhammad Mumtaz Khalid, who oversaw its construction.

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