A teahouse run by nuns in downtown Lhasa.

A rooftop view of the Jokhang Temple, the center of action in Lhasa’s Barkhor district.

It’s impossible to ignore – and illegal to photograph — the omnipresent Chinese military troops in riot gear on the rooftops and street corners of central Lhasa. And it’s clear that the 14^th Dalai Lama’s absence, even after fifty years in exile in India, is still an unspoken preoccupation for many in the capital of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

But life in Lhasa continues to buzz in the hood known as the Barkhor around the 7^th century Jokhang Temple. Pilgrims perambulate, prostrate and pray while stalls, set up each day before dawn and taken down after dark, sell everything from incense, rosemary, amulets and bracelets to teapots, prayer flags, prayer wheels, tennis shoes and watermelon.

Stalls in the Barkhor are set up every morning and taken down every night.

A crowd constantly circumambulates the Jokhang Temple.

Buddhist pilgrims prostrate and pray at the entrance to the Jokhang Temple.

A visiting rural Tibetan and her son.

Work, of course, goes on beyond the street-level stalls and bustling temple square.

The private Dickey Orphanage, to which my British guide Rich Beal just donated half of the $1,500 he was awarded as the Explore travel company’s “guide of the year,” is giving youngsters a shot at life.

Orphans serenade The Idiot and other visitors at the Dickey Orphanage.

Tibetans also come into Lhasa from a rural village to restore the roof of Jokhang Temple, a task they consider an honor to perform. And nuns don’t just run a teahouse.

Villagers perform a traditional song and dance while they manually compact a new roof atop Jokhang Temple.

Nuns pray next to their bustling teahouse at the Ani Tsangkang Nunnery.

Meanwhile the Dalai Lama’s empty summer palace in nearby Jewel Park, where His Holiness was staying just before he fled the country, is a serene floral wonderland this month.

The Dalai Lama last slept here in 1959.

Photos and Text: Joel Stratte-McClure

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About Joel

Joel Stratte-McClure has been a global trekker since the 1970s. He lived in France for over 30 years, working as a journalist, before he turned his attention to a unique life-time-project of walking the shores of the Mediterranean. The first 4,401 kilometers are explored in his inspirational and entertaining first book "The Idiot and the Odyssey: Walking the Mediterranean." The next 4,401 kilometers are covered in the gods-filled sequel, "The Idiot and the Odyssey II: Myth, Madness and Magic on the Mediterranean,” published on Valentine's Day 2013. The last 4,401 kilometers will be discussed in the last book of the trilogy currently entitled "The Idiot and the Odyssey III: Alexander the Great Walks the Mediterranean."