When one leaves the broad avenues between the walls of the groves and pleasure-gardens, and enters the city, one's senses are offended by everything that is unsightly and unclean. Pigs and pariah dogs are nosing about in black oozy mud. The houses are solid but dirty. It is hard to believe that they are whitewashed every year.
Close to the western entrance are the huts of the Ragyabas, beggars, outcasts, and scavengers, who cut up the dead. The outer walls of their houses are built of yak-horns.
Some of the houses had banks of turf built up outside the doors, with borders of English flowers. The dwellings are mostly two or three storied. Bird-cages hang from the windows.
The outside of the cathedral is not at all imposing. From the streets one cannot see the golden roof, but only high blank walls, and at the entrance a forest of dingy pillars beside a massive door. The door is thrown open by a sullen monk, and a huge courtyard is revealed with more dingy pillars that were once red. The entire wall is covered with paintings of Buddhist myth and symbolism. The colours are subdued and pleasing. In the centre of the yard are masses of hollyhocks, marigolds, nasturtiums, and stocks. Beside the flower-borders is a pyramidical structure in which are burnt the leaves of juniper and pine for sacrifice.
The cloisters are two-storied; on the upper floor the monks have their cells. Looking up, one can see hundreds of them gazing at us with interest over the banisters. The upper story, as in every temple in Tibet, is coated with a dark red substance which looks like rough paint, but is really sacred earth, pasted on to evenly-clipped brushwood so as to seem like a continuation of the masonry. On the face of the wall are emblems in gilt, Buddhist symbols, like our Prince of Wales's feathers, sun and crescent moon, and various other devices. A heavy curtain of yak-hair hangs above the entrance-gate. On the roof are large cylinders draped in yak-hair cloth topped by a crescent or a spear. Every monastery and jong, and most houses in Tibet, are ornamented with these. When one first sees them in the distance they look like men walking on the roof.
Generally one ascends steps from the outer courtyard to the temple, but in the Jokhang the floors are level. We enter the main temple by a dark passage. The great doorway that opens into the street has been closed behind us, but we leave a company of Pathans in the outer yard, as the monks are sullen. Our party of four is armed with revolvers.