No one can claim to have really visited Lhasa until they have taken a stroll around Barkhor Street. Famous in Lhasa, and throughout the entire Tibetan Autonomous Region, Barkhor Street is a trading site as well as religious center. As the oldest street in Lhasa, Barkhor is circular and still remains quite traditional, from Barkhor Street, where traditional lifestyles are maintained in the center of the old Lhasa city. Rich and colorful ethnic handicrafts are also available that you won't find anywhere else.

The Barkhor Street is narrow and lined with stalls or shops on each side. Goods for sale are typical reflections of Tibetan culture. From morning to evening, streams of local people and tourists throng in to purchase whatever they need.

Barkhor is a marketplace where shaggy nomads, traders, robed monks and chanting pilgrims are together, mixing in shops and stalls. On sale are printed scriptures, cloth prayer flags and other religious items, jewelry, Tibetan knives, and ancient coins, and more.

Barkhor is also the sacred pilgrimage site. It is a place where Tibetan culture, economy, religion and arts assemble. It was said that in the seventh century Songtsen Gampo, the first Tibetan King who unified Tibet, chose the site to marry Chinese Princess Wencheng and Nepal Princess Tritsun. Later, the Jokhang Temple was built to accommodate the Jowo Sakyamuni, aged 12, brought to Tibet by Princess Wencheng.

Barkhor is the road pilgrims tramped out around the Jokhang Temple through the centuries. Buddhist pilgrims walk or progress by body-lengths along the street clockwise every day into deep night. Careful visitors may find there are four columns on which colorful scripture streamers are hung flying over the street. All pilgrims walk outside of them to show respect.

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