Lhasa, China Hotels, Vacations, Tourism

Situated in a wide, mountain-fringed valley on the north bank of the Kyichu River, LHASA (Ground of the Gods), at 3700m, is a sprawling, rapidly expanding, modern Chinese city with a population of around 200,000. An important settlement for well over a thousand years, it was originally called Rasa, but was renamed by King Songtsen Gampo in the seventh century when he moved his capital here from the Yarlung Valley. Following the collapse of the Yarlung dynasty two centuries later, power dispersed among local chieftains and the city lost its pre-eminence. It was not until the seventeenth century, with the … more »