The traditional flavour of Lhasa and its Tibetan Buddhist heart have been diluted but not entirely lost, writes Philip Somerville.
The very name Lhasa echoes romance and adventure.
Here, on ''the roof of the world'', high on the enormous Tibetan plateau, is a city merging the remnants of the ancient with modern developments.
Here, despite rapid change, it is still possible to see and feel echoes of the past.
Here, you can let your imagination run back to the bygone era when Dalai Lamas were the spiritual and political leaders of the land and its people.
But, at the same time, most Western visitors are likely to yearn for a time 10 or 20 years ago when the place was far less developed and where the day-to-day Tibetan influence and presence was more obvious.
The renovation of old Lhasa, especially, with the major make-over taking place in 2013, will be greeted with decidedly mixed feelings.
This is the Tibetan heart of the city, going back 1300 years.
What has happened around the venerated Jokhang Temple is that a run-down area has been transformed.
Services have been put underground and new buildings constructed in Tibetan architectural style.
This has created a tourist precinct, and what - reading accounts of the former Lhasa - has been lost are the narrow alleyways, the maze of wires, the ancient buildings.
Instead, as one CCTV (China's official television channel) report put it, a high-end ''authentic'' tourist destination has been created with upgraded facilities.
Lhasa, growing about 12% a year as Tibetans are drawn to the region's main urban area and as Han Chinese arrive both as short- and long-term residents, would have been more attractive to those who seek distinctive and old-world charm.
The developments, and no doubt the raising of living standards, has made Lhasa more like any other city.
But this does not stop, and might even encourage, Chinese tourists to pour into Tibet by their millions.
Last year the official number of Chinese tourists was a breathtaking 15million, up 20% on the year before.
The Chinese are attracted to the mountains, the space, the Buddhist culture, the clear air.
It is difficult to find rooms in the height of summer.
Western visitors, by comparison, are relatively sparse, with the 2014 tally just over 200,000.
One of the reasons, with political concern still evident, is because they require permits and a guide.
Not only will this add to costs but it also restricts the freedom so loved by some adventurous travellers.
Nevertheless, you are able to wander around Lhasa on your own and enjoy the classic tourist experience of people- and place-watching, of viewing everyday life.
You can still see pedestrians in Tibetan clothing and signs of an agrarian past amid the traffic and the new buildings.
The primary attractions are the glorious Potala Palace, sitting on and over a hill and dominating the city, and the venerated Jokhang Temple and its surrounding gardens.
The 1300-year-old temple is said to be the spiritual heart of Tibet, and it's impressive and powerful, albeit often overcrowded.
It must be hard for the worshippers among the throngs of tourists.
There are pilgrim trails around the inside of the temple and in a circuit, always walked clockwise, around the temple block.
Many devout Buddhists make their way past the temple, the shops and the Buddhist structures.
A scattering of people prostrate themselves step by step, usually with wooden blocks to help protect their hands.
We, a group of journalists brought to Tibet via the Chinese information service, flew straight to Lhasa (3650m) from sea level, and you can expect at least mild altitude headaches for a few days if you rush to the city.
A fascinating way to travel there would be via the Qinghai-Lhasa railway line, opened in 2006.
It takes 27 hours crossing the Tibetan plateau and is an expensive engineering masterpiece.
At one pass it reaches 5072m, and there's piped oxygen on board for passengers.
There wasn't time to venture much beyond Lhasa, but of course many travellers will want to see Mt Everest from the Chinese side and visit Everest Base Camp, and there are many more temples to visit.
No doubt, too, an older Tibet will be experienced outside Lhasa, and there are trekking and biking tour options.
There's also the infamous and increasingly popular road route between Kathmandu and Lhasa.
It reaches a mere 5100m.
For the most adventurous, there's the remote and sparsely populated west as well.
But do not underestimate the size of this land.
We did venture, however, across the vast, arid emptiness flying north across the Tibetan plateau to Xining, the capital of the ethnic melting pot Qinghai province.
We travelled to China's largest saltwater lake (and the second largest in the world) , Qinghai Lake, home to the ''Bird Island'' sanctuary.
This is still part of the Tibetan plateau and many Tibetans live in the rolling pastures and mountains around the area.
Along the roadside, they dress in traditional clothing, in effect putting on a show while carrying on with traditional life.
Qinghai is again popular for domestic visitors, especially as a cooler summer retreat, and the Han Chinese pay to ride Tibetan yaks and donkeys and dress up for photographs.
Just outside Xining we visit another of China's major monasteries, and hear of pilgrims prostrating themselves step by step for three years on pilgrimage from Lhasa.
Home to 800 resident monks and again teeming with visitors, it was built from 1590.
Clearly, despite rapid change across China, there's plenty of life in Tibetan Buddhism and its sacred places, and plenty for tourists to see and experience.
• Philip Somerville is Otago Daily Times editorial manager.
Dalai Lama's winter home preserved
While the spectacular Potala Palace is the must-see attraction in Lhasa, the Dalai Lama's other former home, Norbulingka Palace, is also worth a visit if you are interested in the life and times of the 80-year-old traditional spiritual leader of Tibet.
Both are part of a Unesco world heritage site.
The palace sits atop a Lhasa hill with thick stone sloping walls, and it lives up to its sometime billing as a wonder of the world.
Its construction started in 1645 and it has more than 1000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and about 200,000 statues.
It also escaped damage during the Cultural Revolution in 1966 - an era when ''idolatrous'' monasteries were being destroyed - through the personal intervention of revolutionary leader Zhou Enlai, then China's premier.
The palace is so popular that numbers are limited and entrance tickets need to be bought in advance.
Once you've climbed (slowly because of the altitude) the steps outside, you file through rooms and chapels.
Perhaps most staggering is the west chapel with its giant central stupa, which incorporates the mummified body of the fifth Dalai Lama (the current Dalai Lama is the 14th).
This sandalwood stupa is covered in nearly 4000kg of gold and inlaid with nearly 19,000 pearls and jewels.
Administration functions and spiritual practices were carried out in different parts of the palace, and you can see where the Dalai Lama lived and worked.
It was from Norbulingka Palace, his winter home in Lhasa, that he fled to India on March 17, 1959, believing he would be captured by the Chinese after a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
What's especially poignant is the glimpse into history in situ.
There's the old radio given by the Soviet Union, the painting from the British and a gift from Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru.
While the palace has had to be renovated by the Chinese after it suffered serious damage in those darkest times for Tibet, this has been undertaken carefully and tastefully.
It is as if time has been frozen back to that day 56 years ago, as if the ghost of the Dalai Lama is still there.
