The airline officials check our baggage very carefully. They X-ray it twice, once before passport control and once after. They open our hand luggage, rifle through our toiletries and delight when they finally discover and confiscate the batteries in our camera. Later, on the plane, we can’t help feeling that not everyone was treated equally. Across the aisle, an old lady sits bundled up in shawls, her sculptured face peeking out from beneath a woolly pink hat, her hand grasping a silver prayer wheel. Engraved with Sanskrit, inlaid with coral and bearing a one-foot-long metal spike, it is a lethal weapon to be respected.

Thankfully, views of Everest soon distract us, and three hours later we arrive without incident. Now it’s the turn of youthful officials — dwarfed by their too-large uniforms and peaked caps — to study our documents.

A 50-foot-high (15 m) carved and painted Buddha guards the road to Lhasa.

“The Lhasa Airport of China,” muses my husband, reading the gold lettering on the terminal building, “no mistaking who’s in charge here.”

As we travel toward the city behind the tinted glass of a Toyota 4X4, documentary-style images rush past the window. Blizzards of dust race across a barren wasteland. Whitewashed houses stand like mini fortresses.

Prayer flags strain from rooftops like bunches of summer flowers. Pancake-like rounds of yak dung — a source of fuel — plastered to walls, dry in the sun. Beside the road, a 50-foot-high (15 m) rock carving of Buddha looks on serenely as prayer scarves decorating the rocks blow in the wind like crepe-paper streamers.

Children play in the dust; cyclists slouch low over ancient handlebars; and workers are piled high on rickety, lopsided carts. We gaze in astonishment as a pilgrim, on his way to Lhasa, places his hands together in prayer, touches his forehead, throat and heart, then lays full length on the ground. Rising, he steps forward and starts all over again. This is the Tibet we want to see — a country where ancient customs and practices still provide an awesome spectacle.

Lhasa is a modern Chinese city. We are greeted by the sight of wide roads, neon lights, shops, banks, offices and restaurants. Then we see the Potala. The huge, haunting fortress fills the sky, its ancient walls radiating brilliance. We strain our necks to absorb its enormity. It’s a fort, a palace, a monastery. It’s where Dalai Lamas ruled, and monks repelled the conquering armies of China, Mongolia and Nepal. If one image defines the nation, this is it.