Ganden and Sera (Tibet)

After the disappointment of yesterday to try to sleep at a monastery we wake up one by one in our little room in our hotel and fresh up. We check out, find our driver and get into the jeep; in  a few minutes we drive to the nearby town Yangpachen - there we have breakfast in a local eatery.

When we look out of the dusty window we see a dead yak lying in the middle of the street. It is not a strange sight in Tibet itself, but when they start to strip the dead animal in the middle of the street before our eyes I can’t saw I have ever seen or experience this before. Our appetite decreases immediately, we pay the bill and ask our driver to drive to Ganden monastery on the other side of the capital Lhasa.

We see the monastery from a distance located at the top of the mountain Wangbur at an altitude of 4300 meters. Before we enter the monastery we decide to have lunch at the restaurant just before the entrance of the complex. Inside it seems like we have entered a medieval tavern - wooden furniture, large pieces of meat are on chopping boards and at the door of the entrance and exit is a large trough where food that’s not been eaten is thrown in.

After this medieval experience we pay the entrance fee and enter one of Tibet's largest monasteries and about 6000 monks live there. It is close to a lake where local fishermen try to catch some fish in small wooden boats. We also see small huts next to the banks. 

It was the original monastery of the gelug -order and was founded in the year 1409. The monastery is traditionally seen as the administrative and political power of the gelug. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, finished his final exam in Ganden in 1958. The monastery is beautifully situated against the hill and the complex is made up of numerous separate buildings in the typical Tibetan style. The three main attractions in the monastery of Ganden are Serdung, which contains a tomb of Tsongkhapa, the conference room Tsokchen and the Ngam Cho Khang, the chapel where Tsongkhapa taught. The monastery had more than 25 important chapels with large Buddha statues. The largest chapel could accommodate 3500 monks at the same time.

It is sad to know that the monastery was largely destroyed during the uprising in Tibet in 1959. During the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, the monastery was bombarded with grenades from the Chinese People's Liberation Army. While the monastery was being rebuilt, the lessons of the monastery were continued by exiles in Mundgod, Karnataka, in India. After a long walk through this beautiful complex we are exhausted. We walk back to the jeep, our driver beckoning to take us to the nearby town of Medro Gongkar.

In the main street we find a hostel and check in. Not far from our sleeping place for tonight we find a Chinese restaurant where we have a bite to eat and a drink. Tired of the day we wander back and crash down on our beds that stand next to each other in this fairly spacious room. We had already noticed that there was a lot of noise coming from the street. Behind the torn curtain we find an open window but unfortunately no glass to close it.

Unfortunately it was very noisy on the streets with Chinese house music and a lot of yelling. On the way to the Sera monastery we stop at a very small village - one of us brought a whole box of brightly colored sunglasses for the children and the plan is to divide it into a meaningless dusty village. It is funny but also confronting to see that these children do not know what sunglasses are for but they love it.

The parents are also very content with it also. We walk around a bit here and it feels a bit akward to walk around here in our expensive clothes. We look at the farmyards with their mud walls and the animals that roam freely here. A little later we are back in the jeep - unfortunately in the back - to go to the big monastery. Sera was founded in 1419 and, like the other two large monasteries Drepung and Ganden, they gave lectures in all kinds of Tibetan Buddhist education and offered the basic instruction for the monks.

In 1959 Sera housed more than 5000 monks. Despite the fact that it has been badly damaged, the end of the 20th century is still standing, has been largely restored and is home to a few hundred monks. The origin of the name Sera is not certain, but is suspected in the fact that the original place where Sera was built was surrounded by wild roses (se ra in Tibetan). When we walk out of the monastery complex two hours later, we look at each other and think the same thing; we have seen enough monasteries now. It is time to go back to Lhasa, the capital.