As we were walking towards the Pelcho Monastery in Gyantse, we decided to take a backstreet instead of the main tourist route, the later being a wider street with green trees planted aside (probably another example of the recent beautification projects in China); thus we had a glimpse into the everyday life of local Tibetans: babies crying and cows lying around at every second doorstep, kids going to school and tiny shops opening up along the road...
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| From ASIA - TIBET - Friendship highway |
As we walked into the Monastery, the main Assembly Hall was straight ahead and we began the explorations from here. The entrance is decorated with statues of the Four Guardian Kings; just by the entrance on the left is a protector chapel, with murals depicting sky burial. The Assembly hall was fairly empty, no monks chanting, no pilgrims making butter yak offerings... but then it turned out that all pilgrims were 'busy' with walking around in the endless series of tiny chapels at the Kumbun, chanting prayers and slipping in their donation to the Buddha statues.
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The Gyantse Kumbun in fact is the Monastery's most famous attraction: a monumental, 8-story-chörten with white layers trimmed with decorative stripes and a golden dome... the inside is no less impressive, 108 chapels filled with Buddha statues and painting after exquisite painting (kumbum means '100,000 images').
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| From ASIA - TIBET - Friendship highway |
Next, we were heading to Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet and home to the Tashilhunpo Monastery, which is the traditionally the seat of the Panchen Lama who would rule over the western part of Tibet. The full name in Tibetan of the monastery means: "all fortune and happiness gathered here".
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| From ASIA - TIBET - Friendship highway |
The monastery itself is like a small city, with a labyrinth of walls, cobblestone paths, stupas and prayer wheels and several assembly halls (one of which we even thought to have recognized in the "7 Years of Tibet" movie), its main 'attraction' being a gigantic, 26-meter-high Buddha statue (the largest gold-copper Buddha statue in the world).
But one of the highlights of visiting the monastery for us was that it gave us room to socialize with the locals, all very friendly people, smiling and looking at us with probably just as curious eyes as we looked at them.
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| From ASIA - TIBET - Friendship highway |
The old city was also worth a visit... something like walking into a different time: kids greeting us with a loud "Hellooo" (it seemed to be the only world they knew in Engligh though), while their dads playing chess or billiard on the street corner... (provided their billiard-board was not taken already :D).
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| From ASIA - TIBET - Friendship highway |
In the evening our guide decided it was time to have some fun and surprise us with something authentic but at the same time contemporary ... we soon found ourselves in a Chinese-Tibetan disco (at 3,900m !), full of flashing lights and a weird combination of Chino-Tibeto-European melodies sung in Tibetan language... Hmm, what did we earlier say about stepping into a different world?
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| From ASIA - TIBET - Friendship highway |
All our photos on Tibet Overland Tour
The journey of our travel along the Friendship Highway continues with the next blog entry....
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