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Published: November 11th 2005
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I am starting to suffer from all of those early wake ups. Bene is consoling me by telling me that I can have a lie-in the next day.
So, yet again, up at 04:00 in the morning to catch our bus to go and see the great Tangka unveiling at Ganden Monastery.
The minibus is packed full and we are ready to go. A group of happy Japanese, complete with white gloves, high tech walking sticks, silly hats and face masks join us in the minibus and break the monotony of the journey by their Oooohs and Aaaaahs, which happen every time we cross another car (on small mountain roads, crossing another car is often a scary experience). Two hours of very uncomfortable riding later, we approach the peak of this gigantic mountain. The peak is, at the moment, still covered by the clouds; the view on the valley and the river below is breathtaking and we are yet more drawn to it as the minibus seems to be sliding towards the precipice ever much so closer at each turn.
There are hundreds of other minibuses, trucks, tractors, sheep and pedestrians making their way to the top of the
mountain on this tiny, mud covered mountain road: this is clearly a great celebration. Suddenly, the cloud cover dissipates and Ganden monastery appears in full view. It is a magnificent sight, perched high on top of the mountain, in a natural amphitheatre. It consists of about 30 to 40 large buildings in typical Tibetan style, majestically overlooking the valley and the nearby mountains. The monastery was built in 1409 by Tsong-Kha-pa and was one of the largest monasteries in Tibet, with hundreds of buildings and more then 2000 resident monks. In 1966, Mao's tanks and machine guns surrounded the monastery and for the next three days, planes and cannon bombarded the monastery into oblivion. Any monk trying to escape was inevitably machine gunned down. All the defenseless monks were slaughtered and the buildings entirely destroyed. Eventually, the habitants of the region undertook to rebuild the monastery. 30 years later, the work was well under way and the main buildings had been reconstructed. In 1996, the Chinese found pictures of the Dalai Lama in the main temple and executed the 2 head monks; others were wounded as they tried to escape and the remaining monks were thrown into prison or reeducation
camps. Today’s monks have all been educated to the communist values and are being seriously watched. Nevertheless, there are now about 200 monks residing in what still is a very majestic sight. The minibus dropped us about 300 meters below the Ganden as there are no roads leading directly to the monastery. We got out and started making our way to the main temple along with all the pilgrims. I quickly suffered from the lack of air - the monastery is nearly 5000 meter high and I struggled to climb 20 meters at a time.
There were thousands of pilgrims, some climbing the entire mountain by lying down and stretching their arms every step and only moving forward to the point their palms reached. Most had prayer wheels. The mountain and every tree was covered in Mandalas (prayer flags) and there were fires, burning some incence, spotted all over the mountain, so that it looked like a volcano about to explode.
I, of course, forgot my camera in the mini-bus and was reluctant to go down the 300 meters to get it, as it would take me another hour to get back up. The monastery in itself in exceedingly
impressive. Thick stone walls, painted dark red, yellow or white, with decoration above the regularly spaced windows. Large golden prayer wheels and sun symbols adorn the roofs. There is a large crowd of pilgrims, very few tourists: we counted that there must have been about 10,000 pilgrims and we only saw about 20 tourists. We really felt part of the ceremony. We visited the impressive library, which had been destroyed by the Chinese but is being rebuilt. The books are being remade and rewritten, most of them by hand. We saw a ladder in a corner, leading to a terrace above the roof; there we met a monk who invited us into his room for rancid Yak butter tea. The first cup was difficult to swallow but, after 5 of them, we got used to it. He told us his story: he was curator of the library and in charge of the books, he had 10 monks working for him writing the books as well as carving out the wooden bloks for the pages, so that prayer books could be re-printed. After much discussion, he showed some hand-written books, which he could sell as they had a slight default of
some sort but as far as we could tell, they were perfect in every other way. Bene and I both bought one. They are very beautiful and have a good story attached to them. If you hold it close to you, it smells of Yak. After the third cup of butter tea, other monks arrived to share our tea and we had a jolly discussion. The monks are incredibly nice, always smiling and welcoming you in for a cup of tea. We were invited to witness the 11:00 prayer. We sat down on those large comfortable benches made with carpets, next to the monks who faced each other, row by row, to start the prayer. The prayer was a monotonous mumbling, the room stunk strongly of Yak fat, like every other room (the rooms are lit by burning Yak fat, which means that everything inside them is covered with a thin layer of fat). After 10 minutes of prayer, we both fell asleep and only woke up 2 hours later when local kids insisted on playing with my hair (they had probably only touched black hair in their lifetime).
The ceremony was about to start. With the help of
our friendly monks we got good seats on the main steps of the temple. The large red wall of the library faced us. It was bare, with no decoration nor windows. Suddenly, it all started with a bang. The monks placed themselves on all the surrounding roofs and started blowing their gigantic horns or trumpets. Those things are more then 10 meters in length and the sound coming out of them is so powerful that it reverberates all the way down the valley. As soon as they stopped, the monastic orchestra, with drums, cymbals and trumpets, in full uniform with their maroon robes, orange Yak vests and large Napoleonic yellow hats, made its way to the foot of the wall, followed by a long line of believers carrying the Tankga. A Tankga is a giant wall tapestry, which will be made by all the monks during the entire year. It covers episodes of the life of Buddha and is then hung on the largest wall, so that everyone can see it. This Tangka was huge, it had to be carried by 50 people and pulled up by 20 strong monks. The crowd was going mad, throwing money, white scarves, prayer
flags, incence and all they could get their hands on at the Tangka.
An unforgettable moment, exactly what the Chinese tried so desperately to destroy, the faith and beliefs of the Tibetans, hoping to replace it by adoration of the party.
I am glad to say that they seem to have failed in their designs and that faith is stronger than repression. After this exiting ceremony we made our way back down, stopping at every stall where they had food - sampling the thousand and one ways in which Yak can be accommodated. I left a prayer flag on a tree, high up the mountain, for the good health of someone I esteem greatly. The journey back was uneventful but for one detail: it was the first time, since I entered China, that I saw a blue sky. The mainland is under a constant smog (even the countryside) and the first day in Lhassa was cloudy. It was only here that I saw a blue sky, first time in ten days. Such a pleasure.
Return to Lhassa quite late, walk and dinner in the old town, admired the threathening Chinese cannons pointing at the town from the
mountains nearby and made to bed.
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