September 10th Ganden Monastery

Today we drove 50km northeast of Lhasa to the first Gelupga (yellow hat) monastery which involves about 12 km of switchback turns to reach the top, about 650 M higher than Lhasa.This monastery at 4,300 M is known for it's fabulous views and fascinating khoras which go past a sky-burial site. You can see the vultures overhead. The monastery was built in 1409 but is now a scene of extensive rebuilding. Because of it's political influence it has probably suffered the most. We enjoyed the Assembly Hall which included the monks robs and hats being left on the prayer bench. We have to always remember to circumambulate clockwise, take off our hats when entering the chapels, and when pointing at something use your whole hand with the palm up. The protector chapels women are not allowed in. David went into one called the bull protector chapel. The printing room was interesting where they are printing on parchment paper using old wood carved Sanskrit blocks. The monks would ink down the block, put the paper on the then use a roller to press the ink onto the paper. Many large piles of paper and one young monk collating them all and them binding them with wood and fabric. These sacred books are then sent to the different monasteries. We will be seeing the three most important Gelupa monasteries and each have colleges and other centers of learning attached to them.

This day trip out brought further to the foreground our guides inexperience and the language comprehension issues. On the way to the monastery we saw what looked like stone mounds similar to what they have in Oman as burial mounds. So we ask him if they are graves, he says they are for barley, we think he says bodies. I think ask is it a single or family burial site and he says family. David and I proceed to discuss this and ask him more questions and then we realized he was saying barley not body. On the way back we looked at these mounds more closely and realized they were cow dung patties stacked up for drying and later burning.

We wanted to do the lower khora hike as we were handling the altitude change fairly well. Our guide pointed us up this trail and said go up there. We asked him to come with us. It then becomes apparent once again that he has no idea of where the khora starts and doesn't seem to be asking anyone. I get out the guide book which says it starts behind the police station and ask him where the police station is. He points it out and then we head off that way. We come to an incense stove and prayer flags and just by going under the flags we see the trail. We start to go along but the guide wants us to turn around as this will take too long. (Guidebook says 45 minutes easy walk or we would not have been thinking about it). He then starts chatting with another female guide and points us to walk up this road. We tell him he is to come with us, but the road is then blocked by construction so he turns around and then has us go back to the car to go back to Lhasa. In our travel contract we had paid for a 4WD for all out of town trips and we had told him that. He had processed to arrange a taxi mini bus. We could go on with several more examples of how we were not able to communicate and he seemed clueless with rest to western needs even as basic as where the bathrooms are at each point of interest. When he was saying that our Monday trip to Lake Nam-tso might not be by 4WD we decided to read our contract and call our travel agent in Xining. We were also uncomfortable with having to rely on this guide in an emergency, let alone traveling in the car for days with him and trying to ask questions of what you are seeing and glean some knowledge of the Tibetan culture. His English was not good enough and when he came to return passport copies and other documents David explained that he was very helpful and trying his best but his English was not good enough and we wanted a more experienced guide for the journey outside of Lhasa. We gave him a money to buy a jacket he had been looking at for going to EBC which made him very happy.

A fast forward note to Sunday morning when we met our new guide Sonam who is of amuck higher caliber. Asked him if he knew where the lower khora trail was at Ganden and he knew where it was and gave details on the sky-burial site that we did not make it to. Sky-burials are the most common form of burial here in Tibet and take place at sunrise and within 25 minutes all the remains have been taken by the vultures and the area is then cleaned. People with diseases are cremated. We learned more about Tibet culture with Sonam in 30 minutes that with our prior guide in 4 days. We realize we should have asked for a change sooner.