#TRAVEL My Weekly Powerup | #club5050 | Impressive Tibetan monastery – Tashilhunpo | #steemexclusive / 15 photos

It has already been a number of years since I was in Tibet, but when I look at the pictures from the trip, the memories of a great trip come back. Apart from spending a few days in the capital Lhasa, I visited cities such as Gyantse, Shigatse and Sakya. I arrived in Lhasa by plane from Kathmandu. The journey back to Kathmanda was by car from Lhasa via the aforementioned cities back to the border town of Zhangmu and on to Kathmandu. This wonderful roadtrip took 7 days.

Palace of the Panchen Lama

In each of the mentioned cities we had time to visit several monasteries. What impressed the most is Tashilhunpo. It's located in Shigatse, which is Tibet's second largest city. This monastery was founded in 1447 by the 1st. Dalai Lama. It has the size of 70,000 square meters. Also, it is the largest of the functioning religious Gelugpa institutions in the country. Some of the other big ones are Drepung, Sera and Ganden. All are located near Lhasa.

The so- called Cultural Revolution that took place in the late 1960s caused the destruction of more than 6000 Tibetan monasteries. Not only were priceless painting burnt or destroyed, but also chronicles and ancient books. Tibet has an monastic tradition that goes a thousand years back in time. The Cultural Revolution did cause severe damage to this tradition. But some of these Buddhist monasteries and traditions did survive. Tashilhunpo is one of the monasteries that managed to recover relatively unscathed from the Cultural Revolution. During this revolution the monastery itself was not extensively destroyed. The buildings that were damanged were mainly the residence of the monks. At that time the monastery had some 4000 monks living here.

It is an incredible experience to walk around the narrow cobbled streets and be impressed by the various buildings, stupas / "chortens", doors and windows, paintings and decorations. The buildings in red are chapels. Only a few were open when we were here. In retrospect we found out that we should have come earlier in the day. Then many more would be open and thus available.

In the year 1966 the Guards (Chinese) broke statues and stupas that contained relics of the 5th and 9th Panchen Lamas. All of these were thrown into the river. Later the relics were saved and the 10th Panchen Lama made sure to build a new stupa in order to house these relics.

The Assenbly Hall

There is something about this monastery that impressed me. Whether it's the size or the architecture, I'm not sure. There were very few tourists present. The fact that most chapels were not open meant that we did not see many monks either. There was a quiet atmosphere everywhere we went.

Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tashi_Lhunpo_Monastery

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All the photoes are mine, Ulla Jensen (flickr, Instagram and facebook)

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