Ganden Monastery - Ruins from a Window

Ganden was a wasteland.

Once one of Lhasa's "big three" monasteries (along with Drepung and Sera), Ganden took the full brunt of the Cultural Revolution.

In 1966 the Red Guard came to Tibet from China, determined to wipe out the "Four Olds": old thinking, old culture, old habits and old customs. The end result was the destruction of all but a few of Tibet's monasteries, the loss of many other parts of Tibetan culture and many deaths.




I had walked for parts of three days to get there from Lhasa, to be rewarded by a steep climb into a bowl-like area populated with acres of crumbling, ragged, weed filled mud brick walls, the remains of a monastery that once held thousands of monks.

Ganden was the seat of the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism - the "Yellow Hats" that include the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. When I was there in 1987 a small attempt had been made to restore the place as a functioning monastery, the main chapel had been reopened and perhaps a hundred monks were in residence. The place felt empty.

In a restaurant I met a former monk from Ganden. As a young man he had dropped his vows to fight the Chinese invasion in 1959, like so many others. Now, with a passport from India, he was revisiting the places that he once knew. He had a photograph of himself looking out from the ruined window of his old room, only half the wall still standing.





Mostly I rested in my two days at Ganden, but I did walk the Kora, a clockwise circuit around the monastery. A number of Tibetans were doing the same. There are spectacular views of the valley below, depressing views of the monastery ruins and rock paintings and other significant sites the meaning of which I did not then know.

One place I had heard about, but an older Tibetan woman made sure. About halfway into my Kora she stopped me on the trail, pointing to an area uphill of where we were. Shaking her head and making "don't go" gestures she began barking and mimicking a dog biting.

I knew what she was saying - up there was the sky burial site - the place where the Tibetans bring their dead to be cut to pieces and fed to vultures. In recent years foreigners had been making a nuisance of themselves at sky burial sites here and elsewhere by acting disrespectfully and intruding where they should not go. I gestured to the woman that I had no intention of visiting the site and motioned to the onward trail of the Kora. This was fine with her and we smiled at each other as we parted.


I understand that a lot of effort has been put into rebuilding Ganden since my visit there in 1987. It is meaningful that the Tibetans, despite so much adversity, would place such importance on recreating this and other parts of their world.


The Tibetan spirit wins over even the casual visitor to their land. More of my journeying in Tibet can be read about at:
TravelinTibet.com

Beautiful handcrafted jewelry of Nepal and Tibet is available for sale:

AccentNepal.com - which is an Ebay hosted store, and also: JewelryTibet.com- an independent wholesale website which is open to the public.