Xiahe Labrang Monastery - Part 5

I saw several Tibetan pilgrims in the Labrang Monastery doing the following, prostrating, movements:



From some Google searching, I believe what this woman is doing is called "prostration." Here is a New York Times article from 2001 on the practice.

As far as I understand, some pilgrims will do this for up to hundreds of miles. Considering that the Labrang Monastery is one of the holiest sites in Tibetan Buddhism and is very far outside of Tibet, it seems likely to me, from my limited understanding of their culture, that this woman and the others I saw at Labrang had been doing these movements for hundreds upon hundreds of miles.

It was truly an amazing thing to see.

Xiahe Labrang Monastery - Part 4

More Xiahe pics:













And finally, a video of some pilgrims walking through Labrang:

Xiahe Labrang Monastery - Part 3

Here is another round of photos from the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe:


Wonderful blue skies


Prayer flags and rolling hills




A lot of Labrang smelled like a campfire. There was a good amount of wood being burned around many of the temples.


Golden roofs


This was at the entrance of a living community

I still have a few more posts to make on my visit to Labrang. Although I already have made a few posts about the place, I feel as though the narrative is lacking a bit on my visit to Xiahe. The problem is that I don't really feel comfortable saying a whole lot about the place right now. I just had a blog shut down two months ago and don't want to have another one follow that same fate.

My friend Andy and I did nothing wrong, questionable, or illegal in Xiahe, yet I still don't really want to get into much of a narrative description about the place right now though. Some day in the future I'll talk more about my experience at the place.

But for the time being, I'm just going to let my photos do the talking.

Xiahe Labrang Monastery - Part 2

The Labrang Monastery is a center of Gelug, or the "Yellow Hat Sect" of Buddhism.

I knew there'd be monks in and around Xiahe, but I was surprised by the sheer number of them that you saw both within the perimeter of the monastery as well as the streets outside of the monastery in Xiahe.

Here are some of the better photos and videos I have of the, largely Tibetan, monks at Xiahe's Labrang Monastery:











And then some monks singing on as the noon hour approached:

Xiahe Labrang Monastery - Part 1

Two French people we were with, my friend Andy and I were the first foreigners to visit Xiahe in Gansu Province in months.



Xiahe is in a military lockdown. Foreigners are not allowed in and haven't been for months.

It is a complicated story how we got in to the monastic village town. I'm not going to go into great details on how we did it right now. We didn't sneak in or go in illegally though.

Andy and I were granted one morning to visit the Labrang Monastery by the local authorities. Although we only had a few hours, we were able to see the place and get a good feel for the culture that pervades there.

Here is the first batch of photos that I'll post to my blog:











I'll post more photos and videos from the Labrang Monastery in the coming days.