from lhasa to the kingdom of guge

another lhasa

2008-11-09T06:08:00.000-08:00

came across some marvelous old documentary footage shot in lhasa in the 40s.

as described by the BFI national film archive, which owns the clips, and posted them on youtube, the first clip shows the parents and siblings of his holiness the dalai lama in its opening scenes, "and a procession of high-ranking men and women. this is followed by a clip of a procession with the dalai lama in a golden palanquin, his presence indicated by the peacock feather umbrella being carried alongside. The final scenes, in contrast, show ordinary children dancing and ice-skating in lhasa." the others do a nice job of capturing some of the texture of lhasa in that truly lost era.

check out the dart scene in this following clip.

debate at sakya

2007-09-25T10:33:00.001-07:00

during our day at sakya, we stumbled across a relatively modest group of monks debating in the courtyard outside one of the main halls.

given the size of the monastery and its monastic community, the numbers seemed thin to me, but there they were, working to deepen their understanding of the material they were studying and opening their views to challenge by others, drawing on this centuries-old dialogic form of tibetan debate. i spoke with several of them and learned that all the debate classes were present at the same time. of course, this monastery begin sakya the commentarial sources differed from those more familiar to me from sera and other gelug monasteries, the major topics were the same... and so was the rough and tumble mix of playfulness and serious intellectual inquiry i knew well from other corners of tibetan culture.

the wild west

2007-09-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

no, this is not the american southwest. it is tibet's far west, as we approach the seats of what is now most often called the kingdom of guge.

we spent about a week in this terrain, located two days of rugged driving in our six land cruisers from mount kailash heading further west.

out in this wild west we passed a few days in the town of tholing as we explored that site and neighboring tsaparang, followed by two nights in the valley that houses the two cave complexes of dungkar and phiyang. several of the shots from the campsites in the next blog entry are of that valley.

and then three more days to drive back

but perhaps i can just let these images speak for themselves...

sleeping under the stars

2007-09-19T07:37:00.001-07:00

several of the sites we visited were too remote to have facilities for overnight stays. as a result, our trip included many nights of camping. quite a few of our evening lectures took place in the food tent, flaps shut against the bite of the wind. in all, nearly a third of our time in tibet was spent under the stars. we camped on the banks of lake manasarovar within view of mount kailash, we camped in pastureland and in clusters of forest. often windy, more often cold, but always in magnificent locales and in great company. here are some photos capturing some of those sites.
the image with the long view down a valley shows our campsite from the caves of phiyang in the other end of the valley; the tiny specks of color in the distant field of green are our tents.

painting a place for us

2007-08-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

All that remains of the splendor that Drathang once clearly had been is the skeleton of a single building. The surrounding complex is gone, the upper two floors of the lone surviving building lie in ruins, and the ground floor itself is far from intact. Its walls bear the painful scars of attacks made under the communist regime. In the places where a magnificent Buddha statue and eight bodhisattvas once stood today one finds bare patches of plaster, a series of halos marking the sanctity of heads that have long been gone, and bits of gilded throne protruding from the wall high overhead.

But what does survive stuns the viewer not only with its beauty but with the clarity of its vision. Between the long slashes of damage are among the most staggering murals we will see on our month-long tour of Tibet’s best preserved artistic treasures.

Viewing art in religious buildings is fundamentally unlike viewing it in museums or secular establishments. Looking at such art in situ, viewers are necessarily placed in the position adopted by the centuries of pilgrims and religious practitioners who had interacted with the art, gazing at it with awe and delight, making offerings to it with admiration or supplication, or simply opening themselves to the blessings and power of its presence.

To the degree that the artist expressly conceived the work with an audience in mind, the art will consciously heighten these responses. Exploiting features of perspective, lighting, composition or simply scale, the art itself anticipates and shapes the way viewers will relate to what they perceive.

Drathang’s wall paintings seem singularly designed to address its viewers. Here the art works on its audience not by the size of its scale but by the composition of a gathering of disciples around the Buddha. The painters clearly envisioned a highly diverse assembly gathering around the Buddha as he taught. An improbable range of ethnic types and colors crowd together around the Buddha, with yellow, red, green, blue and white monks, bodhisattvas, lay followers visually marked as Tibetan, central Asian, Indian, Chinese … Figures are positioned almost huddling together as if trying to draw as close to the Buddha, and the vibrancy of this gathering is palpable. Unlike some depictions of the Buddha as he teaches, not all figures face the Buddha, and not all sit in calm and attentive repose. Instead, the panel is teeming with energy and individuality, with some members of the assembly exchanging smiles of delight, some with eyes wide in amazement and others with their gaze focused intently on the Buddha. A few even appear with their hands in teaching position, apparently commenting to one another on what they are hearing. Even the snow lions below the throne seem caught up in the excitement of the moment, as the artist has pictured them scratching themselves.

Standing before this centuries-old vision of the Buddha and his audience, I suddenly notice that several of the figures in this audience are staring straight out at me, the viewer. In this instant, the artist’s work has reached out to include me in the assembly. Just as some monks in the gathering around the Buddha were exchanging looks, here these bodhisattvas are now exchanging looks with those of us who have joined the assembly in the temple all these centuries later. In this instant, I as viewer am given a place in the assembly. The range of diversity that the Buddhists of that era in Tibet envisioned as part of their community expands just a bit, to include an American nun who is among those smiling as she gazes at the Buddha and exchanges glances with the bodhisattvas also part of the assembly.

Most of these exquisite photos were taken by my wonderful traveling companions Wen-Shing Chou and Christian Luczanits.All

lhasa, tibetan and chinese

2007-08-28T04:59:00.000-07:00

Arriving in Lhasa after an absence of nearly ten years, two major changes stand out immediately. One is the degree to which Lhasa has been turned into a Chinese town. The other is how many monks and nuns were in evidence.

With the exception of the old Tibetan area surrounding the Jokhang, Lhasa seems more Chinese than Tibetan. Passing through its streets, one sees larger Chinese shop signs and hears more Chinese spoken than Tibetan. In fact, Lhasa often has the feel of a standard colonial outpost. Much as did India under the British rule, Tibet attracts young men with economic ambitions coming to make money to support themselves and their families back home in China. As did the British in India, Chinese may lived their whole lives in Tibet without ever bothering to learn the local language.

Meanwhile, even as Lhasa is increasingly Sinified, its Buddhist heart is very much in evidence. It is often said that the practice and study of Dharma is far livelier in eastern Tibet, mainly for political and historical reasons. The occupation of Tibet by China employs, among others, the tried and true colonial method of divide and conquer, and part of that process involves dividing the area of Tibet into several different Chinese provinces. Western and central Tibet lie within the boundaries of the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region or TAR, while Kham and Amdo were politically amputated and grafted onto the provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan. In these two provinces to the east of the TAR, Tibetans are politically grouped with other ethnic minorities and thus receive less intense scrutiny than they do in provinces where they are the single largest rivals to Chinese hegemony.

Nevertheless, Buddhist practice is certainly alive in central Tibet as well. (see Christian's photo above of public teachings we came across at Ramoche temple in Lhasa). We found the debate yards of Sakya and Sera monasteries vibrant with the sounds of monks sharpening their understanding of their textual study. Elsewhere, we happened upon a small monastery whose abbot was conferring a highest tantric initiation that very day, his monks having just completed the corresponding sand mandala. Unlike similar initiations I had seen in Tibetan monasteries in exile, every single monk, even the young monks in the back rows, who had earlier been playing and giggling, evidently knew all the complex mudras and performed them correctly with great solemnity once the initiation had begun. Although this was not primarily a tantric college, it was clear that this abbot had taken great pains to train these young monks.

Thanks again to Christian Luczanits for the marvelous panoramic photo of Lhasa that heads this entry...

overwhelming loss

2007-08-28T04:45:00.000-07:00

Three days drive east of Shigatse, across wind-scorched plains and over dizzyingly high passes, lies the ancient kingdom of Guge. This kingdom, though now best known as a series remote and ruined monasteries, was instrumental in the revival of Buddhism in Tibet. It was a king of Guge who invited Dipamkara Atisha and hosted him during the first years of Atisha’s history-making stay in Tibetan territory. It was here that Rinchen Zangpo labored so fruitfully to render the Sanskrit canon into Tibetan.

In most of the places we visited in central Tibet, the signs of damage to monasteries are limited to shells of buildings, with the rubble mostly cleared away. The old statues made of bronze and other metals that can be made into bullets and weapons were hauled off to China long ago, and the shards of statues that had been made of brittle clay were long swept away.

At Tholing, an ancient seat of the Guge kings, the entire central room of the main chapel is conceived as a walk-in three-dimensional Vajradhātu mandala, with a huge seat for Vairocana Buddha at the center and other larger than life sized thrones at each of the four gates of the mandala. Normally as we walk through temples in Tibet, members of our group call each other over to share a quiet discussion of some detail they have noticed. Here the group falls utterly silent as most of us scatter on our own to bear witness to the incomprehensible clash between the beauty of what once was and the ugliness of what was then done to it.

None of the figures that had once occupied the walk-in mandala escaped the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution. The thrones stand empty. The temples roof had been removed, letting the rain in to do the remaining work of wiping the paintings off the walls. The only other hints of what was once here are random bits of exquisitely modeled limbs and torsos of the statues of the surrounding deities on the outer walls. A few images, too high to be attacked completely, have had their heads bashed in.

For the first time on this trip, I am reduced to tears. Later I see that I am not alone in this response.

nechung - the oracle in a box

2007-08-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

just down the hill from drepung monastery outside lhasa is the monastery dedicated to the nechung oracle, traditionally consulted on matters of interest to the tibetan state. of course, the nechung oracle that is still consulted by the fourteenth dalai lama has relocated to tibet with the rest of the tibetan government-in-exile. but the original seat stands, as it were, and bears magnificent visual testimony to the protectors and all they protect us against.

the oracle of nechung arrived on this spot in a box, it is said, having earlier resided as a fearful spirit menacing the inhabitants of some other valley in tibet. a shaman practicing the indigenous tibetan bon religion was called in to remove the evil being, and he did so by trapping it in a box, which he then placed in the river to be carried downstream. when the box hit land near the current site of nechung, the spirit escaped and took to living in a tree and resumed its activities of harming the locals. this time, rather than a practitioner of bon, a powerful buddhist teacher was called in. this time, the spirit was converted to buddhism and left unharmed - and untrapped in a box - in a pact in which it agreed to serve as a protector to the dharma in tibet and to the tibetan state and its guardians.

we were unable to locate the tree, which we had heard was still standing somewhere. but we did find the monastery, bursting with murals of various protector deities - most quite terrifying. in keeping with tradition, the background of these images of wrathful deities and protectors is black, and we also found on some walls paintings of the gruesome offerings that protector deities like to receive: weapons, animal skins, skullcups filled with blood and other things not found in the sutras.

chanting for a place in the assembly

2007-08-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

a couple of clips of monks reciting the texts they have memorized as part of their exam for admission to Tashilhunpo Monastery in central Tibet. they then stand and must struggle to adjust their robes correctly. once accepted the abbot and disciplinarian dispense advice to the young novice monks.

buddhism is good for business

2007-08-13T02:28:00.001-07:00

The road from Tibet’s main airport into the city of Lhasa passes beside massive images of Shakyamuni Buddha, Tara, Amitabha and Chenrezig that emerge from the rocks as if self-arisen, as indeed Tibetans say they are. Small groups of Chinese Buddhist nuns and lay devotees dressed in grey make deep bows before each image, while other mainland Chinese tourists smoke cigarettes and pose with each other for photos. A few foreign visitors throw khatas up onto the stone. Drivers and tour guides wait patiently for the tourists and pilgrims to finish up before packing them back into the vans and buses that will ferry them into Lhasa. This is the first sign of one major change I will observe during the rest of this trip. In its effort to 'develop' Tibet - read here 'turn into a profit center,' the Chinese government is moving quickly to capitalize on Tibet's potential as a tourist destination. Understanding that a major part of what makes Tibet interesting to visitors is of course Tibetan Buddhism with its monasteries, temples, and the many other marks it has made on the Tibetan visual environment. Buddhism, it seems, is packaged into Tibet as a tourist spot.

A sign of this conceptualization lies just adjacent to the stone images: An amusement park with Buddha-themed entertainment that has been built since my last visit here, in 1997. At the beginning of the trip I did not consider the significance of this, but one month later when I passed the theme park again on my way back to the airport, the symbolism seemed inescapable: The Chinese government’s move to turn Tibet into a Buddha-themed tourist destination is echoed loudly in the rapidly growing tourist industry, that threatens to turn the sacred sites of an entire country into the playground of curiosity seekers with cash to spare.

This eventuality seems distant at the moment, though, and there do seem to be some benefits to the monasteries. To attract tourists to see the charms of a Buddhist Tibet, the government needs to permit and even sponsor renovation and repair of monastic buildings, and perhaps even some new construction. A major renovation effort was underway at Sakya Monastery (see photo.) If only for the sake of the tourist trade, those monasteries need to be filled with people in red robes. For the benefit of tourists, the main debate courtyard at Sera Monastery in Lhasa is surrounded by a paved and elevated sidewalk, ideal for snapping pictures, and afternoon debate is a heavily photographed event. It is impossible to foresee precisely how this tourism drive will shape life of monks and nuns in the long run.

For now, it is clear that Buddhism is very good for business. It remains to be seen whether business will be good for Buddhism.

the texture of monastery life

2007-08-13T02:28:00.000-07:00

a few photos to convey a bit of the feel of daily life in some of the monasteries we visited.

to the left, young monks relax and await the beginning of an initiation that is planned for later that day. below to the right, one monk at Samye Monastery shaves the head of another as two newcomers sit and await their turn. and visitors from abroad - here, me - are usually good for a few minutes' diversion. in this photo, some monks have asked me to identify the lamas in a photo they were sent from south india.

zhalu - home to hero and polymath

2007-08-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

buston is the author of the dge slong ma'i gleng 'bum, the only tibetan text i have located that is expressly concerned with the lives of nuns, and one i hope some day to translate. he was also a great sanskritist, a vinaya scholar with several commentaries to his credit, a translator and editor of the canon, an accomplished director of major art projects and a great polymath. in other words, buston is my hero. and zhalu is his monastery.

buston was apparently also a very good son. he had a stupa built for his mother in an exquisitely painted room constructed as a vajrabhairava mandala, as it is described in the Tantra to Eliminate All Bad Rebirths (sarvadurgatiparis'odhanatantra) which is understood to be able to prevent rebirth in any of the lower realms. nice, eh?

the landscape shot showing zhalu way off in the distance and dwarfed by the mountains behind it, was taken from a neighboring chapel in which sakya pandita is thought to have received his full ordination. zhalu is considered by historians to be the seat of a sort of sub-school of the sakya lineage, but the monks at zhalu itself insist that they are an independent lineage. interestingly, the circumambulatory path around the main chapel is bountifully painted with depictions and inscriptions summarizing past lives of the buddha and his main disciples, according to a text by one of the karmapas and firmly in the karma kagyu lineage.

zhalu also has a bit of a reputation in the area for a famous statue and conch. when i was telling some tibetan monks from tsang but now living in the states about the places i planned to visit on this trip, the only one that elicited any great response was zhalu, whose famous conch and statue i must be sure to see. they told me that on two separate occasions, thieves had attempted to make off with each of these two items. but each attempt was foiled as the conch began to blow as they carried it off, and the statue spontaneously became heavier and heavier as it was carried away from the monastery, until the thieves could hold it no more and had to leave it on the spot. i did see the conch, but never figured out which was the magical statue. perhaps the chinese have since devised a way to counteract its growing weight.

traveling around tibet, i was welcomed with overwhelming warmth by tibetans in most places, and often heard words of delight at seeing a foreign buddhist nun. only at zhalu was i challenged, in a sense, by two monks who wanted to know why i had chosen to become buddhist. not with aggression but with curiosity and perhaps a bit of doubt. my basic answer - that buddhism teaches that suffering and happiness are created within, and offers suggestions for how to do that - passed their apparent scrutiny and they then extended me their full hospitality and warmth (see photo).

zhalu houses an interesting example of the series of paintings that i was researching during this trip, paintings that provide visual exemplars of ideal monastic dress, architecture, conduct, and requisites (see photo). but despite the delicacy of zhalu's painting of the recommended behavior for monks and the many images of how to handle robes, zhalu monks do not seem to pay particular attention to adhering to monastic dress code.

and although it was once a seat of great, great learning, zhalu's several dozen monks currently have no teacher and therefore do not study. in most case, not even enough to identify most of the images painted in the spectacular murals that grace the walls of this moanstery. instead, the names of deities were written by better educated monks on small bits of paper and glued to the walls themselves...

nechung - the oracle in a box

2007-07-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

gyantse

2007-07-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

crowded up against the mountains that ring this verdant valley, the monastic complex of gyantse dates to the 15th century and includes the mandala-shaped 'kumbum' structure as well as a large monastery. the town of gyantse includes a fortress perched atop the highest peak in town. this peak was stormed by the british during the younghusband 'expedition' that invaded tibet in the early 20th century. the panoramic view was taken from the ground floor of that fortress.
during the two days we spent here, students were assigned a room in the kumbum to study and present to the rest of the group. the organizers generously assigned me and a friend - brid arthur - to the tushita chapel, a room devoted to maitreya, the buddha of the future. along with the two-story high central image of maitreya, the room features flanking life-size bodhisattvas seated waist-height on massive lotuses... and walls covered with past-lfe stories of buddha maitreya. the murals both summarize over a dozen narratives of maitreya's career as a bodhisattva in text and also depict in spectacular murals covering virtually all available wall space.

the monastic complex at gyantse sits at the early end of when scholars identify a distinctly tibetan style of art. one of the earliest known tibetan artists to found a school of painting is thought to have learned to paint, in part, by studying the wall-paintings at gyantse.

to my delight, the murals not only retell in word and image the past lives of maitreya - they also identify the textual source from which the story is drawn. luckily this is one of the monasteries that permits photographing of its interior chapels, and i spend much of our free time here documenting the walls of this tushita chapel, with thoughts of future research projects... the quality of my photos here makes it clear: next time i need a better camera...

fabric and stone - tibetan architecture

2007-07-11T11:47:00.001-07:00

One distinct feature of Tibetan architecture is its use of fabric on the exterior of buildings. The exteriors of most large monastic structures present large facades of stately - if bulky - spans of flat space, broken only by the rows of windows that allow valuable light to penetrate the often massive interior spaces. These facades could easily slip from impressive to heavy to oppressive and dull, were it not for the play of the wind on the many pieces of fabric that Tibetans use to adorn their exteriors. Just see Christian's photo of Sakya Monastery below for a structure without fabric - or windows - for the contrast.) Windows are always topped by small awnings, under which narrow curtains ripple and play in the frequent breezes. Roofs and windows can also be lined with larger curtains of bold and dramatic patterns. The combination of whitewashed masonry and fluttering fabric adds a delightful touch of whimsy to the otherwise deadly serious structures .... that host Tibetan Buddhist events that can likewise delight in combining the serious with the lighthearted.

drepung monastery, outside lhasa

2007-07-11T05:35:00.000-07:00

we visited this monastery on a hillside overlooking the valley in which lhasa is located early in the trip. its numbers much diminished compared to the days of its flourishing before the commmunist chinese invasion in 1959, drepung still struggles to educate its monks... this marvelous photo was taken inside one of the assembly halls by christian luczanits...

tsaparang

2007-07-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

once a monastery and seat of royal power housing hundreds if not thousands, tsaparang far out in western tibet is a network of caves and temples that crawl up this precipitous peak. this photo of me near its summit was taken by christian luczanits, whose knowledge of western himalaya monastic art styles helped made this trip massively instructive. tsaparang is located at +31° 27' 58.74", +79° 40' 15.06" - a short ride from the western tibetan town of tholing. see it from the air

ngari - roadside nomad market

2007-07-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

after hours driving on hardscrabble roads across western tibet, we pull over to check out a cluster of tents and nomads. it turns out to be a roadside market, perhaps preceding a local festival. although with my hair grown longer than ever (as you see here) and the fact that i am not in robes, the women realize i am a nun, and ask for 'blessings.' i tell them i am just an ordinary nun, not a dispenser of blessings, but they persist. i remember a pack of mani pills i had with me, and am soon surrounded by outstretched hands as i pass them out.

sera monastery, lhasa - murals

2007-07-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

sera monastery, like other large monastic institutions in central tibet, is organized around regionally-based residential associations. at kongpo khangtsen, which houses monks from tibet's kongpo region, a major benefactor from kongpo sponsored an elaborate set of paintings on the walls of the housing association's temple. completed over the course of three years in the early 1990s. the two images are of interest to me for different reasons. the image at left presents monastic implements and behavior from the vinaya texts that i study for my dissertation, and form a relatively common visual theme in the outer porches of monasteries in tibet. the below image appears as part of the detailed depiction of episodes from the life of lama tsongkhapa, founder of the gelug lineage that sera monastery belongs to. it shows tsongkhapa as a monk directing an artist as he paints an image of the bodhisattva manjushri. lama tsongkhapa was renowned for his visions of manjushri, in which he is said to have receive teachings and personal advice from the bodhisattva. this episode depicted on kongpo's walls does not appear in the text that the murals otherwise follow, but is an imaginative and powerful statement by the modern artist who created it: a kind of visual argument that the images that appear there come from someone who saw the subjects directly and guided artists in presenting them accurately.

tholing: casting long shadows

2007-04-13T20:11:00.000-07:00

two days drive past mount kailash lies the territory of the once vibrant kingdom of western tibet. this kingdom was formed by descendants of the early tibetan empire that once extended into chinese territory and across central asia. after the famed assassination of king langdarma that marked an end to a period of vigorous support for buddhism across the tibetan plateau, a branch of the royal family fled west and took their inclination towards buddhist teachings with them. it was a king of western tibet who extended the invitation to the indian pandit atisha, whose visit did much to reinvigorate the practice of buddhism in tibet.

tholing was a vibrant center for both scholarly and artistic engagement with buddhist ideas and images, many imported from nearby kashmir. the translation of a large portion of the tibetan canon from sanskrit was carried out within the buildings so clearly visible in these three satellite images of the tholing monastic complex. even today, tholing casts long shadows indeed for buddhism in tibet.

drathang monastery: millenium-old murals

2007-03-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

while major portions of the religious and artistic heritage of tibet were destroyed during the fervor of the cultural revolution, a great deal also escaped destruction. this image is one instance of wall painting that has survived, and is located at the monastery of drathang in central tibet, one of the sites we will visit during the site seminar. the building in which the mural is housed was used as a granary during the cultural revolution.

the monastery itself was founded nearly a thousand years ago, in the late 11th century. its founder was a rather ‘eccentric’ figure, a nyingma monastic practitioner of tantra born to one of the highest of tibet’s aristocratic families, the chimpu (mchims phu). this highborn monk, drapa ngonshe (grwa pa mngon shes) later gave up his monastic vows, left the area and eventually came to be known in the nyingma tradition as an important tantric master and revealer of 'treasure texts.'

now in ruins, the monastery lies on a rich and fertile plain on the south bank of the tsangpo river in central tibet, not far from samye monastery. like samye, drathang’s main monastic building was three stories high, with the ground floor following tibetan style, the second following chinese and the top floor indian, according to descriptions of those who visited it before it was destroyed during the cultural revolution. this main structure was said to have been surrounded by satellite temples and three concentric rings. today only the ground floor remains.

images are from the paris-based shalu association which is working to protect tibet's cultural heritage and restore some monastic sites in tibet. although the artistic and religious treasures here have survived many centuries thus far, they did so under the care of active monastic communities. many are located in sites that no longer house a community with the commitment and resources to protect and maintain those treasures.

the itinerary

2007-03-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

this trip spans most of the whimsical map pictured here. we begin in lhasa, and basically make our way west, past mount kailash, until we come to the end of tibetan territory in what was once the kingdom of guge. here is the itinerary as it now stands:
Day 1, June 7: Rest, Lhasa Museum
Day 2, June 8: Orientation to Lhasa
Day 3, June 9: Jokhang
Day 4, June 10: Drepung, Nechung
Day 5, June 11: Gongkhar Chode, Drathang, travel to Mindroling
Day 6, June 12: Mindroling
Day 7, June 13: Samye
Day 8, June 14: Kyeru, travel to Gyantse
Day 9, June 15: Gyantse
Day 10, June 16: Gyantse
Day 11, June 17: Nenying, travel to Shalu
Day 12, June 18: Shalu
Day 13, June 19: Shalu, travel to Shigatse
Day 14, June 20: Sakya
Day 15, June 21: Travel (via Kailash)
Day 16, June 22: Travel (via Kailash)
Day 17, June 23: Tholing
Day 18, June 24: Tholing
Day 19, June 25: Tsaparang
Day 20, June 26: Tholing
Day 21, June 27: Dungkar, Phiyang
Day 22, June 28: Dungkar, Phiyang
Day 23, June 29: Travel to Shigatse
Day 24, June 30: Travel to Shigatse
Day 25, July 1: Jonang Puntsokling, travel to Shigatse
Day 26, July 2: Tashilunpo
Day 27, July 3: Travel to Lhasa
Day 28, July 4: Potala
Day 29, July 5: Wrap up
on july 6th fly back to beijing. after a day there spent in the company of friends of a friend, i leave the evening of july 7 for new york.

from the tibetan plateau into the western himalayas

2007-03-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

this summer a group of ten phd students will accompany five scholars of tibetan art history, architecture, history and religious and cultural studies on a monthlong trip across central and western tibet. starting in lhasa, we will head west, continuing past mount kailash until we reach the kingdoms of guge in western tibet. along the way, we will be visiting monasteries and the ruins of monastic sites from lhasa all the way into the western himalayas.

while it is unclear how feasible it will be to upload details of the trip as we progress, i will use this site to share images, observations and experiences when and as possible. using a gps lent to me by my friend (and my major sponsor for this trip) ed murphy, i will be collecting geocoding information for each site visited, and will later post links to satellite images of each site.

for more on this tibet site seminar, visit http://www.princeton.edu/TibetSem/region.htm