Larung Gar Monastery
After 8 months of being absent in China we decided to come back. Our destination was a small city in Inner Mongolia, that is even quite difficult to find on the google map. You may think that 'small' in China means 1 million people or something like this. But not. It is really small, probably 100 000 people:)
So we bought our tickets from Europe to Chinese city Chengdu. Why? The tickets were really cheap and we were always dreaming about travelling in this region which is quite close to Tibet. That's why before going to Inner Mongolia we decided to take a small trip in the Tibetan regions of Kham and Amdo. Before travelling there we read a blog of a guy who lives in Tibet and he knows very well the regions where we were supposed to travel. One thing that grabbed our attention on his blog was the photos of one monastery in Kham region. We thought that these photos are not real and that such places do not exist anymore in China. But here we are! We finally arrived to this place and it's more than real!
To get to this magical place you can start your journey from a city called Kanding that is also quite nice to visit and has some nice monasteries as well. ''Unfortunately'', we started our journey on the 8th of February which means the beginning of the New Year in China. Of course we knew about it, but it was the only date that was free for us. Thus, nevertheless we wanted to travel in China. When we arrived in Kangding, we got to know that there are no buses going to Sertar (a place near Larung Gar) for next 2 weeks. We thought that it's not a problem and we can start hitch-hiking. But the only car which took us for free was this little boy :)
So we were hitch-hiking for 500m :) However, as we lived in China before we know that everything is possible in that country even if it's their New Year's Eve. Next day we found a car which was going to Sertar. They asked us to pay 800 yuan for the whole car. Luckily, we found two other Chinese travelers who also wanted to go to Larung Gar so we could share the car. So during the whole week we were travelling with a shared car with some crazy Chinese drivers :D Finally, after having four drivers during the whole road to Sertar we arrived to the monastery.
The monastery comprises about 30 000 monks. You arrive there and you see so many red, miniscule houses where the monks live. What's more, once you arrive there you can hear the buddhist music and prayers from huge speakers. The music goes 24/7 so you can really enjoy the atmosphere of being in a unique place on earth! For us, we moved to the different world for two days. We were watching monks praying in their temples, we were trying not to disturb them but we couldn't as we were the only foreigners in the temple. The monks were watching us the same way as we were watching them. They had the same curiosity about us as we had for them. One funny thing that grabbed our attention was the fact that the monks were all using their iphones while being in the temple. They couldn't use Internet as Chinese government cut their Internet during the New Year...so probably they were taking photos of us :) In this region of China, the government is afraid of any riots, because it's an autonomous region and there are a lot of Tibetan people who live there, so they cut the internet during important chinese holidays. When we asked our Tibetan driver about Chinese influence he said that they feel like in prison, there is no real freedom and China does whatever it wants with Tibet. But, on the other hand, China made a lot of developement in this autonomous region. There are making roads from one village to another, all tibetan houses are very pretty and built in the same way thanks to Chinese government. Thus, there are advantages and disadvantages of Chinese influence. However, nothing can buy freedom...
If you want to see more photos of this monastery please go to this page: http://nicolascastermans.wix.com/the-wangders#!larung-gar/risp2