Shotung Festival, Drepung Monastery

You will not believe it... having had a night out clubbing till 3am last night, we all woke up at 4:30am and got taxis to the base of the hill up to the Drepung Monastery- 8kn out of the city. In the dark and pouring rain, we started to climb the steep mountain to reach the Monastery. We were surrounded by pilgrims and there were very few other tourists. Eventually we arrived after an hours strenous climb and entered the monastery at just before six, to find a spot on the hill-side to watch the goings-on.

The reason for all of this is the annual "Shotung Festival" which is translated into English as the "Yoghurt festival"- although I'm still not certain what the relevance to yoghurt is! There were thousands of locals, mostly Tibetan waiting patiently on the hill side, in freezing wet weather. Being slightly deprived of sleep I was beginning to regret it after 2 hours of waiting, when... at 8:30 some drums and Tibetan horns started up and a slow procession of monks came out of the monastery towards a huge slab on the hill. They were carrying a giant thangka (a painting of a Budda) which was at least 100m high and 40 wide! They then strapped it to ropes and unveiled the beautiful Budda infront of the waiting crowd. It was a fabulous atmosphere, as all around us the locals were praying, chanting, prostating in worship to this picture.

After the thangka was reveiled, we wandered around the monastery and grounds just absorbing the atmosphere. For example there was a tent of old monks chanting in extremely low voices, so one felt it more than heard it as the noise was amplified over the area. You can see from the photos just how crowded it was as it is one of the most important festival of the Tibetan Buddism. We were so lucky that we are here in Lhasa at the time.