Lamaseries
Trip Start
Dec 26, 2003
1
25
94
Trip End
Mar 28, 2005
Langmusi, Sichuan/Gansu and Xiahe, Gansu,
China
Thursday, July 1, 2004
Langmusi
Langmusi was a great little Tibetan town with two lamaseries, one located in Sichuan province & one in Gansu province. As the lamas from Gansu were on a trip in Beijing, I spent my time in the Sichuan one.
The monks were very hospitable and curious of us & their large monastery was very interesting to wander around.
Harry, a German I was traveling with, and I took a wander out into the cliff surrounded meadows and some grottoes out of town
1 Inside lamasery, Langmusi
. The scenery provided tough competition for that which we had seen in Songpan. The place was very serene & chilled out.Everyone was delighted with the delicious food served up at Leisha's restaurant. She had two keynote dishes: The Baby McYak Burger and the Big Mac Yak Attack. The Baby McYak was collosal & the Big Mac Yak allegedly twice the size. Everyone enjoyed their Baby McYaks, however, it was only some hours after their consumption that the real Big Mac Yak Attack afflicted us all.
Leisha had told us that a sky burial would take place at 7 the next morning. This is a local religious and gruesome event where a recently deceased body is hacked to pieces with axes & then vultures come to the site & eat the chopped up corpse. At the site were quite some human remains, particularly bones and teeth and it was really chilling to visit the site. The whole site just reeked of death. In the end, Leisha was wrong & we didn't get to see the burial. I am not too sure that that was a bad thing.
Xiahe
Xiahe is another monastery town, with a more famous monastery than Langmusi
2 Meadow, Langmusi
. In fact the biggest Tibetan monastery outside of Tibet.The town is clearly split into a Tibetan section, a Hui Muslim section and a Han Chinese section. You can feel as it as you move from one section to the next to the next.
We focus on the Tibetan part, as it is the most visually interesting & walk the 3km pilgrim circuit around the monastery, spinning the prayer wheels as we go. There are many, many Tibetans devoutly doing the same circuit.
We also do a guided tour of the monastery, however, the English pronunciation of the guide is so bad, it somewhat detracts from the enjoyment of the long tour.
The highlight was wandering into the main hall of the monastery independently at midday to see the best part of 1000 red coated monks filling the hall.
This was another good town to visit, but if I had to pick only one Tibetan town to go to it would be Litang in western Sichuan.
