Saikang Monastery lies at the foot of the holy Gadojuewu Mountain in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province. It is site of the Living Buddha enthronement ceremony, when a reincarnated Living Buddha takes over from the previous incarnation.
It took more than ten hours on the mountain road from Xining to reach Yushu, and after climbing the Bayan Har Mountains in snow and wind, the Saikang Monastery finally came into view through the distant morning mist.
Gadojuewu Mountain has a series of peaks of an average 4,900-meter altitude, the highest peak, grand, precipitous and imposing, standing at 5,470 meters, beside a glacier. Pilgrims had already begun making circuits of the holy Gadojuewu Mountain, and had set up their multicolored tents on the mountainsides. To reach the monastery, we rode horses up slopes of sixty or seventy degrees. Fist sized rock fragments rolled down mountain slopes to the path we traveled, and we saw wild bharal sheep grazing in the valley beside it. Finally, the holy mountain we had seen from afar appeared before us.
Tibetan dance rituals.
Tibetan Lamas and lay Buddhists at the Living Buddha enthronement ceremony.
(China Today Dec 13, 2003)
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