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October 2003 - August 2004

Tibet, part III

Brett Voegele
2005-11-19 14:02:35

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was carried by a snake-like procession of monks and pilgrims to the base of the wall. Monks on the roof of the assembly hall lowered ropes, which were attached to the massive painting, the thangka was lifted onto the wall, and the protective curtain was lifted to reveal the image of Buddha. I imagine the religious painting must have been about 15 meters by 30 meters in size, and was beautiful. As soon as it was hung, pilgrims threw more khatas towards it, and then seemed to head for the many buses waiting to return to Lhasa. In fact, the thangka was only hanging for about 30 minutes. I don't know if that is standard, or if they were afraid it would get rained on, but it was a pretty short-lived event.

Nagchu Horse Racing Festival

A week later I was back on the bus - this time for the 4 1/2 hour trip to Nagchu. I made my way to the burgeoning tent city and started to set up my home on the outskirts - in the rain. Are you seeing a theme here? Every festival I went to in July and August was a rain-soaked, muddy affair. I headed into Nagchu, decided it's probably one of the ugliest towns I've ever seen, and vowed to spend the rest of my time in the tent city near the stadium. I met up with some other travelers, and so spent most of my time in Nagchu with an Israeli couple, a French couple, a South African woman, and a Dutch guy. We seemed to spend a lot of time moving from one restaurant tent to the next....eating, drinking, talking, and laughing. We checked out the standard offering of games, with the most popular being one where you rolled bicycle tires into an area that had a grid of prizes. If the tire fell completely around the prize, you took it home. Cooking pots seemed to be the big mover in that event. The most interesting moment before the actual horse racing happened while we were wandering around one day. A woman ran up to us, smiled, shook our hands, and proceeded to walk with us. It ...