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TARBOCHE (KAILASH), JUNE 2001 - This is the story about one of the most impressive moments I've ever witnessed anywhere. Still now that I'm "back with my feet on the ground" for some months already, I sometimes wonder if I was really there... but I was there, and everything was so amazing !

Saga Dawa, moments of magic

Worldtravelstories
2006-04-06 22:01:04

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TARBOCHE (KAILASH), JUNE 2001 - This is the story about one of the most impressive moments I've ever witnessed anywhere. Still now that I'm "back with my feet on the ground" for some months already, I sometimes wonder if I was really there... but I was there, and everything was so amazing !

Saga Dawa

"Saga Dawa is an important Tibetan Buddhist festival, held each year on the full moon day of the fourth lunar month of the Tibetan calendar, to celebrate Sakyamuni 's enlightenment." , that's what every guidebook will tell you. But actually having been there, to me at that moment it was more like being part of a magic event, something that gets a total grip on all of your senses. So what's going on ? Each year, they replace the Tarboche flagpole, a huge pole that stands on the Kailash kora, south of the mountain. People from all over Tibet gather here that day to attach their prayer flags they brought from home, to pray, and to help erect the flagpole. The flagpole should stand perfectly upright, or else things are not good for Tibet. The whole ceremony is led by a Lama from the nearby monastery. It's his job to make it work 'right first time'.

I was lucky to arrive just about one hour before the actual flagpole ceremony began. Hours before the actual rising of the flagpole, people circumbate the flagpole that is down on the ground now. They pray and throw 'windhorses' (little pieces of coloured paper with buddhist scriptures on them) into the air. They help to remove last years prayer flags and attach new ones. As a visitor you are almost forced to follow them as they go around and around, time after time. Along the sides, on the slope of the nearby hills, a lot of people are sitting to watch the 'spectacle' and there are musicians which play all the time on their horns and symbals.

The flagpole ...