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The
reason why we had to go in August was because of this festival - Shoton
Festival ³·¹y¸`. On the 1st
day of Shoton Festival, i.e. Aug 12 this year, the most important
monastery of Gelugpa in Tibet, Drepung Monastery
õ°F¦x unveiled
the 35-meter by 30-meter Thangka painting
bearing the image of Sakyamuni ÄÀ{¦È¥§¦ò,
founder of Buddhism for worshippers.
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We
had our morning call at 4am! Well, after a night of insomnia on the
train, honestly speaking, we all were a mess. In order to have a
good view of the unveiling, we had to climb the mountain to Drepung
Monastery. Because of the celebration, the roads were blocked and we
had to walk all the way up. By the time we got to the mountain, me &
Milly were both exhausted and could not
go further. At around 8am,
the Thangka was brought out from the temple by some hundred of lamas and
worshippers.
They
walked the thangka all the way up to the mountain and started to pull out
the thangka from the top. The whole process was really amazing!
Go to my album
or watch the videos
and see the action for yourself! The whole unveiling
took around 30 minutes and the thangka remained under the sun until noon.
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We stayed for
another hour, took a lot of pictures! Because we had not been
sleeping enough, all of us (maybe except Kevin) were not feeling exactly
right - nasty headache and exhausted. We had some lunch and then
went back to the hotel to rest for the rest of day. We all slept and
had different degrees of fever. We did not have the stomach for any
more food for dinner
and
thus me, Ronald & Kevin went down to grab some quick food - cup noodles
and bread etc and went to sleep again after taking some pain killers.
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At around 9pm, we heard
the noise of firecrackers! Ronald knocked and told us that we could
see the fireworks from our hotel! We all poured out to the corrider
and got some of the actions in front of Potala Palace. The small red
tower in the picture was the TV tower in front of the great Potala Palace.
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