Sera Monastery

day three in Lhasa

Today we went to a couple Buddhist monasteries. This is the Sera Monastery. The number of monks has dropped massively over the past decade for various reasons but mostly due to the civil unrest in 2008. This place was mostly deserted, buildings abandoned and ignored, but there were still a few hundred monks around. This is what is usually referred to as a "Monk debate". They do this to better understand Buddhist philosophy. Like most debates there is a formal structure and the most common tactic is to try and use your opponents statements against him. What is quite unique are gestures and posturing. They clap at the end of each point really driving the message home as well as distracting their opponent. It's quite aggressive at times, sometimes even leading to cracking their rosaries like a whip and even shoving.

Today I had some yak milk yogurt. Like most fresh yogurts it came with a little pool of yogurt water, but it was sort of served that way, so I enjoyed the whole thing. It was very sour and not very creamy. Not my favorite, but I'm happy I tried it.

I also ate some dried yak milk cheese. It's very hard and powdery, but some Tibetans will hold it under their arm for an hour or so to soften it up a little. I did this. It was still hard and again, very sour. On the plus side it probably wouldn't go off if you left it on the tin roof all summer.

a few others like this one
and a few cross processed shots from my XA2

Diana+ 50mm lens