We made a stop at the Sera Thekchenling Monastery one afternoon. This monastery was founded in 1419 and housed 5,500 monks before 1959. Today, it only has 400 monks. Sera is the second largest monastery in Tibet. Much of it was destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Sera is a yellow hat monastery dating back to the days of the red hats and yellow hats. These were evidently two conflicting groups of monks who fought each other for power.

Sera Monastery was an interesting place. Many items were the same as we saw in the Potala Palace. They had many scriptures and these scriptures were carved in wood. We also saw many statues of the same nature as in the Potala Palace. We saw prayer rooms, sleeping spaces, sitting rooms for the Dalai Lama visits, baptism places, and so on. Pilgrims were passing through with prayer shawls, yak butter, and money. There were large piles of money everywhere and trash and garbage everywhere too. We were in the main and largest prayer room and large rats were running across our paths and across the monk’s prayer seats. We did see a few temple cats but the monks were feeding them. Big mistake.

We visited Sera Monastery for two hours. No photos were allowed inside so I’ll just include two photos of the monks that were outside. They were exercising and doing drills using ‘koans’ and lots of physical movements. The monks were going one on one and they seemed to be quite athletic.

We visited the Dalai Lama’s summer palace on another afternoon. It was the summer palace for the 7th through the 14th Dalai Lamas. Each new Dalai Lama built his own new palace. The palace gardens and grounds are about 89 acres. It’s located a short distance west of the Potala Palace. Originally, the Dalai Lama used to go to the summer palace area to picnic. Eventually, the peasants built the 7th Dalai Lama a summer palace here.

The grounds are covered with trees including many trees over 100 years old. While 100 years is not that old for a tree, they seemed pretty old for China and Tibet. The grounds have a stone and mortar irrigation canal system for watering the trees. We saw mostly deciduous trees including many fruit trees but also some pine and cypress trees. There was a zoo still there but it is in horrible shape. We felt bad for the animals that are still there. Animals included many bears, bobcat, monkeys, rabbits, and many birds including peacocks, vultures, ducks, and geese.

We visited the summer palaces of the 7th, 13th, and 14th Dalai lamas. Each successive Dalai Lama built a much larger and more comfortable palace for himself. Starting with the 5th Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama was both the political and religious leader of Tibet.

The first photo below is the summer palace of the 14th Dalai Lama, which is the current Dalai lama, who is in self-exile in Nepal. He has a very large summer palace. It is two stories and has 40 rooms including a meditation room, study, library, and parents visiting rooms. His palace has a fountain in front and three large pine trees that the 14th Dalai Lama planted. He also has a large radio given to him by the Russian president and another large radio given to him by the Indian Prime Minister, Nehru. The Dalai Lama used to listen to the radio a lot and learned English and much else about the world over the radio. His bathroom included a bathtub and a western toilet.

The next photo is the Tyokyil Potrang which is a pavilion in the midst of a lake and a top scenic spot in the summer palace grounds. It was built by the 8th Dalai Lama. Two stone bridges connect both sides. It’s decorated with gold covered roof and copper tiles and is full of Buddhist murals around the walls and different Buddha statues and rest rooms for Dalai Lama.

The last photo is the back gate where the Dalai Lama escaped on March 17, 1959. He was disguised as a simple soldier and escaped the Chinese and went into Nepal. He’s been in exile since.

This is the end of our visit to Tibet.