On the border of two Tibets. Dzokchen Monastery (Traveling in Kham 7)

Traveling in Kham: • Jashideley! • Burial in the sky

• Kangding, the gateway of Tibet • The Love Song of Kangding • The monastery of Tagong • The Buddhas of Drakgo

• The towers of the Himalayas • Nomadic wedding in Tibet • On the border of two Tibets. Dzokchen Monastery

“We are invited to stay, but we still have a long way to Dergê”, I finished the last entry about Garzê in our Eastern Tibetan travel diary.

The town of Derge – in Chinese Dege 德格 – was built on the border of Kham Province or Eastern Tibet and today’s Tibet Autonomous Region, in a narrow valley of a tributary of the Yangtze, since the upper reaches of the Yangtze are the border between the two provinces. Back in the 13th century, the Mongols appointed a governor to rule the town and its surroundings, who, after the end of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, declared his small territory – half the size of Hungary – an independent kingdom. This was also recognized by the Chinese Qing dynasty, which conquered Kham in 1720 and bestowed the Derge king with the title of tusi, i.e. Chinese vassal ruler. The kingdom survived until the Republic of China, which gradually absorbed the semi-independent ethnic border provinces previously ruled by tusis into the unified Chinese administration. The Derge Kingdom was annexed to Sichuan in 1918.

In the 9th century, when the Tibetan Kingdom dissolved, and the provincial lords who followed the pre-Buddhist shamanic religion of Bon, began to persecute Buddhism, the kingdom’s official religion, the monks found refuge in the peripheral regions of Tibet, in the western Ladakh and the eastern Kham. The Nyingma order, founded in the 8th century, settled mainly around Derge, among mountains difficult to access. When, in the 11th century, Buddhism became the dominant religion of Tibet again, the Nyingma did not return to the central parts, but continued to keep up their mother monasteries here. We are going to visit some of these now.

Derge Kingdom from the Historical Atlas of Tibet. The border between Kham and Tibet, marked with dashes, has since shifted slightly to the east and runs in the Yangtze (Jinsha) Valley. The red circles indicate the most important monasteries we visited (in this post I will write about Dzokchen, and the others follow in the next ones). On the right edge of the map is indicated Garzê, visited in the previous posts, under the name of Kandze

From Garzê to Derge, the road is only one hundred and eighty kilometers – but what a hundred and eighty! The road first runs in the wide valley of the Yalong River, between small monasteries with golden roofs, and then, leaving the valley to the west, it gradually rises, from two thousand meters to almost five thousand. After a while, the trees disappear, and there remains only the beautiful green lawn. And  the jagged mountain ridges covered with last year’s snow. And the small rivers that flow abundantly from every mountainside. And the nomads and yaks that live everywhere.

The yaks not only live, but sometimes also die, and if this happens unplanned, then the hour of the vultures comes. As we approach the 4,500-meter Haizishan Pass (or rather the five-kilometer tunnel that leads underneath it), we see them circling in the sky, sometimes descending very low and then soaring again. We stop to see if I can get a close-up shot. As I get out, I am shocked to see that there’s one standing a few meters from me, like a well-developed hen, not bothering itself. A little further away, another one, then another. They are standing, then move a little, sometimes flap their wings. What is going on here? I only understand it by looking down into the canyon along the road. These ones are on guard duty here, while the others are feasting on the carcass of a yak down there. Sometimes they quarrel over a bite, but the consumption is basically going on at a good pace. Sometimes one or another guard flies down there, and gets replaced by someone. Some of the guards are watching the promising yak herds grazing on the other side of the canyon. It’s only when I get back to the car that I see, looking towards the pass, what a magnificent guard line they’ve formed.

After a bend in the road leading up the high mountainside, the monastery town of Dzokchen, built around one of the most prestigious monasteries of the Nyingma order, unexpectedly reveals itself. The monastery is not yet visible from here, only a few of its golden domes peek out from behind the green hill on the left edge of the first photo. This is still just the town of Dzokchen, and the large Tibetan-style building in the middle is a modern pilgrim hotel. The town suddenly transitions into the countryside. Past the last houses, immediately come the pastures with nomadic tents, herds of yaks visiting the town, and stones carved with Buddhist holy images and texts scattered across the field.

The monastery of Dzokchen is as grand and magnificent as is fit for a mother monastery. The path to its main temple leads between rows of six large white elephants with six tusks, each of which is the most prestigious symbol of the Buddha. It also impresses the pilgrims, especially the young lamas from distant, smaller monasteries, who visit the temples with great enthusiasm and take photos of each other in front of them. Their enthusiasm reaches its peak when they discover me as the most exotic object in the field, and they all want a picture together with me. In return, I also take pictures of them. They lead me into the great temple, where a ceremony is currently taking place. There are about five hundred monks living in the monastery, many of whom are here now.