Photos

At the end of the day we arrived at the town of Gyantse. This town is famous because of two interesting places: the Pelkor Chöde monastery with the very special chörten (stupa) and the large fortress (dzong) that is visible on this picture.

When we arrived we saw that the late afternoon sun gave a beautiful golden light to the mountains and buildings. So despite our weariness after a long day of travel, we set out as soon possible to take a few pictures (while the rest of our group stayed in the guesthouse to take a shower...). We went to the monastery and climbed the hill on the premises. From this hill you have a wonderful view over the old part of Gyantse and the majestic 14th-century dzong that is overlooking the town from the top of another hill as you can see on the picture.

The dzong was the scene of a battle between British and Tibetan troops in 1904. The British troops, led by colonel Francis Younghusband, were invading Tibet to enforce a treaty between the Tibetan and British governments. The British wanted the Tibetan government to sign a convention as soon as possible, as they were afraid that otherwise the Russians would advance into Tibet. The battles were unfair: the British were much better equipped and the casualty ratio was at least 1:100. Some sources speak of 700 Tibetan deaths within 4 minutes of battle... One of the buildings of the dzong hosts the "Anti-British Imperialists Museum", which has some hilarious captions written in Chinese-English that explain scenes that are shown on pictures of the exhibition.

My next post will show you an overview picture of the monastery, taken from the dzong.