The Long March Museum, Ganden Sumtseling and Napa Lake

Rather stupidly, I left the window propped open, which came back to bite me in the middle of the night. The day started out quite cloudy, so after eating breakfast, I headed to the old town to partake in some indoor activities. Instead of just passing by the Museum of the Long March like I did yesterday, I ventured inside, where I was instantly greeted by a huge mural of the Chinese Red Army entering Shangri-La to the enthusiastic reception of local priests. A similar collection of statues stands outside the museum’s main gate. Furthering an account of Communist and Tibetan unity, the museum seems to be part of a former temple complex, with the exhibition looping around the still functional central shrine.

Not pictured are the sounds of a winter storm made by a machine somewhere in the hall.

A propagandistic mural

The statuary in front of the museum

The weather showed signs of only marginal improvement, so I decided that there was no rush in visiting the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery. Instead of taxiing, I walked there through the city of Shangri-La. In its modern centre, Shangri-La looks positively Soviet: huge and empty city squares, imposing concrete structures, and shops that do not spill out onto the streets. The government buildings seamlessly fuse Tibetan architecture with brutalism. The roads are broad, as are the clean pavements lined by trees.

I was glad to see the outskirts too, as I surely would not have seen pigs running wild through alleyways had I taken a taxi.

A stupa in the old town

Another stupa

Tibetan-style grandeur in the town centre

Soviet-style Shangri-la

A temple on the way to Sumtseling

Another view of the temple

A roadside hog

A roadside Buddhist statue

I arrived at the entrance to Sumtseling after about an hour and a half. At the ticket counter, though, I found out that it was another two kilometres to the monastery itself, and that the distance was covered by a bus. Having already walked this far, taking the bus seemed like cheating, so I set off on foot between the road and the slopes with grazing cows. More than halfway to the monastery, there was a sign next to a dirt path pointing the way to a Tibetan burial platform. According to the sign, this was where after dying, a person’s remains would be fed to the vultures and incinerated (I believe some Zoroastrians still observe a similar practice). For a vulture to eat even a small part of the body was considered very auspicious.

The pathway offered a beautiful view of the Sumtseling Monastery and the lake below. It ended at the hill’s peak, which I assume was used as the aforementioned platform. After unsuccessfully trying to descend through the pine grove along some disconnected paths, I came to the realisation that the best policy was a tactical retreat to the road.

A Tibetan-style window

The hills near Sumtseling

Sumtseling through the pines

The pine forests around Sumtseling

The view of Sumtseling from the hill trail

The monastery itself is giant. Its gently sloping walls are white at the bottom and red at the top, ending in gilded double-sloped roofs. The interiors impress visitors with huge statues, intricate paintings, and towering wooden pillars garlanded with colourful cloths. Many shrines make up the Sumtseling complex, and I did not visit all of them, but after the third or the fourth, a layperson cannot quite tell the difference between them.

The roof of the main temple at Sumtseling

A statue "supporting" the structure of the temple

Another of the many temples at Sumtseling

Monastery roofs

Stupa at Sumtseling

It was around noon as I ate lunch and set out around the lake. Ducks were placidly feeding and building nests for their young, fish were swarming, and damselflies were mating. It was a peaceful afternoon.

A floating path at Sumtseling

Some species of duck

An American coot

An American coot nest

More ducks

Common moorhen

Duck

A duck I have not yet identified

An American coot chick

Another duck

The central temples of Sumtseling

The lake at Sumtseling

Sumtseling mirrored in the lake

A vertical view of Sumtseling

On my way back, I thought I would take another look at the monastery from the hill trail, but as I started ascending, an elderly man started hollering at me in Tibetan. I figured that he wanted me to come down, so I started to, but his agitation did not abate until both my feet were firmly planted on the cement of the road. He was pointing wildly at the monastery, at one point taking me by the arm as if he intended to push me all the way back to the temple, while I was trying to explain to him – more with my hands than with my mouth – that even if I did not climb the hill, I was heading for the exit and did not have a bus ticket to return. After some more pointing and confusion, the man finally let me go, and I spent the rest of the day puzzled as to what the whole episode meant. I figure his family either owned the land or he was not happy that a tourist was trying to visit a sacred burial site – either way, this does not explain why there is a sign pointing tourists up the trail.

Having visited all the places I wanted to visit in Shangri-La, I made up my mind to see some of its natural scenery. The taxi driver I caught at the entrance to the monastery talked me out of trying to visit a nearby hillside botanical garden, saying that it was farther away than I thought. Instead, he drove me to my second choice, which was the somewhat more famous Napa Lake.

I am not quite sure why the area – vast fields ending at the feet of tall forested mountains – is called a lake, but I assume it is filled with more water at other times of the year. The ticketing office was run by a lady who was rather sad that I did not want to ride a horse (I would not have enough money to afford a ride back if I did and even if I did, I do not like riding horses). She did, however, shower my Chinese with ill-deserved praises as she gave me my ticket.

Napa Lake is really quite pretty, even if it sometimes lacks the liquid assets to merit the label lake. Yaks, cows, and horses graze on its sprawling meadows as clouds move serenely above its stolid mountains.

White stupas at the Napa Lake

The white stupas up close

A house at the Napa Lake

More Napa Lake houses

A Napa Lake horse rider

The mountains at Napa Lake

The cows at Napa Lake

The very meagre amount of water at Napa Lake

A van simply parked in the middle of Napa Lake

More mountains at Napa Lake

Another view of the stupas at Napa Lake

As I returned to the ticket office, though, serenity left me quite abruptly. When my taxi arrived, there was a total of two taxis in the parking lot. Now, there were none. Maintaining an unperturbed air to evade the gazes of unregistered drivers who might want to offer me a very expensive ride back, I quietly inquired with the shared van drivers whether their cars were already full. They were. Seeing as I might wait an eternity for another taxi to come to this rather remote place, I turned southwards and set off on foot.

My wanderings took me along the Napa Lake Scenic Area through several tiny villages. Many houses were empty, probably because people were still out working, but the longer I went, the more people I saw tending the fields or cleaning and binding their produce in nearby wooden shacks. Closer to the city, I saw a herd of yaks crossing a bridge, and closer yet, I came very close to being chased by an unfriendly dog. I got back after about two hours and my feet protested making another journey out of the hotel. I fell asleep very early that night – I think I might have walked around eighteen kilometres altogether.