Ganden Monastery

Of the three great Gelug monasteries, Ganden is the one that requires a decision — an hour and a half east of Lhasa, up a series of switchbacks onto the flank of Mount Wangbur, and at around 4,300 metres noticeably higher and harder than Sera or Drepung. It is also the oldest and, for the school, the most important.

Tsongkhapa's monastery

Tsongkhapa — the reformer whose lineage became the Gelug school and, through it, the institution of the Dalai Lamas — founded Ganden in 1409 and died here in 1419. His seat, the Ganden Tripa, remains the formal head of the Gelug school, above the Dalai Lama in that specific institutional sense. This is where the school begins.

What happened here, and what stands

Ganden was very thoroughly destroyed during the Cultural Revolution — more completely than Sera or Drepung — and much of what you walk through today is reconstruction begun in the 1980s, alongside ruins that have deliberately been left as they are. It is a strange and affecting combination, and it is the clearest place in the Lhasa region to see the twentieth century in the fabric of a building rather than in a caption. Tsongkhapa's reliquary chapel was rebuilt and holds a replacement stupa.

The kora and the view

The monastery fills a natural amphitheatre facing the Kyichu valley, and the kora that loops the ridge behind it is the best hour here: prayer flags, rock carvings, sky-burial ground, and a long view down the valley that no photograph of the buildings will give you.

Ganden is also the trailhead of the classic Ganden to Samye trek, four to five days over high passes to Tibet's oldest monastery in the Yarlung valley — the standard walking route of the Lhasa region.