Taking Photos of the Songzanlin Temple 松赞林寺
The bus ride from the city to the Songzanlin Temple or Ganden Sumtseling Monastery was a surprisingly short one. I realized that it was possible to walk from town to the temple itself. Anyway, it cost only one CNY to get there so it didn’t really matter. It seems that this place wasn’t the temple itself. It had a temple looking structure but is was only the ticket office. It was strange since everyone was confused as to where we were. We entered the “temple” to be able to find the ticket counter. It was quick and they showed me to the free shuttle to the temple itself.
Small Park Outside the Songzanlin Temple 松赞林寺
Strange enough that the bus didn’t bring us directly there but no matter, we were already within walking distance to the temple as it loomed over the horizon. It was quite magnificent and reminiscent of the Potala Palace, I have seen photos of the Potala Palace and there really is a similarity. The Songzanlin Temple has an excellent location at the foot of some hills with the small lake outside. If I were to build a monastery of my own it would probably look something like this. There didn’t seem to be a lot of visitors here, at least not the mass tourism type of quantity that I see in other places. I was also surprised to see some westerners.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/SongzanlinTemple.kmz} zoom=19]