Ganden Monastery and a rammed afternoon

On 16th November, on the way back to Shangri-La we got to learn all about how to get your problems resolved in China - you call the Mafia because their bribe is less than the police! That's where Xin had been in the morning before we set off on the trip - sorting out a problem some cowboy builders had caused his friend...via the Mafia. Nice. Amusingly enough though the Mafia are scared of the monks - probably because there's about 7000 all wielding swords and apparently they're not scared of dying. So when one of them strays down from the monastery, uses one of the Mafia's prostitutes and then refuses to pay on the grounds that he is a monk (I think the monk might be missing the point here), the Mafia are left powerless to do anything. In fact within Shangri-La there are four groups you don't want to piss-off - the monks, the mafia, the police and the army, which has a huge base just outside town. Annoy the wrong policeman and you might find you've also got the mafia on your back - there's a little bit of crossover here! And then if you've upset enough people and decide the best course of action is to leave town you've got to watch out for the Tibetans who all carry swords and daggers and aren't exactly hesitant about pulling them out in the heat of an argument.

Ganden Sumtseling Monastery lies nestles in the mountains on the outskirts of Shangri-La. Its a monastery of some 7000 monks and two living Buddhas. With three temples of various ages at the top of a huge flight of steps it was quite impressive. There were also plenty of false monks on hand with their prayer wheels begging money.

In the first temple there was probably the most well-looked-after Buddha we'd seen so far - not just because he was well polished but because he had seven bowls of water to keep him from thirst (hunger too apparently as some were supposed to represent fish and other foods) and hundreds of butter candles keeping the place warm in conjunction with the huge yak;s hide over the doorway.

The entranceways to the temples were decorated with the overlords of the four corners of China - each bearing a different implement - swords, umbrella and two others. Another painting depicted the patient elephant versus the clever monkey learning Buddhism - the elephant taking his time and beecoming pure whilst the impatient monkey thought he could find a shortcut but failed. Xin told us he always tells students this story. A circular design in the second temple shower the Earth split up into six segments, with heaven at the top, hell at the bottom and something which is supposedly better than heaven off to one side. I was surprised to see photos of the Dali Lama around the temple and even in the hotel we'd stayed at the previous night. So long as they're small photos and not on public display I'm told the authorities don't bother you, well at least that's the case outside Tibet.

The rest of the day was a bit of a mission - we got Xin to first take us to the bus station where we booked a 5pm sleeper, then to lunch (more fried yak's cheese and bread - yum!), then the PSB to get a visa extension, then to buy a sword, then to pick up our luggage, then back to the PSB to pick up our visas before finally getting dropped-off at the bus station. And we managed all that in the 2-1/2 hours we had before the bus went! This time there were five of us crammed into the beds at the back of the nightbus. Although one moved eventually that didn't have any useful effect such as lengthening the beds so you could lie flat and it didn't really help with the width either as there was a vertical metal ladder splitting the two beds...great!