After Losar, Tibetan New Year, comes Monlam -- the Great Prayer Festival.
Swinging Xining with its mosques, KFCs, crazy drivers and neon chickens doesn't offer much in the way of Monlam so I took myself off to Rebgong (Tongren in Chinese), a Tibetan monastery town, a two-hour drive on a new highway to see the monks in action.
The great wonder of Monlam is the swarms of Tibetans who swamp the town to attend the festival. I'm not much good at estimating numbers, but I'd say 10,000 was in bouncing distance of the ball park.
Families, grandparents with sun-sleepy infants perched on their shoulders, individuals, old ladies with sticks more boisterous than most were everywhere.
And all the monks of course.
And a sprinkling of aggressive Chinese photographers, who manoeuvred infants into cute poses for whatever blog, magazine, weibo they were posting to.
I complained to one lady from Xining.
"Yes," she said, with a little laugh. "You foreigners are very polite at things like this. But us Chinese we're not like that. We just like to take our pictures."
Well. It's up to the Tibetans to complain if they didn't like it, I conceded. "But if you want to take my photo I want 10 yuan."
The Tibetans showed remarkable patience just sitting around in the sun for whatever religious ceremony was played out that day. But when any religious relics appeared on the scene, they were like a beast with no head in their single-minded pursuit to touch the holy object.
It was a real monlam mash.
The town itself, a scruffy medley of tower blocks, Hui butchers and concrete fronted storefronts had a carnival atmosphere, albeit subdued.
Tibetans filled up hotels and hostels and sat snacking on sausages, noodles, and fried pancakes peddled by the entrepreneurial Hui's, some of whom had set up plastic-sheeted makeshift huts which served as canteens.
Here are some images from those three days:
Day one: sacred relics are taken out of their dusty temple corners and displayed to the public. It is good luck to touch the relic with your forehead.
Day two: This monk uses a bendy branch to make space in the courtyard. This is your best chance to get whipped by a monk and have a good excuse.
This little boy gets the royal view on the bony yet sturdy shoulders of his lovely grandpa who offered me his stool so I could see over the crowds. I declined. I had put on a little holiday weight and the stool was on its last legs.
The giant tangka emerges like a supreme sausage. It is also holy and people surged forward to touch their foreheads to its snaky body.
The tangka is unfurled on the hillside. As the covering is raised, the women around me -- grandmothers to teenagers started prostrating while others began singing a wonderful religious chorus. I felt like I was in a National Geographic documentary.
Day three. The monks gather in their Monlam best to blow conch shells in a circle.
Big shoulder pads on this monk. This is in the square. Mountains with slivers of snow in the backdrop. Lovely!
Several monks had ipads which they used to record Monlam.
I followed this beautiful Amdo boy around all day. He agreed to the photo but was too shy to talk to me. Better than any Khampa Hanzi any day.
That's Monlam for you. Bloody marvellous!!
