Discover Lhasa
Drepung Monastery
哲蚌寺
Once the largest monastery on earth, housing around 10,000 monks, it spills white-walled down a mountainside west of Lhasa like a small town. It was the Dalai Lamas' seat before the Potala was built, and it holds its own debating sessions most days.
The story
What makes this place special
Drepung was founded in 1416 by Jamyang Choje Tashi Palden, one of Tsongkhapa's principal disciples, on the slopes west of Lhasa, and was the largest monastery in Tibet: a British observer in the late 1930s recorded 7,700 monks and said the number sometimes reached 10,000. It is divided into seven colleges, Gomang, Loseling, Deyang, Shagkor, Gyelwa, Dulwa and Ngagpa, and is often compared to a medieval university. The Ganden Phodrang, built in 1518 by the second Dalai Lama Gendun Gyatso, was the residence of the Dalai Lamas and the seat of their government until the fifth Dalai Lama built the Potala. Almost half the older buildings were destroyed after 1951, though four colleges, the Tsokchen assembly hall and the Dalai Lamas' residence survived. Monks took part in protests in 2008 and the monastery reopened in 2013 after five years closed.
What you’ll discover
A white city stacked up a mountainside above the valley floor, which is where the name, Rice Heap, comes from. You arrive at the bottom and climb through lanes between the colleges, in and out of assembly halls with rows of cushions and columns hung with brocade, protector chapels in near darkness, kitchens with cauldrons the size of bathtubs, and the Ganden Phodrang. The Tsokchen is the largest hall, and a staircase in it leads up to a Maitreya chapel. The hillside above holds the great stone wall on which an enormous appliqué thangka is unrolled at the Shoton festival.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- This is a climb, not a walk. The complex rises continuously up the mountain at around 3,800m and seeing it properly means a couple of hours of ascent and descent on stone lanes. Treat it as a day when you are well acclimatised, not your first or second in Lhasa.
- Take a taxi up to the upper gate rather than walking from the road. The lower approach adds a long uphill slog before you have seen anything, and the lanes inside provide all the climbing you want.
- Walk the kora round the hillside if you can. It goes past rock paintings and hermitages with the Lhasa valley spread out below, and takes about an hour; it is the best thing at Drepung and nearly empty.
- Nechung monastery is ten minutes' walk below Drepung and was the seat of the state oracle. Almost no visitors go, and it is a darker, stranger and more memorable interior than anything in the main complex.
- If your visit falls in the Shoton festival, usually in late summer, the unrolling of the giant thangka at dawn on the hillside is one of the two or three great sights in Tibet, and the monastery is impassably crowded for it. Plan either to be there for it or to be elsewhere.
- There is a monk-run teahouse in the complex serving butter tea and sweet tea, and it is both the cheapest and the most interesting lunch on the hill.
When to come
Morning, to climb before the sun is high and to see the halls while the monks are in them. April to October; Shoton in late summer for the thangka. Winter is clear but the stone lanes are icy in the shade.
Getting around
Not suitable for a wheelchair, and hard on a bad knee. The monastery is a continuous stepped climb on uneven stone with no level route and no lifts, and halls are entered over high sills and up steps. A vehicle can reach the upper gate, which gives access to one or two of the nearest halls on relatively flat ground; beyond that the site is closed to anyone who cannot climb.
Worth knowing before you go
The site is steep and strung out at over 3,800 m, so take the shuttle up and walk down rather than the reverse. If you are here in late summer, the Shoton Festival thangka unveiling happens on the hillside above.
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