Seda Monastery, Norther Sichuan 2011

Norther Sichuan in Ganze Prefecture - The Largest Tibetan Buddhist school in the world

SeDa School/Monastery/Nunnery Pano

Above: A pano of SeDa. It’s hard to understand the scale until you see the full image. Check it out here.

About a year ago my business partner, Jamin, and I spent four days driving from central Sichuan all the way back to where I live in Qinghai. Driving all the way through Sichuan is a treat. Ganzi/Ganze prefecture has to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. So much great culture in that area of Tibet. I wanted to post about my trip there now because this area has been in the news quite a bit over the last few weeks for ethnic tensions.

Travel bloggers, agencies, and books will tell you that Labrang monastery in Gansu is the largest monastery in all of Tibet. However, this is no entirely true. SeDa (also called Sêrtar) is a monastery, nunnery, and a schools all combined into one with a population the swells to over 40,000 people during certain times of the year. That’s over 5 times the population of LaBrang, which most consider to be the largest.

Few foreigners have visited this area because it’s often closed and extremely remote. After hearing about it years ago, I was excited to be able to visit it. Even though I knew it was big, taking in the size and population was really hard. It was difficult to believe such a place existed – a virtual city that covers three different mountain sides. I was pretty happy to have been able to visit.

Below are pictures that I was able to take during my time there. All these are ‘new’ to the blog and haven’t been released either here or my portfolio. Take a look and enjoy…

2012 Workshop Destination & Interview

Images of Bhaktapur, Nepal & a quick Q&A of our 2012 Tibet/Nepal Tour

A few days ago Matt Brandon, Jamin York and myself got together on Skype to discuss our 2012 Lhasa, Everest, Nepal Overland Workshop. We covered almost every aspect of the workshop. I mentioned quickly that one of the best parts of the trip for me was our day in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Bhaktapur is a small community outside of Kathmandu city still located in the Kathmandu Valley. The amazing think about Bhaktapur is that the local community has made an amazing effort to preserve their culture and way off life. It truly is a city trapped in time. Ancient city walls, buildings, shops, and architecture all filled with people doing life much the same way that have for thousands of years.

In this year’s tour we will be spending a few days in Bhaktapur. I couldn’t be more excited about our time there.

If you are interested to know more about the entire tour, I strongly suggest you take a listen to our short interview below. We cover quite a bit of ground in this interview.

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