My Travel Experience of Labrang Monastery I

Every two or three years, I always take the advantage of the holiday of Spring festival to take the silk road tour, which can give me some fresh idea on operating the tours for my distinguish clients. With the speed development of Chinese economic, there are some new hotels set up, as well as some good guide join in our group. As a professional tour operator, it is our obligation to provide the best service for everyone. On 24th Jan, I visited Pingyao old town, Xi’an, Chengdu, and Lanzhou. Pingyao is a ideal town to experience the taste of Spring festival. I think this year I will put pingyao in the silk road tour packgaes. Regarding on Chengdu, which is just personal affair which is visiting my aunty. And today I would like to share my travel experience of Labrang Monastery, which has a history of 300 years. As another center for conveying Gelug Sect (yellow sect) of Tibetan Buddhism, it has six colleges and 108 branch temples. Since opening to the publicin 1984, it has attracted a great number of tourists. In the morning of 6th Feb, about 12pm, we (my husband and daughter) arrived in Lanzhou by train from Chengdu. Then we drove to Xiahe County which took us abput 3 hours. Once we stepped in the town, we found that the streets totally different from years ago. The typical Tibetan style architectural spread on the two sides of the main street. 90% population is Tibetan, the rest 10% are Hui (they are muslim) and the tourists. First I checked the best hotel in Xiahe-Aviation hotel. In my opinion, the hotel absolutely can satisfy our clients. But we select the youth hostel for the reason of sharing the experience of the travelling with others. After we checked in the hotel, we were going to visit the Butter Sculpture Display Ceremony in the evening. After we finish the dinner, it is totally dark, there are no lights on the road to the entrance of the Labrang monastery. Ten thousands of Tibetan believers crowed into the Monastery, we backed to the hotel and considered to go again in midnight. we stilll can't step in the monastery in 12 o'clock in the midnight, the same reason: too crowed and then my husband said he would look after the daughter and then i tried hard to the main hall of the monastery and then take the quick pictures. it is rush, but excited as well ! Forgive my poor language that can descript the beautiful of the Butter Sculpture in the lights. share some pictures! I will arrange the other tour in the spring festival of 2013 which will cover Pingyao, Xi'an, Lanzhou, Dunhuang, Turpan and Kashgar, if you are interested, please contact me via email.