Palcho Monastery

Rising in stepped tiers above the walled monastery of Gyantse, the Kumbum of Palcho is a stupa you can walk through: a tower of whitewashed terraces, about 32 metres high, that hides dozens of small chapels inside its body, each painted floor to ceiling. It is also called the Pagoda of Ten Thousand Buddhas, for the roughly ten thousand images, sculpted and painted, enshrined within, and it is counted as the largest structure of its kind in Tibet.

Gyantse grew into a princely seat in the 14th and 15th centuries under the overlordship of the Sakya school, and its rulers left three great monuments: the hilltop fortress, or dzong, the monastery assembly hall and the Kumbum. Prince Rabten Kunzang Phak, a devotee of Khedrup Je, the disciple of Tsongkhapa later recognised as the first Panchen Lama, built the main temple, the Tsuklakhang, between 1418 and the mid-1420s, and began the Kumbum in 1427, completing it about ten years later. The monastery became unusual in Tibet for housing colleges of several traditions side by side, with Sakya, Zhalu and Gelug schools each establishing their own; by the end of the 17th century there were sixteen. In 1904 the British expedition under Francis Younghusband occupied Gyantse, and officers carried off statues and scrolls; the monastery was damaged again in 1959 and in the Cultural Revolution.

The Kumbum is built as a three-dimensional mandala to be climbed clockwise. Its lower storeys are square in plan and the upper ones circular, giving the whole a pyramidal silhouette, and the chapels on each level are arranged as a progressive sequence of tantric deities, rising to a single top chapel devoted to Vajradhara. The murals, in vivid colour and a naturalistic style, are among the finest surviving examples of 15th-century Tibetan painting, with Newar and Chinese influences visible in the figures. The neighbouring Tsuklakhang keeps its 15th-century interior: a 48-pillared assembly hall hung with silk thangkas, a main chapel dominated by a copper Buddha about 8 metres tall flanked by the Buddhas of past and future, and an upper-floor chapel whose walls carry fifteen mandalas some 8 metres across. A gold-lettered Kangyur manuscript dated 1431 is kept in the Vajradhatu chapel. Each year, during the festival of the fourth Tibetan month, giant thangkas are unrolled on a wall in the north-east corner of the precinct, a custom begun under the same prince.

Getting there

The monastery stands in the town of Gyantse, a short walk from its centre, in the Nyang valley of southern Tibet, about 230 km south-west of Lhasa and about 100 km east of Shigatse. The Friendship Highway between Lhasa and Kathmandu passes through Gyantse. The nearest airport is Shigatse Peace Airport (RKZ), about 55 km away.