Hike around Sera monastery

Sera Monastery (3 700 m asl) is one of the three most important university Gelupka /Buddhist school/ monasteries in Tibet and is only a few kilometers from the center of Lhasa, so it is frequent destination of sightseeing trips around the country. In addition, there is one of the few options how to separate from organized tour at least for a while and walk around Tibet on your own.

After most people from your group set out for visit of the monastery, go first along the monastery wall to the west and then straight up. The first destination and the guide is a chorten draped with flags high on the slope. Already after a few meters you will have a nice view of the monastery and the valley.

The monastery is quite large and you will see it during this trip from all sides from bird´s eye view.

The first stage of this trip – to chorten (3,860 m ) above the monastery will take about 30–45 minutes depending on how long you will admire the views and how well you find the way between giant rock boulders towering from the hillside.

Chorten towers at the end of the side ridges to the north of Lhasa and it is possible to see from here to wide side valleys. Old Tibetan area is replaced by blocks of housing estates, factories and halls as far as you can see. 

From chorten there is a stunning view of the monastery and of the whole valley of river Lhasa, which is in these places up to seven kilometers wide,. On the horizon you can see Potala. Mountain range bordering the southern horizon has about five and a half thousand meters above sea level.

Almost at the top of the ridge throunes like an eagle's nest of a small monastery, the highest point of this trip. Of course, it would be much more interesting to continue on to the ridge and ascend along it up to the top of this five thousand high mountain. But you will certainly not have time.

The ascend to a small monastery is finally not as easy as it seemed from the chorten – paths are losing and appearing again and you need to use intuition to get there. In addition, you will not meet here a living soul, so you cannot even ask for the right way.

After about 45 minutes ascend from the chorten you finally arrive to this small monastery (4 130 m asl), which lies in a small oasis of greenery near mountain stream.

There is a stunning view of the valley from the monastery. But gigantic buildings of unified housing estates in the foreground, however, are quite intimidating. The way down to the east side is much more comfortable and without possibility to lose your way – apparently it's the official way to this temple.

The descent along path of relatively good quality will take about one hour and you'll be able to enjoy interesting views of Sera monastery from above again.

Just above the monastery is an interesting white building, around which you will already meet the first tourists. Interesting are also the surrounding paintings on boulder rocks around.

Buddhist paintings on the surrounding rocks will definitely impress you. In addition, you will find out that there is no admission charge collected from this side to the monastery, so you have the tour (probably for the effort made) for free.