Tibet Festival Tour on Saga Dawa Festival

It is wonderful to make a Tibet tour during a certain traditional Tibetan festival, a Tibet festival tour on Saga Dawa Festival in particular.

The Saga Dawa festival has been held for the last thousand years. The Saga Dawa Festival is an important Tibetan Buddhist festival, held each year on the full moon day of the fourth lunar month of the Tibetan calendar, to celebrate Sakyamuni's enlightenment.

When you travel to Tibet on Saga Dawa Festival, you will find it is a moment of magic. Something gets a total grip on all of your senses. On each Saga Dawa Festival, Tibetan people replace the Tarboche flagpole, a huge pole that stands on the Kailash kora, south of the mountain.

What’s more interesting is that Tibetan people from all over Tibet gather at Kailash that day to attach their prayer flags they bring from home, to pray, and to help erect the flagpole. The flagpole should stand perfectly upright, or else things are not good for Tibet. The whole ceremony is led by a Lama from the nearby monastery. It's his job to make it work 'right first time'.

If you want to watch the ceremony of replacing the Tarboche flagpole, it is best to arrive at least one hour before the flagpole ceremony begins so that you can see how Tibetans prepare for this ceremony. Hours before the actual rising of the flagpole, people circumbate the flagpole that is down on the ground now. They pray and throw 'windhorses' (little pieces of coloured paper with buddhist scriptures on them) into the air. They help to remove last year’s prayer flags and attach new ones. As a visitor you are almost forced to follow them as they go around and around, time after time. Along the sides, on the slope of the nearby hills, a lot of people are sitting to watch the 'spectacle' and there are musicians which play all the time on their horns and symbols.

After the flagpole is upright, people start circumbating the flagpole again, this time to assure themselves the job is well done, and that all is well. Tourist can join in them in doing this, in some kind of almost euphoria. Some hours later the place is empty again, except for the tents further away belonging to the people that will spend the night here, maybe to return the next day, or to do the Kailash kora.