Yarchen and Sertar, Sichuan, China  ཡ་ཆེན གསེར

Home to two of the biggest Buddhist monasteries in the world, something is going on here and no one’s talking.

Access to Sertar has just begun to be prohibited for foreigners, but there’s a feeling that Yarchen may suffer the same fate soon. Since I’m technically not a foreigner, I was able to waltz right into both places. (As with Tibet province.) Plenty of domestic tourists. Nothing felt amiss.

I took two overnight trips while based in Garzê: first, to Yarchen Gar (Chinese: Yaqing Si 亚青寺), a sprawling monastery city where everyone’s a monk or nun. Well, mostly nuns — way more nuns than monks, in fact. The view from the hilltop is a sight to behold.
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