Arrived in front of the Monastery Guesthouse. Turns out we were the only people staying the night here! From our balcony you can see the pilgrim buses awaiting their returning passengers. We would not be returning with them this day, and were excited to be at the famous Ganden Monastery! Upon exiting the bus, we were immediately swarmed by a group of young monks trying to sell us entrance tickets to the monastery. Many of the larger and more famous monasteries had entrance tickets and fees, and Ganden was no exception. These monks were ferocious and although we weren't planning on going in to the monastery that day, but just enjoying around the guesthouse, they insisted we needed to go ahead and buy our tickets right then. So we did, and after dropping a little humor on the situation, we walked off to check in to our room at the guesthouse. We dropped our packs off, nabbed some hot water to fill our thermos of green tea, and we were off to explore the monastery itself... might as well seeing as how we were ticketed and all. The funny thing is that I didn't see anyone else collecting for tickets the rest of the three days we were there... As a side note, we learned at the end of our trip that the money from these entrance fees goes to the local Chinese officials... dammit, nothing is sacred!
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