Drepung monastery surroundings during the Yogurt Festival, also known as Shoton Festival. Each year in the month of August, between 35,000 and 40,000 tourists flock to Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region, on the occasion of the celebration of Shoton Festival, together with the Tibetan New Year, is considered the most popular festival of Tibetan culture and tradition. The Festival, which dates from the eleventh century, is also known as the Yogurt Festival because the inhabitants of the region offered yogurt to those monks who had completed their retreat. Since the seventeenth century, the festival formerly held exclusively for religious, has become the perfect occasion for Buddhist rituals, folk performances of Tibetan opera and yaks and horses racing. The Festival begins early in the morning at the Drepung Monastery a few miles from the city, when 100 lamas carry a Thangka (typical painted or embroidered tapestry) with the image of Sakyamuni Buddha, 35 meters long, up a hill close to the monastery and operate for visitors to admire and seek health and happiness. The celebrations continue for a week at the Norbulingka, former summer residence of the Dalai Lama, which organizes performances of Tibetan operas provinces. In the beautiful park of the palace, Tibetans and their families gather for picnics. Included in most of the tourist routes that take place in August, in recent editions, the festival has been "contaminated" by the effect of commercial development of the area, with non-traditional events such as fairs and car showrooms and real estate. In 2010, during fairs and exhibitions were signed commercial contracts with a value investment than 4,000 billion yuan.  

 

LA ABADÍA DE FONTEVRAUD, SÍMBOLO DE PODER. Fundada en 1101 por el eremita Robert de Abrissel, la abadía de Fontevraud se convirtió durante la Revolución francesa en una de las ciudades monásticas más grandes de Europa. Sustentado por los papas, los obispos y los condes de Anjou, se erige como el símbolo del poder de los Plantegenêt albergando aquí su necrópolis. Aquí, en la iglesia de la abadía, eligieron ser sepultados los reyes Plantagenet (Enrique II, Eleonora de  Aquitania, Ricado Corazón de León y Isabel de Angoulême).