Pabonka sits on a rocky hill above Drepung Monastery, on the western edge of Lhasa, and it is one of the oldest religious sites in the Lhasa valley. Tradition associates it with the seventh-century king Songtsen Gampo, who is said to have built a small palace and a meditation retreat here, and with the scholars who first worked on a script for the Tibetan language. It has been a hermitage and a small monastery ever since, and it remains an active place of retreat rather than a site with a ticket counter.
The buildings and the rock
The hermitage is built onto and into a large outcrop, with whitewashed rooms, chapels and terraces stacked against the stone, and a stupa at the summit. The oldest structures are the rock-cut chambers, which are said to include the meditation cave used by Songtsen Gampo, and around them are halls containing clay and bronze images, thangka, manuscripts and ritual objects accumulated across centuries of use. From the terraces there is a wide view south and east across the Lhasa valley towards the Potala, with Drepung's white assembly halls directly below and the mountains behind.
The rock carvings
The slopes around Pabonka and the paths connecting it to Drepung are covered with carved stone - images of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, Tara and the lineage lamas cut in relief and painted, along with long stretches of mantra carved into the rock face and piles of hand-carved mani stones left by pilgrims. This is one of the densest concentrations of rock carving in the Lhasa area, and the walk between the two sites, which takes about forty minutes up a steep path, is the best way to see it. Pilgrims make the circuit on foot, and the path is lined with cairns and prayer flags.
Practical notes
Foreign visitors to Tibet travel on a permit and with a guide, and Pabonka is normally visited from Lhasa together with Drepung, either on foot up the pilgrim path or by road. The climb is steep at altitude, so allow more time than the distance suggests and carry water. The hermitage is a working religious site; keep quiet, do not photograph the occupants without permission, and check whether photography is allowed inside the chapels. There is no admission charge at the hermitage itself, and the best months are from April to October, when the path is dry.
