Yarchen Gar Monastery

Yarchen Gar Monastery is also known as Yaqing Temple (Ya Qing Si in Chinese), located in an isolated valley with altitude of 3,900 meters above sea level, in which the river Dzin-Chu flow through.

Brief

Yarchen Gar Monastery was founded by The abbot Achuk Rinpoche in 1985, and with lineage of the Nyingma Pa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

Yarchen Gar monastery becomes more popular in Pelyul County (Baiyu in Chinese), Kanze (or Garze) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in western Si-Chuan province.

The nuns

Currently, houses more than 10,000 Sangha, which is considered to be the largest concentration of nuns and monks in the Tibetan plateau after Larung Gar monastery. Most of the Sanghas are nuns. Among of those, about 7,000 nuns live in self constructed shacks on a 25 hectare flood plain near a river, and another 3000 around monks live on East side of the river in their own shanty town.

Location

This monastery is almost at the center between Kanze county or Pelyul County, slightly closer to Kanze; Approximately 850 km (about 3 days) drive from Chengdu which has direct international flight to Europe and North America.

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Accommodation

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There are 2 monastery run guesthouse near the meditation area by the river; In addition, there are another 9 small guesthouses being run by local villagers; conditions of those guesthouse is quite basic;

Room rates is usually from 30 per bed per night to 200-300 per room per night

How to get to there

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Yarchen Gar Monastery is seated on the grassland of A-cha village in Pelyul County. It is about 7 kilometers to the road intersection which leads 130 kilometers to Pelyul in the northwest, and 95 kilometers northeast to Garze (Kanze). There is no public transportation to this site.

The only possible way to get here is to rent local vehicle, and to get here;

The rental for a minibus (7 seats) usually costs RMB 400.00 – 500.00 per trip