Saga Dawa Festival

Thanks for posting the Firante Treks website here, Jenn. If you click through you can read the trekking company's description of the Saga Dawa Festival at Raling Gompa, which we will participate in as viewers.

Saga Dawa at Raling 

Firante says:

Saga Dawa Festival - 15th June 2011Saga Dawa Festival is observed as one of the most  important festival in Buddhist society all over the world. This festival held each year on the full moon day of the fourth lunar month of the Tibetan calendar. This festival is celebrated in honor of Sakyamuni's enlightenment. And this auspicious day coincide with three important events in Buddha's life, Birth, Nirvana and death.

Tibetan Buddhists travel impossible distances each year to celebrate this festival at the holy Mount Kailash in Tibet, which is considered to be one of the abodes of the gods. The celebration at Kailash is a truly international event which draws thousands of pilgrims. We will NOT cross the border into the Kailash region of Tibet, but we will be nearby, on the Nepalese side of the Kailash mandala, at Raling Gompa.

Saga Dawa at Raling Gompa is not to be dismissed as a substitute, though. The Nepalese site of pilgrimage is also a huge festival and the home of meditation caves where the 8th century Buddhist 'saint,' Padmasambhava, meditated for years after he brought Vajrayana Buddhism to the region. In the 11th century, another famous Tibetan saint, Milarepa, also sojorned in the caves at Yalbang.

If you click into this satellite map, you can zoom in to see the town of Yalbang, or the monastery,  and if you zoom out a bit, you can see  several other place names we will visit, including Kermi a bit to the east of Yalbang.