Drepung Monastery (哲蚌寺, Zhébàng Sì)

¥50 CNY per person (as of 2026), booked through your tour operator — you cannot buy it at the gate as a foreign visitor because the Tibet Travel Permit system requires an organised tour. Some peak-season listings show ¥60; confirm the current rate with your operator before you travel. Photography inside chapels is extra, usually ¥20-50 per chapel in cash.

No. The Tibet Travel Permit (TTP) that lets you into the Lhasa area also covers Drepung, which sits inside Lhasa prefecture. You only need additional permits — the Alien Travel Permit and the military permit — if you travel outside Lhasa prefecture to places like Everest Base Camp, Mount Kailash, or border zones.

2-3 hours for the main route — the Ganden Podrang palace, the Tsokchen assembly hall, and the four dratsang colleges. Add an hour if you walk the upper kora for the panorama over the Lhasa valley. Plan a half-day including the 20-minute drive each way from central Lhasa.

Technically yes — public buses and special Sho Dun shuttles run to the site — but for foreign visitors this is impractical: you are required to travel with your guide and a dedicated vehicle under the Tibet permit system, and the bus signage is in Tibetan and Mandarin only. DiDi does not operate in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and there is no metro in Lhasa. Your tour vehicle is the practical option.

1416, by Jamyang Chöje Tashi Pelden, a direct disciple of Tsongkhapa, who founded the Gelug (Yellow Hat) school. It is one of the three great Gelug monasteries of the Lhasa region, alongside Sera (founded 1419) and Ganden (founded 1409).

It was the largest monastery in the world at its 17th-century peak, with up to 10,000 monks, and the Ganden Podrang palace here gave its name to the religious administration that the Fifth Dalai Lama led beginning in 1642. The Dalai Lamas lived at Drepung until the Fifth moved to the newly built Potala in the 1640s, which is why the palace name became associated with the Tibetan religious establishment.

No — Drepung itself is not individually inscribed. The UNESCO listing for Lhasa (Historic Ensemble of the Potala Palace, list 707, inscribed in 1994 and extended in 2000 and 2001) covers the Potala, the Jokhang, and Norbulingka. Drepung sits within the same cultural landscape but is not part of the listed property — a common point of confusion.

Sho Dun (the 'Yogurt Festival'), held over a week in late August by the Tibetan lunar calendar, opens at dawn on its first day with the unfurling of a giant thangka — a colossal silk Buddha image — on Drepung's hillside. Tens of thousands of pilgrims gather before sunrise. It is the single most dramatic public event of the Lhasa religious year and the one time Drepung is unambiguously the centre of the city's attention.

Moderately demanding. The site climbs about 100-150 metres of stone steps from the road to the upper chapels, at an altitude of roughly 3,800 m — about 150 m higher than Lhasa's valley floor. If you have acclimatised for two nights in Lhasa first, it is manageable with rest stops; do not attempt it on your arrival day. There is no wheelchair access and no elevator.

Outside, yes, freely. Inside the chapels, photography is generally restricted and usually costs ¥20-50 per chapel, paid in cash to the monk on duty — always ask before raising a camera, and respect a refusal. Never photograph military, police, checkpoints, or border zones anywhere in Tibet; doing so can cause serious problems for you and your guide.