Three Sacred Peaks

Mount Chianrezig (Xiannairi, 6,032 metres), Mount Jambeyang (Yangmaiyong, 5,958 metres), and Mount Chanadorje (Xianuoduoji, 5,958 metres) form the three vertices of the high plateau that defines Yading. Each represents a different bodhisattva — Avalokiteshvara (Compassion), Manjushri (Wisdom), and Vajrapani (Power) respectively — and Tibetan pilgrims make the full kora circuit around all three peaks, a multi-day journey through the high terrain between the reserve and surrounding valleys.

The peaks are not climbable by ordinary visitors and no climbing permits are issued. The experience of them is entirely visual: seen from the grasslands below, from the upper hiking trails, from the saddles between them at altitude. The combination of the three distinct geometric forms — Chianrezig's massive rounded bulk, Jambeyang's sharp pyramid, Chanadorje's vertical north face — and the glacial terrain between them creates a landscape with no obvious analogue elsewhere in Sichuan.

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A story
The three peaks were formally identified in Tibetan Buddhist cosmology as the physical manifestations of bodhisattvas by the Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century, following an earlier designation by the Karma Kagyu teacher Karma Pakshi in the thirteenth century. The American botanist Joseph Rock, who visited in the 1920s and wrote about the area for National Geographic, brought the peaks to international attention and described the landscape as the last Shangri-La — a description that has haunted the region's tourism ever since.

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