Beautiful Photographs of a Sacred Prayer Festival at a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery

Award-winning photographer Kevin Frayer has documented a sacred festival at an ancient Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Monks carry a rolled-up silk painting of the Buddha, known as a thangka, up a hill overlooking the monastery. They unveil it before dawn, so that the first rays of sunlight illuminate the sacred painting.

The annual spectacle known as "the basking of Buddha," or the "sunbathing Buddha festival," is part of the Monlam prayer festival, a magnet for pilgrims from the Tibetan-populated areas of China.

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