The Barkhor

From the circumambulation of stupas in India to the great kora paths around Mount Kailash, the act of walking clockwise around a holy site is understood as both a physical and spiritual discipline. In Tibet, where landscape and devotion are intimately intertwined, these circuits—koras—form the connective tissue of religious life. Nowhere is this more evident than in Lhasa’s Barkhor, the best-known of the city’s pilgrimage routes and the one that most vividly expresses the living heart of Tibetan Buddhism.

The Barkhor encircles the Jokhang Temple, Tibet’s holiest shrine and the repository of the revered Jowo Buddha. While the innermost pilgrimage route, the Nangkhor, runs within the temple itself, and the outer Lingkhor once traced the city’s former limits, the Barkhor occupies a middle ground—both geographically and symbolically. It binds the sacred centre of Lhasa to the surrounding monastic and residential quarters, forming a devotional ring that has been walked for more than a millennium.

The origins of the Barkhor lie in the seventh century, when the Jokhang was first established and pilgrims began to circumambulate it as an act of merit. Over time, the path widened into a bustling street lined with chapels, incense burners and small monasteries. Even today, the Barkhor remains a place where religious devotion and daily life coexist seamlessly. Pilgrims from across Tibet—nomads in sheepskin coats, villagers in regional dress, monks and nuns from distant monasteries—walk the circuit clockwise, spinning prayer wheels, murmuring mantras or performing fullbody prostrations along the flagstones.

The Barkhor is also a marketplace, a role it has played for centuries. Traders once arrived from every corner of the plateau, bringing wool, butter, turquoise and salt. Today, shops sell prayer flags, incense, ritual implements and the everyday necessities of life in Lhasa. Yet despite the commercial bustle, the spiritual purpose of the route remains unmistakable. The great incense burners, blackened by centuries of juniper smoke, mark the rhythm of the circuit, and the Jokhang’s golden roofs glint above the crowds like a constant reminder of the sacred centre.

In recent decades, the Barkhor has faced the pressures of modernisation, tourism and urban redevelopment. Yet it remains one of the few places in Lhasa where the continuity of Tibetan devotional life is palpable. To walk the Barkhor is to witness a living tradition: a pilgrimage route that has survived dynastic change, political upheaval and the passage of centuries, still circling the Jokhang as faithfully as the pilgrims who tread its stones.