The Gyanak Mani Stone Pile: The world's largest pile of prayer stones in Yushu

The Gyanak Mani Stone pile is an enormous collection of carved prayer stones, each of which depicts holy Buddhist scriptures and mantras.The Gyanak Mani stone pile and temple is located in in a small village called Senzi town of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in southeastern Qinghai Province, just about 6 kilometers from downtown Yushu or Jyekundo. Located at 3,600 meters above sea level, this holy site is in a valley surround by beautiful 4,500 meter hills. This makes for a stunning backdrop to see the 1000's of Buddhist pilgrims who visit and pray at this site every day and, certainly, one of the highlights of visiting this location is rubbing shoulders with all the Tibetan nomads who devoutly walk this pilgrimage.

There are over 2 billion prayer stones stacked on the top of each other spread across a roughly square kilometer. This pile reaches a height of 3-6 meters (depending on the area of the wall). The stones are individually stacked in a rectangle shape around the size of a large football pitch that takes about 30 minutes to walk around at a good brisk pace. With many other large prayer stone piles across Kham Tibet, the Gyanak Mani Stone Pile is the world's largest Mani stone pile.

Buddhist followers and pilgrims will come to visit this site to add one or several Mani stones to the larger mound as an act that helps them achieve better merit through Tibetan Buddhism. The act of adding a stone to the ever-growing pile is equivalent to praying the sutra texts of Buddhism that ask for relief from suffering for all living beings. Thus, the Mani mounds are growing taller every year and it is a huge task just to manage this giant heap of stones and place them in a way that the whole pile does not topple on the ground. Most of the stones are hand carved with 1 or 6 of the main Tibetan characters of the prayer "Om Mani Padme Hum" which loosely translates as the "Jewel in the Center of the Lotus", which is the most popular sutra of Tibetan Buddhism and is a prayer of compassion and deep meaning through its six Sanskrit syllables.

Around the mani stone pile is a large temple hall, a nunnery, and some smaller areas to turn Buddhist prayer wheels and light butter lamps. There are also some statues carved on 2 meter tall stones and some stupas around the compound. These stone structures are a compilation intricately carved stone tablets, most with the inscription

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