Ganden Monastery lies 45 kilometres east of Lhasa. Its a beautiful ride along the Lhasa River Valley (the Lhasa R. links with the Brahmaputra River which also flows by Lhasa and eventually flows into India) both rivers having clean, glacial water much like one sees in the Rockies.
The monastery sits atop the mountainside at about 4267 metres (c. 14,000 feet) and is the first of the monasteries built by the Gelugpa or Yellow Hat sect under Tsong Khapa (or Zongkapa) in 1409. It is, in fact, the central monastery of this sect of Tibetan Buddhism. There used to be between 3500 and 4000 monks there before 1951; now there are only 400 and limited to that size by the government.
The monastery was completely destroyed following the Chinese invasion of Tibet and the subsequent events of the Cultural Revolution. Since the 1980s, it is being re-built and in use.