More than 30,000 Tibetan Buddhists formed a 1,000-meter line outside the Sera Monastery Tuesday to take part in a Buddhist pilgrimage ritual three days before the Tibetan New Year's Day.

The annual religious event held before the dawning of the Tibetan New Year is the most important one to the Tibetans, who believe they can ward off disaster and hardship in the year to come by holding the celebrations.

The ceremony began at about 4:00 a.m., at the Sera Monastery, Tibet's third-largest monastery, in the northern suburbs of this capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, and was officiated over bythe Sera Monastery's abbot, Daba Kainzhub, who gave head-touching blessings to believers one by one.

The long queue waiting for him stretched one kilometer at about4:00 a.m., as the Buddhists gathered before the monastery to pay homage to the "Horsehead King."

The celebration, which falls on the 27th day of the 12th month by the Tibetan calendar, was determined by the fifth Dalai Lama and has a history of about 300 years.

After having his head touched by Master Daba Kainzhub, Norbu Zhamdui, a Tibetan herdsman from northern Tibet, said he believed that his family would have good fortune in the new year.

The Sera Monastery was built by disciples of Zong Kaba, founder of the Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, between 1403 and 1424.

(Xinhua News Agency February 20, 2004)