Mt. Targo and Lake Dangra

Dangra Yumco and Dargo Mountain are the most sacred landscape of the Bon religion, Tibet's indigenous pre-Buddhist tradition. The area is associated with the ancient Zhangzhung Kingdom, the political and religious center of Bon before its absorption by the Tibetan Empire in the seventh century.

In the creation time, Dargo Mountain, the husband, stood as guardian over the vast waters of Tangra Yumco, the wife. Together they brought barley to the people and taught them to cultivate the land. Their union is the source of all fertility and sustenance in the region. The herders and farmers who live beside the lake are the beneficiaries of this divine marriage, and their rituals maintain the reciprocal relationship that sustains both human and sacred life.

The area around the lake was the heartland of the Zhangzhung Kingdom, the political and spiritual center of pre-Buddhist Tibet. Zhangzhung was the cradle of the Bon religion, the tradition that shaped Tibetan spiritual life before Buddhism arrived. When the Tibetan Empire absorbed Zhangzhung in the seventh century and later converted to Buddhism, the Dangra Yumco region preserved what was suppressed elsewhere.