Annual Tibet festival starts with thangka

Thousands of Tibetans and tourists celebrated an exhibition of giant thangka - religious images embroidered in silk - to mark the start of the annual shoton, the Tibetan word for yogurt festival, on Saturday.

The thangka images were unrolled at the Drepung and Sera monasteries in Lhasa, Tibet autonomous region, at 8:30 am on Saturday.

Accompanied by the sound of horns and religious chanting reverberating through the valley, monks slowly unrolled the thangka on a stage on the mountainside behind the monasteries.