Being asked whether I am religious, my answer is no. I do believe in God, but there is no such thing as an amplifier (that would be a church then) needed between me and God.
In Switzerland many young people seem to think the same. As soon as the church is asking for some 3 or 4% of your annual gross salary, people rethink their need for a religion membership card.

Things are different in Tibet. Whatever you do is guided by Buddha (and there are several Buddha). People refer to “my Buddha” and visit a special temple or place to worship. And worship they all do.
The concept is the following: Generally, Buddha is not happy with you. He/she/it will inflict draconic punishments on you whenever possible. To escape this hardship, you have to make Buddha happy. How? As in every religion, prayer is a good start. Even better is a long pilgrim journey during which you should lie down, get up, praise Buddha, lie down again, get up, etc., as often as you can.
We saw pilgrims on their way to Lhasa through the train windows on our journey from Beijing – and this is a distance of more than 4000km. The longer the pilgrimage, the better. You get the picture.
However, if you really want to make Buddha happy, you have to burn a whole into your wallet. The more RMB you leave after your visit in the monastery of your choice, the better.

On our 4-days trip to the Mt. Everest, we visited many monasteries. One more beautiful than the other one. It was a joy to take pictures – provided you could afford it. At the entrance every non-pilgrim (and they somehow seem to know who is a pilgrim and who not) pays 5 to 10 Dollars (that is up to 70 RMB and equals the salary of landless labourer in a week) and once you are inside, you have to pay a separate fee if you want to take pictures inside the holly halls. 
I could understand it if you were not allowed to take pictures – but the doing of the brother monks seems to be guided by Adam Smith rather than by Buddha.

Ok, you say, we are some rich and possibly superficial tourists and do not earn better. Ok, I say, fair enough, but what about the poor pilgrims? You say: “But they can enter the monastery for free!” That’s right, but once they are inside, they blood-letting starts. There are plenty of shrines you have to walk by. At each one you must leave a yuan or two – otherwise Buddha will not be happy at all. Also, you should buy some butter-candle – available in every good monastery (for some RMB, of course). On my stroll through the monastery I got harassed by some chief-monks three times – just because I carried my camera with me (I did not take any pictures of their most holly halls). “You picture, you money!” was the message. I shock their greedy hands of and took a picture of the pile of money they were accumulating instead.
Once more, I can understand that a monastery (or any church similar institution for that matter) needs money and wants to get that money from believers. However, getting money from people who hardly can afford food and clothes for their children seems tough. Even more so when you see monks speaking into their cutting edge mobile phones – courtesy of the poor pilgrims.

So, there we are. I don’t like religious institutions – any of them, since all of them make money with the fear of people. This has been the same for the last 2000 years and it won’t change much in the future.  
However, I do want to add that I like some religions for the values they stand for on the paper. Buddhism could be great – if monks were not human beings and what we stand for: vain, greed and materialism.

Requiem: Right now I am sitting in the plane from Lhasa back to Beijing. I fly economy class and boarded as one of the last ones. When entering the plane I walked through Business Class (yes, there is such a thing as a communist businessman who is entitled to a 8cm wider seat). On seat 2A (window) a fat man was sitting. His head was bold and he wore a red and orange dress. Guess…