The Incredible Ladakh Monasteries
One of the most visited monasteries in Ladakh is Thiksey, home to two hundred monks and dating back to the 15th century.
I’ve already mentioned in a previous chronicle that traveling through Ladakh feels like traversing the moon. Only the blue serpent of the Indus adds a splash of color and life to the imposing landscape, bristling with peaks. The riverbanks break the gray monotony of the surroundings with the miracle of green life. The rest is bare, torn stone. To the right of the stream rise the snow-capped peaks of the Karakoram, while to the left stand the pinnacles of the Great Himalayas. The Indus is everything in Ladakh; it divides mountain ranges and enlivens the landscape. Along its banks, most of the monasteries take their stand, bearers of the country’s history and true beacons of light and hope for the suffering Ladakhis, who are predominantly Buddhist.
The Indus is life in Ladakh. Everything that lives and grows depends on the river. / Photo: F. López-Seivane
Air India is the only airline flying to Ladakh. The country is so high that everything can be seen in detail from the airplane window.
The capital, Leh, is situated in the Indus Valley, perched atop a vast barren slope that gently descends to the river, eight kilometers below. The altitude of three thousand five hundred meters makes the legs feel like rubber in the first days. It is advisable to spend at least a full day resting before starting to explore the region, but so many hours in the hotel can become tedious, and it’s common to end up buying pashminas in the city’s bazaars, which are cheaper and of better quality here. Or directly visiting the countless monasteries of the land.
One of the Many Monasteries Dominating the Land / Photo: F. López-Seivane
Following the river, the main road of the country strings together the sparse population centers like beads on a necklace. The rest are distant valleys, such as Zanskar, which can only be reached in winter by walking across the frozen river that bears its name—a saga that can last ten days. Or Nubra, to the north, the most fertile of all, which lies outside the accessible area and requires a great deal of paperwork to reach. There, amidst gray sand dunes contrasting with the green of its fields, live the Changpa, the first nomads to migrate to Ladakh from neighboring Tibet in search of pastures for their animals. They still dwell in “rebos,” yak-hair tents surrounded by stone walls, which they share with their animals. The Changpa subsist mainly on tsampa (a kind of oat porridge) and the inevitable gur-gur chai, a tea fortified with yak butter, which they hospitably offer to all guests but few can manage to swallow. In the valley, besides wheat and oats, grow walnuts and small apricots, usually eaten dried.
The Indus flows majestically between bare mountains / Photo: F. López-Seivane
One of the most visited monasteries in Ladakh is Thiksey, home to two hundred monks and dating back to the 15th century. The most extraordinary feature is the view from its privileged location overlooking the Indus Valley. But none surpasses Hemis, the oldest of all, inhabited by two hundred fifty monks who have embedded their homes into the sheltered slope adjacent to the old monastery courtyard where every summer the country’s most extraordinary mask festivals are held. Hemis is the hallmark, the source, and the conduit of Mahayana Buddhist tradition, and it is said that in one of its most secluded rooms lies an old manuscript, “The Life of Saint Issa,” the greatest of all sons of men—a sort of unknown gospel that recounts the adventures of young Jesus (Issa in Tibetan) and his initiatory journeys through India and Tibet, where, it is said, he spent several years studying Vedic and Buddhist teachings before returning to Palestine to preach the ‘good news.’ When questioned about the manuscript, the monks smile and vanish. My friend Rinchen, however, who was given to the monastery by his parents as a baby and has spent his life living as a monk, assured me that the manuscript exists and is kept there, in one of the twelve secret rooms scattered throughout the monastery. Who knows.
Monks Meditating and Praying in the Sanctum Sanctorum of Hemis Monastery / Photo: F. López-Seivane
Two tourists stroll through the silent cloister of Hemis Monastery / Photo: F. López-Seivane
In the Himalayas, as evening falls, the valleys are extinguished and the peaks are set alight. Each rock dons light and color in the heights while the sky displays its finest attire. Occasionally, the silhouette of a chiru, a Tibetan antelope endangered for its shatoosh, the finest and most precious wool in the world, appears perched on the highest crag, silhouetted impassively against the sky, surely also enchanted by the magic of twilight. It is, I tell myself, the perfect image to embody the spirit of the Himalayas—a place beautiful, solitary, imbued with mysticism and stillness, yet also harsh, inhospitable, and scarcely habitable. Only suited for those who find solace in living far from the worldly din, closer to the sky than to the earth.
A Buddhist monk seems to watch the passage of time without anguish or haste / Photo: F. López-Seivane
One of many monasteries set in the most rugged and remote locations / Photo: F. López-Seivane
Wandering the lonely paths of Ladakh, a small hermitage may appear at any turn, with its hermit inside / Photo: F. López-Seivane
In contrast to the simplicity and austerity of most monasteries, this is the entrance to the palace where the Dalai Lama often spends his summers / Photo: F. López-Seivane
The Reference Article Los increíbles monasterios de Ladakh
