Lamayuru Festival
Lamayuru is one of my favorite places in Ladakh. It’s a beautiful village with an amazing monastery set in a totally surreal mountain landscape. I went to the monastery’s annual festival last weekend. Masked dances (chams) enacting themes from Tibetan mythology are the center stage of these festivals and the house is always packed. (Thankfully, [...]
A Great Little Day!
Today was a great little day for me. I stumbled onto a small festival where I was the only non-Ladakhi and the locals just brought me into the fold. The exact reason for the festival is still unclear to me, but monks and nuns from different monasteries were there to recite some Buddhist texts. The [...]
Ladakh Prayer Festival: Day 5
The photo above is the gompa’s big prayer wheel. I met the monk at Lamayuru Monastery last year. He spends most of his time in a meditation room (6 years so far) and is the only long-haired and long-bearded monk I’ve seen here. I gave him the pictures I took of him last year, as [...]
Ladakh Prayer Festival: Day 1
About 1,300 Ladakhi Buddhist monks and nuns have gathered here in Leh at Soma Gompa for a five-day prayer festival called Ladakh Monlam Chemo. The monks sit in the main shrine and the nuns occupy a separate space (which is third-rate in comparison). It runs from 8 – 4 and includes breakfast and lunch. I [...]
Ming Po
Ming Po is 86 years old and comes from Karsha village in Zanskar. She caught my eye the other morning while she was filling her yellow and green jugs at the neighborhood water tap. Like many places in India, Leh has a water shortage and residents without their own sources of water (most of the [...]
