Thikse Monastery
Interesting facts
- Unusually for Maitreya, the future Buddha, the great statue shows him seated in the lotus position rather than on a throne or standing.
- The Maitreya was created by local Ladakhi artists working under master sculptor Nawang Tsering, and it is the largest Buddha image in Ladakh.
- Thikse once controlled about 1,327 acres of land and around 25 villages, making it a major landholder of the Indus valley.
- The monastery oversees ten other monasteries, among them Diskit in the Nubra valley, Spituk, Likir and Stok.
- Its library keeps the 225 volumes of the Tengyur, the classical Indian commentaries on the Buddha's teachings translated into Tibetan.
- A temple dedicated to the goddess Tara holds 21 images of her, one for each of her traditional forms.
- The Lamokhang temple on the top floor of the complex may traditionally be entered only by men.
- The assembly hall walls carry a painted Wheel of Life, the Buddhist diagram of the cycle of rebirth.
- The Nyerma nunnery within its precincts stands on land Thikse donated at a site linked to the 10th-century translator Rinchen Zangpo.
- About 60 monks live at Thikse, and their autumn Gustor festival is accompanied by a fair at the foot of the hill.
Why it is worth it
Thikse rises out of a rocky hill above the Indus like a town stacked on a single slope: white and ochre blocks climb in terraces to red-painted chapels at the top, and the whole mass narrows as it climbs. It is the largest monastery of central Ladakh, twelve storeys high at about 3,600 metres, and its silhouette is so close to the Potala in Lhasa that it is often called the "Little Potala". It belongs to the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism and traces its founding to 1433, when Jangsem Sherap Zangpo, a disciple of the reformer Tsongkhapa, established the first community here.
Inside the complex are courtyards, assembly halls and small dark chapels full of murals, thangkas, stupas and ranks of bronze images. The most famous room is modern: a temple housing a seated Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, about 15 metres high and rising through two storeys, so that visitors on the upper floor meet his face at eye level. It was made to mark the visit of the 14th Dalai Lama in 1970 and took four years to complete. The gilded face, painted blue hair and calm gaze make it one of the most photographed images in the Himalaya.
The roof terraces are the other reason to come. From the top the view runs across the flat green fields of the Indus valley to the monastery of Matho, the royal palace of Stok and the old palace of Shey — the whole political and religious landscape of old Ladakh in a single panorama. The monastery is a living community of monks, with a nunnery within its precincts, and the early morning prayers are when the place is most itself. Each autumn, in the ninth month of the Tibetan calendar (usually October or November), the Gustor festival brings masked cham dances to the courtyard.
Getting there
Thikse lies about 19 km east of Leh along the Indus valley highway, a short taxi or bus ride from town. The nearest airport is Leh Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport (IXL), roughly 14 km away in a straight line. At this altitude, arriving visitors usually spend a day or two in Leh to acclimatise before exploring the valley.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Thiksey Monastery or Thiksey Gompa is a Buddhist monastery affiliated with the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. It is located on top of a hill in Thiksey approximately 19 kilometres (12 mi) east of Leh, in the Ladakh region of northern India. It is noted for its resemblance to the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, and is the largest monastery in central Ladakh, notably containing a separate set of buildings for female renunciates that has been the source of significant recent building and reorganization.
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