Monasteries of Leh

The night was very cold. Manish told in the morning that the temperature was around -24 degrees. He mentioned that temperature range between -10 to -20 is good for Chadar. If the temperature drops below -25, the ice on the Chadar starts cracking.

Today on the 24^th, the plan was to do some site-seeing around at Leh. In the morning, another member, Bhavin also came down from Delhi.

There are many places around Leh which are famous for their monasteries and we had planned to visit a few of them.

The first place which we visited was Shey Palace. 15 kms from Leh, is the former summer palace of the kings of Laddakh. The gompa is partially used and is still begin restored. The 12m high Shakyamuni Buddha statue is largest in this region.

We hiked up to the top. The views were very amazing from the top. The snow clad mountains of the Stok ranges appeared to be very close. We met bunch school children who had bunked their school to visit the Shey palace. The kids proudly told us that “3 Idiots” was shot in their school.

Thiksey Monestry was the next place. It is close to 17 km from Leh and is is very beautiful thanks to the extensive restoration work. It has a big statue of the Maitreya Buddha.

After Thiksey we visited Stakna Gompa. It is on the Hemis side of the Indus River and is around 800 years old. I found that in all the gompas, people make an offering of a lot of chocolates. As the old llama at the gompa showed as around, I realized that it was extremely cold in there, much too cold for us to bear. The llama on the other hand felt nothing.

By the time we came to Leh, it was 3.30pm and we were all hungry, but I couldn't get the beautiful gompas we had seen, out of my mind. I had wanted to see more and spend more time at each of the site. I made up my mind to visit again soon.

We had some good hot food and decided to come back to the hotel. There is a very small duration in the day, between 6pm to 10pm when electricity was available in the Leh city. We did the packing of our stuff early that night and were ready for the next day.

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