The Prayer Wheel at the Zapha Dorje Ling Monastery, Buddhkharabu, Ladakh
Budhkharbu is a hamlet located enroute from Srinagar to Leh.
The dusty road from Kargil climbs up the river bank and then passes leeward of the mountains with its barren inhospitable surface. The old dried up sludge of the ocean floor that has risen up to form these mountains is still loose and keeps on slipping down ever so often.
The sparse autumnal leaves of the poplars and the fruit trees in the riverine valley disappear very fast and on the dusty route the only constant companion are the jaggged edges of the mountain peaks looking down with emphatic disdain.
Buddhkharbu obviously has something to do with Lord Buddha. I would come to know later that the place has some personal significance for me as well. A few months after the journey while going through the photographs I was told by my father that he knew Buddhkharbu very well. He said he had been there for 2 years in the desolate hamlet of less than 10 people in the 1960s soon after the war with the Chinese forces.
This is the Zapha Dorje Ling Monastery in the frame. It is for nuns and it came into existence very recently. It was not there when my father was in that place. I asked him if he had seen it or forseen it that a monastery would come up at that spot. "No not even in my dreams he said. "
The Dalai Lama inaugurated it in September 2010. The yellow walls are still fresh and clean and you have to cross the river to reach it.
_DSC5971 jpeg
The Prayer Wheel at the Zapha Dorje Ling Monastery, Buddhkharabu, Ladakh
Budhkharbu is a hamlet located enroute from Srinagar to Leh.
The dusty road from Kargil climbs up the river bank and then passes leeward of the mountains with its barren inhospitable surface. The old dried up sludge of the ocean floor that has risen up to form these mountains is still loose and keeps on slipping down ever so often.
The sparse autumnal leaves of the poplars and the fruit trees in the riverine valley disappear very fast and on the dusty route the only constant companion are the jaggged edges of the mountain peaks looking down with emphatic disdain.
Buddhkharbu obviously has something to do with Lord Buddha. I would come to know later that the place has some personal significance for me as well. A few months after the journey while going through the photographs I was told by my father that he knew Buddhkharbu very well. He said he had been there for 2 years in the desolate hamlet of less than 10 people in the 1960s soon after the war with the Chinese forces.
This is the Zapha Dorje Ling Monastery in the frame. It is for nuns and it came into existence very recently. It was not there when my father was in that place. I asked him if he had seen it or forseen it that a monastery would come up at that spot. "No not even in my dreams he said. "
The Dalai Lama inaugurated it in September 2010. The yellow walls are still fresh and clean and you have to cross the river to reach it.
_DSC5971 jpeg