The Mountain Monastery That Grew Richer Than Any Kingdom Around It

Once every twelve years, on one morning in summer, the monks of Hemis bring out a painting.

It is a thangka of Padmasambhava, and it is very old, and it is very large. It hangs in the courtyard for the day. Then it is rolled up and put away for another twelve years.

People plan their lives around it. A Ladakhi who wants to see it has perhaps five or six chances in a lifetime, and if the year is bad, or the money is short, or the roads are closed, the next chance is twelve years off. Families come down from villages two days' walk away. Old men who saw it as boys come back to see it again.

That painting has never had to be hidden. It has never been carried out of a burning building or buried in a field. It has simply been rolled up, and stored, and brought out again, for three and a half centuries.

That is the whole story of Hemis, and it is a rarer story than it sounds.

How the faith got there

Buddhism reached Ladakh early, by the second century of the common era.

It came the way everything came to that country: along the trade roads. The high Indus valley sits on the route between Central Asia and Tibet, and merchants and monks crossed the same passes, in the same weather, often in the same company. Goods went one way, and so did the teaching.