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"Rain is so scarce in cold deserts of Spiti Valley. Surprisingly it started raining in the evening for almost 30 minutes filling in my mind with nostalgia of rains that I am used to. We were inside the Tabo monastery when it started drizzling and it was such a great feeling to sense the trickling of drops on the tin sheets. Tabo monastery is one of the oldest monasteries in this region dating back to 1011 years. The whole place had a ‘Celtic’ feeling to the atmosphere. May be it was the architecture.
A young monk took us around explaining various aspects of the stunningly beautiful wall paintings and murals originally done by Kashimiri painters who were brought in exclusively for this purpose thousand years before. The wall depicts various phases of the life of the Buddha and images of various offering deities. While walking through the dimly lit monastery listening to the monk, for some reason, my mind refused to go into the details of the paintings and all those information he was providing in his halting English. I just wanted to absorb the whole feeling and be there at that moment. I still don’t know if it was me absorbing the feeling of the place or whether it was the place that was absorbing me. Like how the mountains sometimes have taken me in to their depth and intricacies!
The Monastery has suffered damages during the 70’s earthquakes and some of the murals and sculptures have been destroyed beyond repair. Still it has survived all the onslaughts of nature and not much damage has happened to the basic infra structure. May be modern architects should take a cue from this indigenous knowledge before recommending any more earthquake resistant building techniques! "
© GP
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