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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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