Key to Spiti Valley

Posted by Sriram (Chennai, India) on 1 November 2009 in Landscape & Rural and Portfolio.

30 minutes from Kaza is this beautiful Monastery called "Ki". Here is more about this place... Ki Monastery is the oldest and the biggest monastery of Spiti dominating Ki-Village. About 300 lamas are receiving their religious training in its monastery, which houses rare paintings and beautiful scriptures of Buddha and other gods and goddesses. It is serving western population of Spiti. It is regarded as the largest in the sub-division. It is a collection of rooms and a labyrinth of corridors that do not follow any defined plan, but seem to have grown over the years. No definite data can be ascribed to the construction of the gompa - that acted both as a monastery and as a fort. In the architectural definitions given to various monasteries, Ki falls in the 'Pasada' style which is characterised by more stories than one and often plays the role of a fort-monastery. Ki is the repository of the rare 'Thangka' paintings and several ancient musical instruments - trumpets, cymbals and drums. Its library holds the manuscripts of the sacred Tangyur texts. Apart from the cells pccupied by the monks, the monastery has a large 'Du-Khang', assembly chamber lined by religious paintings and other chambers of the incarnate abbot, the zim-chung is the highest point in the building. The village of Ki is just short of the monastery.

Do check out some of the themes that I have worked on in the past, esplly:

Colours of Rajasthan:
http://thetraces.aminus3.com/tag/jaisalmer/
http://thetraces.aminus3.com/tag/jodhpur/
http://thetraces.aminus3.com/tag/udaipur/

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