Exploring Pangan Monastery. Part-3 (Exploring the schools, the stupas and the temple).

Namaste 🙏

Hope you all are doing well!!!

Thanks for showing love on the first two parts of the series. This will be the last blog of the series and part three in which will discover the Pangan monastery closely. If you haven’t been through the first two parts of this amazing series, I’ll be posting links below.

https://hive.blog/hive-163772/@parvkhuller/exploring-pangan-monastery-part-1

https://hive.blog/hive-163772/@parvkhuller/exploring-pangan-monastery-part-2-the-mysterious-prayer-flags

So this is the parking area of the monastery, where people park their car whenever they need to visit the monastery. By the way, this parking area is only meant for staff or the people who live here, but if you are a visitor, you can also park here for a while. I was on foot so we didn’t have to worry about anything. On the right side of the parking, there is one staircase that will lead you to the campus of the monastery.

The Tibetan School-

As already mentioned in previous blogs that this campus has many things like a school temple, many Stupa, many houses of people and a lot of other things to and will be exploring all of them in this blog. The first thing you will see whenever you enter this place is the school.

These different schools are special schools only reserved for Tibetan people. Unlike conventional schools, these people educate them, their way of living and main focus of these schools are to make them a monk.

It is like if someone is sending their children to these schools. They are fulfilling their part of contributing to the Tibetan society and preserving the Tibetan culture. It is believed that if someone has multiple child, they send one of their child to be a monk.

Just after crossing the school, you come across a lot of little houses that are built on the slope that are meant for I guess the teachers or monks who teach the lessons to the children studying in the school.

As this monastery is built on a cliff and every house has a slope to it, it has an added benefit. The benefit is that the views are just mesmerising from here. You can see the view of Valley and the river clearly.

There are narrow streets built inside of the campus for easy navigation. These are non-motorable and has a lot of slope into it, so it’s only fit for walking, not even cycling.

You will definitely see a lot of colours here. Many buildings are painted red because red is considered sacred in their religion. they also believe that tying a specific kind of flag in front of the door makes the house more peaceful. That’s the reason you will find a flag tied in the front of the house everywhere, here in the monastery campus.

The Stupa—

After crossing the school and the few houses in the campus, you will come across this beautiful looking Stupa, that’s built of the grid in such a location that there is no blockage of any view from there. You will see the clear view of the mountain ranges and slow clad peaks from there.

There is a particular area dedicated for building this stupa and that area also has a beautiful garden. The garden has mostly flower pot in it instead of the planted flowers, but it looked really amazing.

In front of the Stupa, there is a flame that lighting up all the time and the monks of the monastery don’t let it burn out. They keep it lit and that’s their ritual.

The photograph below is my personal favourite photograph of the Stupa. Let me know in the comment, which one you like the most.

The Temple—

Now it was time to visit the most important place of this campus. The temple.

What can I say about the temple? It was a magnificent looking building, right in the middle of the campus in which the monks worshipped. It’s a kind of place that you can only imagine in your dreams, and when you come here in reality, you come to know that in the reality is better than dreams.

Just visiting this place, so meditative imagine having real meditation here and that’s what these monks do every day. There is a specific kind of peacefulness here that cannot be experienced anywhere else.

The temple was right in the end of the cliff, and it was made in such a way that it felt so peaceful. The school was right next to it, and I can imagine how great the children studying in the school would be when they’ll grow up.

The Brigu lake and the Hampta peak is clearly visible from here as you can see in the photograph below. The view of Pir Panjal Range of the Himalayas was looking very magnificent, and I fell in love with the view.

This is the main gate of the temple from where you enter as it was really an early morning time of about 7:30 AM. The ministry Temple was still not open.

As I have mentioned multiple times, this place is built on a cliff, so there is high chances of falling and to prevent that people have constructed a really good railing just outside in the borderline to save people from falling Down the cliff.

There is enough space around the monastery to roam around and complete the Parikrama that is considered really sacred. We also did 2-3 rounds of Parikrama before getting back.

There are many interesting elements in the campus, just like this beautiful looking stone, in which someone has painted a Tibetan Mantra.

That’s all for today, thanks for passing by. Have a good one.!!!

Peace ☮️