Lachung Monastery is a

Nyingma Nyingma (literally 'old school') is the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. It is also often referred to as ''Ngangyur'' (, ), "order of the ancient translations". The Nyingma school is founded on the first lineages and transl ...

Buddhist

gompa A Gompa or Gönpa ( "remote place", Sanskrit ''araṇya''), also known as ling (), is a Buddhist ecclesiastical fortification of learning, lineage and sādhanā that may be understood as a conflation of a fortification, a vihara and a universi ...

in the

Lachung Lachung is a town and hill station in northeast Sikkim, India. It is located in the North Sikkim district near the border with Tibet. Lachung is at an elevation of about and at the confluence of the Lachen and Lachung Rivers, both tributaries ...

Valley,

Sikkim Sikkim (; ) is a state in Northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Province No. 1 of Nepal in the west and West Bengal in the south. Sikkim is also close to the Siligu ...

, northeastern

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

. It was established in 1880.

means a 'small mountain'. Lachung is at an elevation of about 3,000 m (9,600 ft) at the confluence of the Lachen River and

Lachung River The Lachung River is a tributary of the Teesta River located in the East Indian state of Sikkim. It is a chief tributary of the Teesta, which is an important river in Sikkim along with Rangeet River. The village of Lachung is perched on the cra ...

, tributaries of the

Teesta River Teesta River is a long river that rises in the Pauhunri Mountain of eastern Himalayas, flows through the Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal through Rangpur, Bangladesh, Rangpur, and enters the Bay of Bengal. It drains an area of . In I ...

. The word Lachung means "small mountain". The village is 118 km from

Gangtok Gangtok is a city, municipality, the capital and the largest populated place of the Indian state of Sikkim. It is also the headquarters of the Gangtok District. Gangtok is in the eastern Himalayan range, at an elevation of . The city's populat ...

on the North Sikkim Highway and is the last one before the Indo-Chinese border. It was a trading post between India and Tibet before China forcefully annexed Tibet in 1950. Permits are required for visits to North Sikkim. The monastery hosts a famous mask dance each year.

Footnotes

References

* Singh, Sarina, et al. ''India'', (2009), p. 606. Lonely Planet. .

External links

* * Photos of monastery at
Panoramio is no longer available
an
LACHUNG MONASTERY, North Sikkim, India
Buddhist monasteries in Sikkim Nyingma monasteries and temples 1880 establishments in India {{India-religious-struct-stub