Buddhism in Arunachal Pradesh

In the highlands of the eastern Himalaya, Tibetan Buddhism has survived and grown true to its essence. Once part of a free Tibet and ruled from Lhasa, the region is today the western end of Arunachal Pradesh. It is proverbially beautiful country — huge forests full of fruit and flowers, high mountains, big rivers, and cultures that live simply and hold your attention. The earliest inhabitants belonged to the Monyul Kingdom, which ruled here for more than a thousand years until the sixth century. The Monpa took up Buddhist practice over the centuries that followed, and in the seventeenth century the Galden Namgey Lhatse Monastery — ‘celestial paradise in a clear night’ — was built at Tawang on the wish of the fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso. It belongs to the Gelug school of Mahayana Buddhism. The region is also a good example of how Buddhism absorbs local faith rather than replacing it: the Monpa, and tribes like the Aka and Serdukpen, follow a culture that folds Buddhism together with older Bon and animist belief. The trip climbs from the Assam plains into West Kameng and stops first at Shergaon, a Sherdukpen village among apple orchards, named one of India’s Best Tourism Villages in 2023. It ends at Thembang, a green Monpa village where you join in village life and learn about Bon-Buddhist practice; a responsible tourism project there keeps visitors in homestays and the benefit at village level. In medieval times Thembang was the seat of a large territory ruled by the Thembang Bapu, a direct descendant of the king of Tibet, and the fortification walls of that kingdom still stand. Higher up, toward the border with Tibet, is Tawang, where the monastery sits on the hill above the town and reads from a distance like a signal. Around it are the fifteenth-century Urgelling Monastery, birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama; Anni Gompa, the oldest nunnery in the region, built some five hundred years ago; and Khinmey, the one major Nyingmapa shrine in Tawang, where the hermit Kudun Sangey Rinpoche is said to have quieted a pack of hunting dogs while meditating. Beyond Tawang the country opens out into high peaks and pasture, and the road runs down to Zemithang — a valley wedged between Bhutan and Tibet, the last Indian village on that side, where the twelfth-century Gorsam Chorten stands a hundred feet high in the same lineage as Boudhanath in Kathmandu. There are also two community projects on the route — Manjushree Vidyapeeth, an orphanage run by Buddhist monks, and Jhamtse Gatsal, a home and school for around ninety children from nearby villages. Volunteering at Jhamtse Gatsal is worth doing, and the school will help you find something useful to do. The anthropologist Verrier Elwin put the Monpa well: “Gentle, friendly, courteous, industrious, good to animals, good to children, you see in the Monpas the influence of the compassionate Lord Buddha on the ordinary man.”

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