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Mongar - Tashigang, Drametse Lhakhang

Drametse Lhakhang is a sixteenth-century monastery straddling a steep and narrow mountain ridge in the verdant slopes of the eastern Himalayas. The complex consists of a three-story temple in the center of a courtyard surrounded by residential quarters, offices, and classrooms on the periphery. The thick walls of the buildings, made out of stone laid in clay mortar, are coated with white and red-pigmented limewash. In the interior of the lhakhang, carved, painted wood columns support painted beams and the building’s unique “flying” roof, a low-pitch roof that extends far beyond the edge of the walls without being attached to them.

This Nyingma Buddhist site predates the 17th-century consolidation of Bhutan into a single kingdom and remains the seat of the living lineage of the famous religious master Terton Pema Lingpa. The current abbot of Drametse is Sungtrul Rinpoche, the eleventh Pema Lingpa incarnation. At present more than 80 young monks reside and are educated there.

(source: www.asianartnewspaper.com/article/drametse-lhakang)