Hemis Fear

We were bolting along the Leh-Manali highway and gawping at a white boulder field of stupas, when our taxi driver tapped the brakes causing us to pull up at the side of the road. Two men tore open the sliding door, and gleefully hurled two packages in at us, before slamming it shut and sending us back on our way. Thomas and I looked at each other, bewildered. Had we just been handed a bomb? We peered into each of the bags, and untied them tentatively to find a collection of food: orange juice, bananas, crackers.

It was an important date in the local Buddhist calendar: festival day at Hemis monastery, commemorating the life of Guru Padmasambhava, the man who brought Buddhism to the Tibetan people! And free food was just the first evidence of the festivities...

As we passed beneath a gateway carved with fanciful depictions of tigers, dragons, and ornate patterns, the scale of the event had very much become apparent. People had flocked from all over the union territory, crammed into buses and clinging to the back of trucks, and local families were dressed in their finest traditional woolens and turquoise jewelry, while a sea of parked cars stretched for miles down the mountainside.

After finding our homestay, we headed straight into the carnival, ascending past baby monks (or as Thomas kept calling them, chipmunks) jumping for joy on bouncy castles and trampolines, then adult monks crowded rowdily around a green-felt betting table, and even a young monk shooting tourists excitedly with his toy gun.

At the top was the monastery itself, a tiered amphitheatre carved into the mountainside, one of the barren Himalayan peaks that framed the action. We poked about until we found the main courtyard, dripping in vibrant colour and crammed with expectant tourists squinting into the high-altitude sun. Frilly silks hung from each ledge, and ropes cordened off the stage like a wrestling ring, where monks wore opulent brocade robes.

Their walkout music was the deep, droning vibration produced by long, telescopic copper horns, beneath the semi-rhythmic metallic clashing of cymbals. They were accompanied by the steady thrum of drums, and the voice of a man who had definitely lowered the pitch of his voice by at least two octaves to impress the ladies.

But the monks' performances were less about RKOs and more about traditional Cham dancing, which involved spinning methodically in clumsy circular patterns. It must have been sweaty work, as they balanced heavy masks on their heads, meant to represent wrathful deities with bulging eyes and jagged teeth to scare away evil spirits.

Two evil spirits that remained undeterred were Thomas and I, and we stuck around for the most captivating part, a performance from the "Kung Fu Nuns". They chopped, flipped and shouted 'AH!' in perfect synchrony, in maybe the most impressive group act since Diversity dazzled Simon Cowell in the Britain's Got Talent final.

As the day grew long, we climbed to another stupa, before retiring to our homestay, where the light was golden and the view was fleeting. Our host, Padma, lovely though she was, served us the middest rice and dhal I've ever eaten, then we headed up to possibly the hardest mattress I've ever laid on. A bad night's sleep and a squat toilet, that's enough to give anyone Hemis Fear.Read more