India's highest monastery town — Tawang Gompa at 3,048 metres, Sela Pass snowfields, and a Monpa Buddhist culture untouched by the lowland world
Tawang is a remote town in Arunachal Pradesh at 3,048 metres near the China (Tibet) border — the highest town in India accessible by road, and home to Tawang Monastery, the largest Buddhist monastery in India and the second largest in the world after Lhasa's Drepung. The surrounding district is home to the Monpa people, a Tibetan-descended Buddhist community who have maintained their culture, script, and monasteries despite the region's modern strategic significance as a contested border zone between India and China. The approach over Sela Pass (4,170m) through snowfields and alpine meadows i…
Tawang Monastery was founded in 1681 by Merak Lama Lodre Gyatso under the direction of the 5th Dalai Lama, making it one of the oldest functioning Tibetan Buddhist monasteries outside Tibet. The town's modern significance was established in 1950 when the Dalai Lama (then 14) fled Tibet and crossed Sela Pass into Tawang before continuing to Dharamsala — the same route used by thousands of Tibetan refugees. The region was administered by Tibet and then British India under the McMahon Line (1914); China disputes the McMahon Line, making Arunachal Pradesh including Tawang a longstanding territori…