#himalayansociety

[dawadaparkhang]

From the windowpanes of the old Lalung Monastery — this elderly woman was making her way through to the monastery above, where I stood and was capturing her, to her surprise and awe in the second picture, she posed frantically. 📿

One of the first monasteries to be founded in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, was Lhalung Monastery, also known as Lhalun Monastery or Lalung Monastery (also known as the Sarkhang or Golden Temple). The name Lhalun literally translates as "land of the gods" (lha = deities, devtas; lung = land, region), and it is believed that the Lhalung Devta, who emerges from the Tangmar mountain beyond the settlement, is the main Devta/deity of the valley. According to legend, this mountain's colour changes according to the emotions of the gods or devtas; red is thought to represent wrath, yellow, joy, etc.

Tashi Delek / Julley everyone! 🙏🏼Comment below if you liked the story and please share it with your friends and family. Do support my blog and check out my social on Instagram too for exciting fresh content. 🤌🏼✨

[dawadaparkhang]

Story of Palzom Deckey; A Handicraft shop owner in Tabo, Spiti Valley (the trans-Himalayan region) in Himachal Pradesh

“I first came to visit Tabo in 1989 and saw how remote and otherworldly it was, I was so mesmerized - shortly after that I left."

I came back again in 2007, during the time my father-in-law used to run this shop, and shortly after that, I and my husband used to handle this handicraft shop. When we started, there was no connectivity to the town, and we didn't really have a proper shop.

- From one of the first shop owners in a remote Himalayan region where only offbeat travellers dared to visit.

We used to have a tent cloth (tarpaulin) which we used as a roof over our head for the shop, after a long while when we both had a hard time convincing our landlord that we are facing many issues as we have to wrap up everything by 5 pm in the evening, we need a proper structure and dimensions for our shop, and after continuous efforts, we built this shop that you're seeing today. And this was all back in the year 2009!

It took us 3-4 hours every single day to set up our shop, back then it used to be on a woven cot. The types of items we sold were antique pieces and handicrafts from Nepal, Tibet, and regional India. When we started in Tabo, it was extremely remote than it is today. The streets were empty, they were not even built. There was no connectivity and the only shop that existed was mine alone. There was the Tabo Monastery and its guest house. During that time, his Holiness Dalai Lama initiated Kala-Chakra and I met him for his teaching. Majorly foreign tourists visited for 'off-beat travel' in those days. There were no apple orchards, homestays, or any vegetation. Life was different and serene back then, my business boomed and has boomed since then, though after the pandemic hit it has been difficult to sustain the business, as I run a shop here in Tabo in the summers and at Goa in winter.

A self-made woman in business, a daughter, a mother, and a grandmother, and our very own sweet and loving aunty, Deckey Palzom.

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Tashi Delek / Julley everyone! 🙏🏼Comment below if you liked the story and please share it with your friends and family. Do support my blog and check out my social on Instagram too for exciting fresh content. 🤌🏼✨