The air at 4000 feet is rarified, but that’s not the only reason why the monastery at Rangdum seems magical, enchanted.

Our only means of communicating with the monks (who don’t speak English) is to smile and say, “Jullay!”–an apt greeting for any occasion in Ladakh.

The monastery has a certain melancholy–there isn’t a single painting, object, or structure that doesn’t have need of restoration. It doesn’t take much intuition to know that nothing gets restored here. The poverty is so tangible that you could almost touch it…and yet the faces of the monks are bursting with joy and inner richness.

Rangdum Gompa was constructed around 300 years ago.

We are so far away from everything, in an area plagued with unresolved political conflicts: conflict between the local Buddhist population and the Muslim administrators in Kargil, who in turn are perennially at odds with the largely Hindu Indian government.

It’s easy to see that the regional and central government has little interest in a handful of herdspeople and their Buddhist monastery.