MANALI
Small, colorful monastery close to Mall Road with a Tibetan handicraft market attached. A quick, calm stop between Mall Road and Hadimba Temple rather than a standalone destination.
The monastery was built in 1960 by Tibetan refugees who settled in Manali after fleeing Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959, part of a wider wave of Tibetan resettlement across Himachal Pradesh. Its yellow pagoda-style roof and tiered tower follow traditional Tibetan Buddhist monastic architecture, and its interior murals depict the life of the Buddha and Buddhist cosmological concepts such as the Kalachakra, or wheel of life. It functions both as an active place of worship for Manali's Tibetan community and as the anchor institution of the adjoining Tibetan Market, which grew up around it as a source of livelihood for the refugee community.
