Beyond the range
Spiti and Lahaul lie north of the main Himalayan range, in the rain shadow — high, arid valleys with a Tibetan Buddhist population and cultivation confined to irrigated terraces. Spiti was governed by a hereditary chief called the Nono under the Ladakhi kings, and Lahaul by a set of thakur families.
Political control passed between Ladakh, Kullu, the Sikhs and finally the British, but the valleys' remoteness meant that authority was always exercised at a distance and through the local chiefs.
Tabo
Tabo monastery, founded in 996 by the great translator Rinchen Zangpo under royal patronage from the Guge kingdom of western Tibet, has been in continuous use ever since. Its mud-brick halls hold wall paintings and clay sculpture of the tenth and eleventh centuries that survive because the climate is dry and the site was never sacked; the assembly hall's life-size stucco bodhisattvas standing against the walls are among the oldest intact Buddhist interiors in the Himalaya.
Key and Dhankar monasteries, on their crags above the Spiti river, are the region's other principal foundations.
The valleys were closed to outsiders as a border area after 1962 and opened only in 1992. They form the Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh, the least densely populated district in India.
Further reading
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Behrendt, Kurt A. The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007
- Blurton, T. Richard. Hindu Art. Harvard University Press, 1993
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.