For a detailed description of the Hemis festival and the paintings at Alchi

Mani walls and the monks' houses on the way to Hemis Gompa.

Hemis Gompa on the first day of the Cham Dances — the mystery play. The dances take place in the inner courtyard of the monastery, below the balconies with the red fringes. Merchants sell their wares or serve food in the tents. We camped with other local pilgrims under poplars in a valley to the left.

The First Day

A precious Perakh the heirloom of the Ladakhi women, a heavy head piece studded with turquoise, corals and silver coins.

The grandmothers take care of the bottom-less baby. The woman on the right is the baby's grandmother.

The mother of the baby was just sufficiently cross-eyed to be considered a great beauty, and she knew it. After I had taken her picture she flirted shamelessly with me, baring her breast to eventually ostensibly feed the baby, etc... Tibetan women can be surprisingly aggressive grabbing the unwary foreigner between the legs in public for "fun," or the girls at the hotel reception want to spend a night "making babies".... This has nothing to do with prostitution (although that exists too in Lhasa) but very much with the free social position of the woman in these mountains. In Tibet proper she is often married to three or four men and even in Ladakh the woman decides and makes advances towards the man she would like to have in her bed.

Sharp, argumentative grandmothers. Mother Kiddar also belonged to that group — she always had the last word in any argument...

The big Tangka — scroll-painting — of Hemis showing the Great Guru Padmasambhava is rolled out early in the morning.

The orchestra and the masked dancer emerge from the Dukhang. The deep-throated long-horns make much noise.... to scare evil spirits away. The gallery is crowded with German tour groups. In front sit visiting monks from other monasteries in the valley.

The proceedings begin with a group of "Black-Hat Sorcerers," pre-Buddhist Bön magicians (shamans) whom Padmasambhava recruited to protect the Dharma (Buddhist Faith) from evil spirits. They purify the courtyard. Except for the last dance of the skeletons on the second day the dancing is very ponderous and slow to an accompaniment of sutra chanting and the banging of big drums, cymbals, and long-horns.

The dances begin. Two "Old Tibetan Kings" reenact the history of Padmasambhava's first appearance in Tibet.

 These frightening, black masks carry their viscera and cardboard effigies of the Linga (not to be confused with Lingam, Shiva's phallus). The funny looking, yellow-clad masks are itinerant Buddhist monks with their begging bowls. On the very left stands one of the Old Tibetan Hero-Warriors. 

 From left to right: two "Jokers" or Hindu priests, Three Black-Hat Sorcerers, and a frightening mask possibly an Old-Tibetan Temma Fury, or a frightening manifestation of Padmasambhava — there are so many "frightening" or "wrathful" manifestations in Tibetan Buddhism that an annotated list covers 700 pages of a modern text on the subject. Who knows them all...? and that is precisely the reason for the need for sorcerers and magic and music and masks that will keep their influence under control.

 Padmasambhava - under the umbrella of the Dharma - the Faith - and his entourage emerge from the Dukhang of the monastery....

 ...and set up court in front of the Abbot of Hemis

 A peaceful incarnation of Padmasambhava in the foreground and the oversized Guru himself under the umbrella.

Padmasambhava as Guru Rinpoche with his retainers who are smiling about some irreverent joke the pig-mask has made. The pig is a probably a representation of Vajravarahi or Vajrayogini — Dordshe Phagmo in Tibetan— the Diamond Sow and female protrectress of Nepal. She carries a mirror, which reflects the future and man's misdeeds.

A lokapala, a local wrathful deity (a form of Pehar?) drafted by Padmasambhava to protect the Dharma. 

A tragic king from Tibet.

 He holds a damaru — a magic double-drum used by shamans, which led me to believe that he is King Langdarma who was assassinated (842) during the fight for supremacy between Padmasambhava's Buddhists and the Bön supported by the Tibetan nobility.

This benign manifestation of Padmasambhava carries a mirror to demonstrate the inverted image of the "real" world.

The red mask to the right is Dragpo — The Terrible One. He is the most important terrifying emanation of Padmasambhava in the first day dances, he will destroy the linga with the phurbu — ritual dagger he holds in his hand. In the back waits Yama bull-headed Death for his turn to destroy the linga on the second day. - Because the place was so crowded that one could not move and Cornelius was feeling lousy there are no photos of the destruction of the Linga — Evil (female!) from the first day. The act will be repeated on the second day when Yama, Death chops up the Linga, - see below.

An old pilgrim and his grandson.

Two rugged men intensely watching the proceedings.

 Distribution of money and tea to Lamas from other gompas.

Towards the end of the first day Cornelius was in poor shape running a mild temperature. Always weary of high altitude illness to which he and I are susceptible, I finally decided to put him into the tent to sleep while I cooked dinner for us — watched by the young people from the pilgrims tents nearby.  

We had pitched our tent in a stand of poplars above the Gompa in the friendly company of pilgrims, who soon congregated in our front yard. I told them German fairy tales and the girls sang Tibetan and Ladakhi songs. When I knew no more, Herbert, a bearded man from New York, whom Cornelius had already met in India, invented a lengthy mystery story and I cooked dinner for us.

I had brought an English pressure cooker which got a lot of attention. Thank God, the thing did not blow up.

Adidas, she wore her pullover inside-out, was the brightest among them. She spoke excellent English. The old woman collected trash on the campsite and watched for order.  

 Later in the evening these two characters visited us, and discovered themselves in the illustrations of our lonely-planet "Ladakh" guide....!

The Second Day

 On the second day the abbot was absent and so were the German tourists, the place was nearly empty and I had full freedom to photograph to my heart's delight. - As on the first day the Black-hat Sorcerers first disinfected the courtyard.

 A tired herald leaning to the base of the flag pole. He holds the triangular, red and blue flag of Tibet!

 The beggar monks are back too.

 Two scary wrathful ghosts.

 and one of the Tibetan warriors defending the Dharma

 The monks of Hemis are distributing tea to the Black-Hat Sorcerers 

 Meanwhile two monks prepare a triangular space which they paint with blue and yellow chalk. The triangle is a spirit trap for the Linga, a small bread-dough figure of a woman, which they place on a chopping board, place it into the trap, and cover it with a red cloth:

 The linga in the spirit trap - a rare photograph, but nobody prevented me from taking this picture. The linga has a double meaning, it represents the evil in the world which lures man from the true path and himself but it also represents what we call the Ego which has to be destroyed to free man from himself — only our "Ego" is usually considered male....

 The Old-Tibetan Warrior-Heroes and the wrathful, black-masked lokapalas dance around the linga to ban all evil into it.

 Yama — Death (of Iranian origin) arrives to begin his dance around the linga. He carries a large saber in his hand with which he will chop up the bread figure a few seconds later. He and his frightening entourage then eat the crumbs. 

 This being done Yama loses all power and four Skeletons, the guardians of the cremation grounds of the four directions begin a wild, cheerful dance around the linga, celebrating the destruction of evil and the ego....

End of the dances. Every person around raced to catch a vehicle back to Leh. Cornelius' temperature had risen and he now felt truly miserable. I tried to persuade the escort of a Japanese tour group to let him ride on their bus, but was rebuffed by the silly woman (who spoke good English). My patient was at an end and I made the mistake of getting very angry at her - which one must absolutely never do in the Orient. We finally climbed on a truck where we shared space with a large number of people. Half-way to Leh the truck blew a tire.... Well, it took us three hours to reach our room and put Cornelius into bed. Mother Kiddar proved a good soul after all, she made special Ladakhi tea for him and a rice soup for dinner.

 For the story of the rest of our stay in Ladakh return by way of your browser arrow or click here Leh.