Rumtek, East Sikkim
Rumtek faces Gangtok from across the Ranipool valley. What meets you at the top is the door: five carved snow lions above it, and the sandals of those already inside in a row on the step.
Photo: Soumyojit Sinha
1959 and 1966
The 16th Karmapa reached Sikkim from Tibet in 1959, bringing relics and sacred objects from Tsurphu, his seat there. He opened Rumtek as his seat in exile on Losar, the Tibetan new year, in 1966, on an eighteenth-century foundation.
Photo: Soumyojit Sinha / Pexels
22 km from Gangtok
The road drops through Ranipool and climbs the opposite slope. Cars stop below the monastery, so you walk the last stretch past the village under its wall. Keep photo ID in your pocket: the seat is guarded, and the guards ask for it.
Photo: Pritam Laskar / Unsplash
When the monks are away
No monastery here prints its prayer times, so we ring Rumtek's office the evening before. If the assembly is away at a ceremony, you sit in on prayers at Lingdum, the Zurmang Kagyu house at Ranka completed in 1999, and see Rumtek after lunch.
Photo: Ankan Sarkar / Pexels
500 m down the path
Skip the gift stalls and take the path about 500 m down to Old Rumtek, the monastery of the 1740s that stood here before the Karmapa came. You may be its only visitors.
Photo: Arjis Kundu / Pexels
Plan the morning
Come in the first hour after the gates open, while the courtyard belongs to the monks' college rather than the stalls. Sit along the back wall during prayers, ask before any photo, and you are back in Gangtok for breakfast by 09:30.
Photo: Unsplash