Monks and Monasteries

Meet red-robed Buddhist Monks
and Reincarnate Lamas.


With the vanishing of the once-legendary kingdoms of Tibet, Sikkim and Ladakh, Bhutan remains the last bastion of Mahayana Buddhism. Red-robed monks and Lamas preside over all religious ceremonies which might be a celebration of a wedding or a promotion, the consecration of a temple or a house, invocation of local deities or exorcising spirits from village homes, or reading the Book of the Dead to guide a dead person’s conscious principle passing through Bardo, the place between cycles of death and rebirth.