About Drametse Lhakhang
Drametse Lhakhang, a sixteenth-century monastery straddling a steep and narrow mountain ridge in the verdant slopes of the eastern Himalayas, today houses a community of 80 monks. This Nyingma Buddhist site predates the seventeenth-century consolidation of Bhutan into a single kingdom. The complex consists of a three-story temple in the center of a courtyard surrounded by residential quarters, offices, and classrooms on the periphery. The thick walls of the buildings, made out of stone laid in clay mortar, are coated with characteristic white and red-pigmented limewash. In the interior of the lhakhang, carved, painted wood columns support painted beams and the building’s unique “flying” roof, a low-pitch roof that extends far beyond the edge of the walls without being attached to them . Drametse Monastery was founded by Ani Choten Zangmo, Pema Lingpa’s granddaughter, who fled from Bumthang to escape a proposal of marriage from the local king. She fled east and when she found a pl...