Place · Himalayan gateway town · India
Bomdila
The gateway town at 2,415m in West Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh, on the Guwahati-Tawang highway 165 kilometres from Tezpur — the staging post for the Tawang monastery pilgrimage and the gateway to the eastern Himalayan Mon-Monpa Buddhist cultural belt. The Bomdila Monastery (Gentse Gaden Rabgyeling, built 1965 by the twelfth Tsona Gontse Rinpoche after his flight from Tibet) is the principal Nyingma-Gelug complex in the hills south of Tawang. The town's three-tier Buddhist complex (upper, middle and lower gompas), the Tipi Orchidarium with 7,500 species, and the apple orchards of the surrounding ridges anchor its contemporary identity. Bomdila lay on the 1959 flight path of the 14th Dalai Lama from Lhasa to Tezpur. The 1962 Sino-Indian War made Bomdila the Indian army's main eastern Himalayan garrison.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.260, 92.420
Connections (3)
- Route adjacencySikkim
Sikkim and the Monpa country around Bomdila and Tawang are the two Tibetan Buddhist regions inside India, at opposite ends of the eastern Himalaya, and both were monastic and trading provinces of the Tibetan world before they were parts of an Indian state. Sikkim joined by referendum in 1975; Tawang was included by the McMahon Line in 1914 and is still claimed by China.
- Site adjacencyParasuram Kund
Parasuram Kund in Lohit district and Bomdila in West Kameng district are the two annual pan-Indian pilgrim destinations of Arunachal Pradesh — Parasuram Kund for the Makar Sankranti bath each January that draws fifty to seventy thousand devotees, Bomdila for the Gaden Rabgyel Ling monastery of the sixth Reting Rinpoche and the gateway it provides to Tawang. The two sit at the eastern and western edges of the state, five hundred kilometres apart along National Highway 13 — the trans-Arunachal highway that passes through almost every district headquarters.
- Site adjacencyDirang Monastery
Dirang and Bomdila are two of the three stations of the Monpa Buddhist landscape of West Kameng — Dirang the lower-altitude old village with its 17th-century Kalachakra gompa and Dirang Dzong fortress of the Monpa headmen, Bomdila the modern district headquarters with the 1965 Gaden Rabgyel Ling monastery of the sixth Reting Rinpoche. The two are forty kilometres apart on the Balipara-Charduar-Tawang road, which is the only motorable route into Tawang and the pass over Sela. Both villages were briefly held by the Chinese PLA in November 1962.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Bomdila”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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