Yiga Choling (Tib. yid dga' chos gling) Monastery

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“The Yellow Hat monastery of Ghoom—its Tibetan name means ‘the Religious Continent of the Joyful Soul’—is a square one-storey building with yellow painted walls and curved roof in the Chinese style. Two stucco dragons writhe above the entrance, and long rows of the curious Tibetan prayer-wheels in open wooden boxes flank the monastery door on both sides. These are metal drums bearing characters of the so-called Lantsa alphabet on the outside and containing within innumerable strips of paper with prayers printed on them. An antechamber, on whose walls are portrayed the Buddhist Guardians of the Four Sides of the World, leads to the great assembly hall.”

[Nebesky-Wojkowitz, René von. 1957a. Where the Gods Are Mountains: Three Years among the People of the Himalayas. Translated by Michael Bullock. New York: Reynal and Company, 18–19]