Tsuglagkhang Temple

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“The Tibetan New Year festival is also celebrated annually at Gangtok with a great masked dance, in which the space before the great royal temple is peopled by dancers depicting black-faced Gompo and the Garuda bird, together with hosts of Black Hat wizards, jesters and skeleton dancers. Apart from this cham originating from Tibet, another Buddhist dance, created in Sikkim itself, is performed every autumn at the same place. On the fifteenth day of the seventh Tibetan month, the monks conclude their traditional homage to Sikkim’s mountain gods with a masked dance in which Kangchenjunga and his minister Yabdu, represented by priests from Pemiongchi Monastery, perform to a circle of spectators from all parts of the Lepcha country.”

[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, 238]