Mustang Gompas

Gompas - Lo Monthang, Mustang, Nepal

Jampa is the red building to the left. Thubchen is the red building to the right.

Mustang is an ethnically and culturally Tibetan district in northwestern Nepal, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau.

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/BuddhistTempleArt/index.html

According to local legend, the gombas were established in the late 14th or early 15th century by the king of Lo Monthang, together with his prime minister and a Sakyapa abbot named Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo. Although there were also Nyingmapa monks in other villages, the Sakyapa were the predominant order in 13th century Mustang, and in Tibet as well. In fact, it was Sakyapa leaders who converted Kublai Khan and the Mongols to Buddhism. In return, they were given temporal authority over Tibet for a period back then. In the 14th century, the abbot founded the great Sakyapa monastery called Ngor, which, until its destruction during the Cultural Revolution, was considered one of Tibet's artistic treasures; he subsequently was involved in establishing the two great gombas of Lo Monthang. It is quite likely that he brought some of the same artists to decorate the temples in Lo Monthang who had also worked on Ngor monastery in Tibet.

Lo Monthang was an important, independent kingdom, because it is on one of the major trade routes between Tibet and the south. There are a number of passes that make travel across the Himalayas possible, but this route offers somewhat easier access. There was a lot of trade, with salt and wool coming down from Tibet and rice and other goods being sent up from India and what is now Nepal. The kings of Lo Monthang grew rich because they straddled this trade route and were able to tax trade, and they decided to spend a great deal of their treasure building these two gombas.

http://www.inch.com/~shebar/mustang/temple1.htm