Monpa Culture: A Traveller's Guide

The Monpa are the dominant community of Tawang and northern West Kameng, with historic, linguistic and religious ties to Bhutan and Tibet. Several distinct sub-groups exist — Tawang Monpa, Dirang Monpa, Lish, But and Kalaktang Monpa — speaking related but not always mutually intelligible dialects. Tshangla, shared with eastern Bhutan, is widely spoken around Dirang.

The Sherdukpen of Shergaon and Rupa and the Brokpa yak herders of the high pastures are neighbouring communities with their own languages and customs, often lumped in with the Monpa by outsiders. They are not the same people.

Monpa Buddhism follows the Gelugpa school, and Tawang Monastery has been its institutional centre since the 1680s. The sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, was born at Urgelling near Tawang in 1683 — a fact that anchors the region's religious identity. Prayer wheels, chortens, mani walls and roadside flags are not decoration; they are a working devotional landscape maintained by the villages that surround them.

Village gompas run their own calendars. If you happen on a puja in a small village, you are welcome to watch quietly from the edge; you are not welcome to walk through it with a camera.

Traditional Monpa houses are stone-walled with timber upper storeys, small windows against the cold, and livestock or storage below the living floor. Roofs were once shingle and are now largely corrugated tin, often with a small chorten finial. Maize and chillies dry on the walls through autumn. Thembang, a fortified dzong village on India's UNESCO tentative list, is the best-preserved example on the circuit.

Mon shugu, handmade paper from the bark of the local shugu sheng shrub, has been produced here for centuries and is still used for scriptures. Tawang's craft centre keeps the tradition alive alongside carpet weaving in strong Tibetan patterns and the carving of the wooden masks used in Torgya and Losar dances. Buy from the craft centre or the villages rather than from resellers — the price difference goes to the maker.

Walk clockwise around chortens, mani walls and prayer wheels. Remove shoes and hats in prayer halls. Do not point your feet at an altar or a monk. Ask before photographing people, and accept refusal gracefully. Do not touch religious objects or climb on mani walls for a photograph. Accept butter tea when it is offered, even if you only sip it.

The most common unintentional offence we see is travellers walking anticlockwise around the monastery's inner circuit while filming. It is a small thing that reads as significant disrespect.