The Hemis Monastery is located in:

Hemis Monastery, or Hemis Gompa, is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery located about 45 kilometres south-east of Leh, in the Union Territory of Ladakh. It stands at a height of about 3,600 metres on the west bank of the Indus river, in a sheltered valley. It belongs to the Drukpa lineage of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.

The present monastery was re-established in 1672 by the Ladakhi king Sengge Namgyal, with the help of the lama Stagsang Raspa. It is the largest and wealthiest monastery in Ladakh. It has a rich collection of ancient relics, including a copper-gilt statue of the Buddha, stupas made of gold and silver, sacred thangkas (Buddhist scroll paintings) and old manuscripts.

The monastery is famous for the Hemis Festival (Hemis Tsechu), held every year in summer, usually in June or July, on the 10th day of the fifth month of the Tibetan lunar calendar. The festival celebrates the birth anniversary of Guru Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche), who is believed to have brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century. During the festival, lamas perform the colourful masked dance called Cham, to the sound of drums, cymbals and long horns. Every 12 years, in the Tibetan year of the Monkey, a huge thangka of Padmasambhava, several storeys high, is displayed.

Ladakh became a separate Union Territory without a legislature on 31 October 2019, under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. Other famous monasteries of Ladakh include Thiksey, Diskit, Alchi, Lamayuru and Spituk. The Hemis National Park, home to the snow leopard, is the largest national park in India.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Sikkim has the Rumtek and Pemayangtse monasteries.
• ✗Himachal Pradesh has the Key (Kye) and Tabo monasteries in Spiti.
• ✗Arunachal Pradesh has the Tawang Monastery, the largest in India.