Key Monastery or some may pronounce it as “Ki, Key or Kee”. Whatever you may call it’s all the same. Well, many of you would be familiar with this monastery. It is very well known and very famous due to its amazing history. It is located in the district of Lahaul and Spiti. It is the biggest monastery in Spiti Valley. Well, as I said, it has a very long history so, to cut to the chase, it was first founded by “Dromton” in the 11th century. Key Monastery has been attacked many times. Among them, one is by Ghulam Khan (The Dogra Army). In the 1840s, it was severely destroyed by the fire. Well, to talk about the latest calamity, in the year of 1975 a severe earthquake ramshackled everything. So, with the help of local people and the state government it was made better to some extent. It is still under development.
I visited the monastery 3 months back and still some work was going on. Key monastery has a collection of the ancient murals and the walls of the monastery are also adorned with ancient paintings. The books and murals serve the greatest value in today’s time.
To reach to the monastery top, it is a very difficult walk because of the slanting road. It takes too much effort to reach to the top, but once you reach, the effort is worth it. Well, I was too tired with all the walking and I thought that I will enter the monastery, pray for some time and leave, but the lama over there told me that I could also go to the top of the monastery and I was excited and happy because I would be able to see the views from the top. The views were amazing and they can’t be described in words.
The lama there served me herbal tea and as a tea lover I couldn’t resist so I took it and enjoyed the tea with the gorgeous view. I drank 3 cups of herbal tea. It was so tasty and hot which was in accordance with the weather. Then I left the monastery after clicking some photos from the top of the monastery. While going I asked my tempo traveller driver to stop and I got down from the tempo traveler and I clicked this photograph. It is the most beautiful monastery that I have ever seen.