Torgya Festival

A Buddhist monastic festival to drive away evil spirits, with spectacular sacred mask dances.

Organized to perform complex destructive rituals that target the accumulated negative energy and demonic hexes of the passing year, ensuring that the incoming spring season brings health, prosperity, and spiritual growth.

The snow-covered monastery grounds come alive with intense visual energy. Monks don heavy, multi-colored silk robes and towering, fiercely carved wooden masks to perform the holy 'Cham' dances. The air is filled with the booming blasts of twelve-foot brass longhorns (Dungchen) and the rhythmic beating of monastic drums.

The definitive ritual involves the creation of a massive, 3-foot-high triangular pyramid made of parched barley flour and ghee, called the 'Torgya'. On the final afternoon, this effigy is carried out of the monastery gates in a grand procession led by the abbot and burned in a giant bonfire to represent the total destruction of evil. Every three years, this is scaled up into the grand 'Dunggyur' festival.

The burning of the Torgya effigy is believed to permanently incinerate all wandering demons, plague spirits, and political instabilities targeting the region. Witnessing the sacred dances is thought to protect the spectator from accidental death and bad rebirths.

Established centuries ago, after the founding of Tawang Monastery in 1681 AD, the festival follows the strict tantric texts set down by the ancient Tibetan masters and remains central to Monpa tribal identity.

Against a backdrop of towering, snow-capped Himalayan peaks, the stone courtyard of the ancient monastery explodes with sound. Monks wearing fierce, painted masks of wrathful protector gods leap and spin, their heavy silk robes cutting through the crisp winter air. As the giant Torgya effigy is carried out toward the flames among the booming blasts of twelve-foot brass horns, you feel the raw, intense power of an ancient mountain kingdom resetting its cosmic balance.