Mindroling sits in the Dranang valley south of the Yarlung Tsangpo river, a couple of hours from Lhasa on the far side of the water, among fields and low hills. It was founded in the seventeenth century and grew into one of the six principal monasteries of the Nyingma school, the oldest of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, which traces its texts to the first transmission of Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century.
What made it important
Mindroling was a centre of scholarship above all. It trained monks in the full curriculum of Buddhist philosophy and ritual, but it specialised in the sciences attached to monastic learning: astronomy and the calculation of the Tibetan calendar, astrology, medicine and calligraphy. For centuries the monastery was one of the places where the annual calendar was worked out, and its scholars produced the almanacs that farming households across Tibet used to plan planting and festivals. It also had a strong tradition of woodblock printing and manuscript production, and its monks were known for a distinctive style of Tibetan calligraphy.
The site
The monastery is a compact complex arranged around courtyards, with assembly halls, chapels, a college building and living quarters, sheltered by trees. It was badly damaged in the twentieth century and has been substantially rebuilt, with the printing house and parts of the library restored, and it now functions again as a monastery with a resident community. Because it is off the main Lhasa circuits, it sees few foreign visitors and retains a working, slightly austere character. The surrounding valley is agricultural, and walking in the lanes between the monastery and the village gives a good sense of the rural Tibet that surrounds the urban centre.
Practical notes
Mindroling is about two to two and a half hours from Lhasa by road, on the south side of the river, and is usually combined with Samye, which lies in the same valley further east, and with the tombs and temples of the Yarlung valley. There is no convenient public transport, so a car and driver is the practical approach, and the route crosses farmland and small villages. The monastery charges a small admission and closes for part of the middle of the day. As at every Tibetan monastery, walk clockwise, avoid photographing inside chapels without permission, and keep voices low.
