Beat of the drum

For the residents of Tawang the dull, periodic thump of a distant drum signals the imminent coming of dawn. Originating from the monastery perched high above the town, it is the call to meditate and begin another day for the 450-odd resident lamas.

A little bit of the drum-beating right above my head would certainly have helped to wake me up better too. The quilt and you become quite inseparable at 3.30 am. It requires a certain motivation to haul yourself out of a warm bed and complete the morning ablutions in water at a temperature just above freezing. But the chance to attend the monastery's morning meditation was not one to miss.

The drumbeat is there with you through the ghostly streets, and the increasing frequency of the thump tells you to hurry. The only other sound is the crunch of my feet as I scramble up the granite slope leading up to the massive wooden doors.

Along the way, I peer through a window of one of the outer cottages to see an elderly lama already deep in prayer. The gates to the monastery are locked, but just then I spot a lama using a side entrance. I hurry to follow his lead and soon I am in the courtyard, bathed in the orange-yellow of a lone sodium-vapour lamp.

The monastery is named Galden Namgyal Lhatse and was built by Merak Lama Lodre Gyatso in the year 1680-81, in accordance with the wishes of the fifth Dalai Lama. I had to admire the builders' ingenuity in choosing a site at an altitude of 10,000 feet with a spectacular view of the Tawang valley below. The monastery was refurbished by the current Dalai Lama (the 14th) in 1977 and is undergoing further renovation now.

The drum picks up its rhythm further and the first monks, all wrapped up to beat the cold, start to stagger through the courtyard from their quarters. Some of them have the luxury of footwear, but the unlucky have to dash across the frozen stone slabs to the Dukhan, the heart of the monastery. One can hear the soft rustle of cotton cloth in the breeze