Phuktal Monastery, Zanskar

A photo of the dramatic ancient cliff face Buddhist monastery at Phuktal in Zanskar.

Phuktal is an ancient cliffside monastery in Zanskar.
At the top of the monastery is a deep cave with a huge shorten; prayer halls and monks' quarters cascade precariously down the cliff face connected by a warren of stairs and passages.
We camped on a flat plain below the monastery and above the final drop down to the river. On New Years Eve 2014 a landslide blocked the river upstream from Phuktal forming a lake. A few months later the dam formed from the landslide rubble burst and flooded the canyons downstream. The newly inaugurated school for young monks was destroyed, along with all bridges downstream.

The photo was taken in 2016 on our Sultan Largo trek from Padum to sTonge (yes, that's the correct spelling) in the Zanskar valley.

Landscape format.

A guide to approx sizes
A3: paper size 42x29.7cm, image size 40x28cm
A2: paper size 59.4x42cm, image size 57x40cm
70x50cm paper size, image size 68x48cm