When it happens

Gomphu Kora falls in the second month of the Bhutanese lunar calendar, so its dates move from year to year. The main festival day is the tenth day of that month. Monks perform the Soldeb Bum, a ritual cycle for Guru Rinpoche, inside the small temple during the first seven days of the month, and it is part of the observance.

The timing follows the original date of the older trade and pilgrimage festival held here in the second lunar month, which ensured enough pilgrims could come. Chorten Kora, the other major kora festival in Trashiyangtse, falls some weeks apart.

Where it happens

Gomphu Kora is a pilgrimage site, not a dzong (fortress). Gomphu means “meditation cave” and kora means circumambulation. Its focus is a huge sacred rock called Zangdok Pelri, the “Copper-coloured Crystal Mountain”, understood as Guru Rinpoche’s paradise. A cave has formed in the rocky cliffside, and a small lhakhang (temple) stands beside it.

The rock and temple are on the bank of the Drangme Chhu river, and the site’s sacred places are strung along the river. They lie among paddy fields below the road to Trashiyangtse, 23 kilometres from Trashigang Dzong. The site’s relics include a garuda egg and the remaining lengths of chain from the iron bridge at Doksum.

According to tradition, the true sanctum is Kapalidaphu, a rock cave a little above the site overlooking the Drangme Chhu valley. Guru Rinpoche is said to have meditated there for three months, and a sacred spring is said to emerge from a hole shaped like a skull cap (kapala), which gives the cave its name. A small cave reached directly from the motor road is said to be the house of a former local demon, Tsergom Dud, bound by oath and made a protective owner of the place. It is said to be visited first or last in the round of sacred places.

Administratively the festival spans two districts. The monks who organise it come from the Drukpa Kagyu congregation of Trashigang Dzong, across the boundary, while the lay administration is Trashiyangtse’s.

History

According to tradition, a demon repeatedly obstructed the building of Samye monastery in Tibet in the eighth century. Guru Rinpoche is said to have pursued it south across the Himalayas and finally subdued it at Gomphu Kora. Pilgrims are often described as reading the formations in and on the rock as traces of that battle, and as touching them to receive purification, protection and blessing. Another legend holds that Guru Rinpoche hid the nectar of immortality inside the rock as a treasure (terma) for future generations. Pema Lingpa is said to have visited Gomphu Kora in the fifteenth century.

From the second half of the seventeenth century, Gomphu Kora lay where important trade routes between Tibet and India through Bhutan met. It was one of few important pilgrimage festivals in the area that brought people from Tawang together with traders from eastern Bhutan. The border closed in 1962 and cut that route.

Within living memory the site was only the sacred rock, with no houses, no road, no electricity and no cham (masked dance). In the 1960s families pitched their own tents for two or three days, and the night kora around the rock was the main activity. In a thinly populated region, the chances of meeting a possible marriage partner were higher during Gomphu Kora than at any other time.

In 1987, after the temple was built and under the sponsorship of the Fourth King, the monks of Trashigang Dzong began performing the Soldeb Bum inside it. In 1993 a Drukpa Kagyu lama in residence at Trashigang Dzong enlarged the ritual and introduced the first public monastic masked dance ever performed at the site, the Zheshi Pemo, an offering dance to Guru Rinpoche. The dance ground was levelled and the temple renovated in 1995. From 1996 the congregation gradually added more masked dances, copied from those already performed at other dzongs. In 2001 a large new thongdrel (a giant appliqué scroll), 25 by 39 feet and showing Guru Rinpoche with his eight manifestations, was consecrated at the site.

The festival kept its basic folk character until about 2005, after which the growing role of the Trashigang monks and the Trashiyangtse administration changed it. The tshechu (a festival honouring Guru Rinpoche with masked dances) was introduced only recently. It became a major tourist attraction and replaced the folk pilgrimage festival. Love songs are no longer performed here, and the old rows of men and women from different ethnic groups dancing, joking and drinking together have largely gone.

Rituals

The defining act of Gomphu Kora is kora, not cham. Pilgrims walk clockwise around the sacred rock, reciting prayers, taking sacred substances and gathering merit, which is believed to purify defilements and secure protection and a better rebirth. Local people and pilgrims from Merak, Sakteng and Arunachal Pradesh circumambulate throughout the night. A local saying tells people to circle Gomphu Kora today, because tomorrow might be too late.

At the rock, any nine people, men and women together, should be able to lift a heavy, smooth, oval black stone using only their index fingers. Success is read as a good omen and a sign of fertility and coming rain. The site also has a steep rock to climb for blessings and a narrow passage in the rock to crawl through to be cleansed of sins.

The main festival morning opens with a large procession. The lama from Trashigang Dzong leads senior lay officials from Trashiyangtse, monks and lay dancers around the rock and the temple, and they make a gold libation offering (serkyem). The large thongdrel of Guru Rinpoche is then unfurled. Pilgrims queue to touch its hem with their foreheads for the blessing of liberation through seeing, and the dances are performed in front of it.

The Zheshi Pemo is the first and most important sacred dance, performed by six dancers as khandroma (sky-goers) both inside and outside the temple. Monks of Trashigang Dzong perform the Drukpa Kagyu monastic dances that go back to the state builders of western Bhutan. Male lay dancers from Trashiyangtse perform more local masked dances, connected with earlier traditions of eastern Bhutan. These alternate with shabdro (folk dances) by young women from Trashiyangtse in matching pink kiras (women’s traditional dress). Their repertoire is a standard one brought in by way of the Thimphu and Paro tshechus. During the masked dances the atsara (clown), with a big nose and a big red wooden phallus, chases after women and makes fun of dignitaries and tourists’ cameras.

According to tradition, the Acho Lam Cham folk dance began when local people distracted the demon so that Guru Rinpoche could subdue it. It is said to be performed today only by the people of Shingkhar Lauri.

Being there

You reach Gomphu Kora by road. The site lies below the Trashigang–Trashiyangtse road, about an hour’s drive from Trashigang, and you walk down from the road to the temple. Built for the festival are a car park for vehicles and tour buses, a large gate, broad cemented stairs down to the temple and a row of stupas, an enlarged dance ground and a stone terraced amphitheatre for the audience.

Expect a crowded, market-like pilgrimage fair rather than a formal dzong occasion. Families pitch tents. Vendors sell plastic goods, chilli seedlings, dried chilli, wooden bowls and kitchen items, alongside food stalls, gaming tables and a video parlour. For local people it is a break to trade, socialise and celebrate before the farming season starts.

Dakpa pilgrims from Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh walk into Bhutan to attend, as most pilgrims from the Indian side do. Brokpa herders from Merak and Sakteng come too, in the same dark red hand-woven raw silk dress as the Tawang pilgrims. The rock is described as lit with electric lights for pilgrims’ safety during the night kora.

Trashigang is the base town, and more hotels have been built there for visitors to the festivals at Trashigang Dzong and Gomphu Kora. Yonphula airport, near Trashigang Dzong, opened in 2012 as an alternative to the long drive from Paro and Thimphu through Bumthang.