ABSTRACT
Gombo is quite a special kind of village. A lama of that name, venturing into the uninhabited upper Nubra Valley, found that a divinity lived on the top of a rock which looks as if it had been cut out of the mountain-side by powerful blows with a gigantic axe: it is smooth from top to bottom except for the narrow gash of a chasm, which looks like a wound. Gombo stopped here to adore this mountain-divinity, built a little temple and founded a monastery in order to have companions in his adoration. Round the temple appeared a few chorten, a few mani, even a few fields, for the lamas had not been ordered to remain in adoration from morning till night, nor yet to live entirely upon alms. Later the fields were extended so much that a family of peasants was required to cultivate them. But Gombo, unlike a new American city, had no further increase; its history is all contained here, and never went beyond this stage—-just one peasants' house, a few houses for the ten lamas, and the little temple, small but elegant, all white with a border of crimson, and with a thousand prayers fluttering on its lofty pennons in honour of the divinity who still lives on the top of the great polished rock.
