Have you ever wondered what are the ancient portals to Nirvana like? Imagine a world without routers, signals, or frequencies. . . no invisible threads tethering you to a global network. How, then, would the divine broadcast its presence?  

My recent conversation with Peter van Ham—the visionary documentarian behind the Western Himalaya Monastic Art Project—sent my mind spinning down this very rabbit hole. For forty years, van Ham has climbed rickety ladders with his camera into the dust-choked interiors of medieval Himalayan temples, holding his breath to capture murals. Perhaps what he stumbled upon wasn’t just art history, but a living app from the period immediately after the end of the Tibetan Empire.

I walked away from our talk convinced of a new hypothesis: those ancient monasteries in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh—Tabo, Charang, Alchi, Nako—are not mere museums, but spiritual routers. Consecrated centuries ago, they function as direct portals to the divine, bypassing the need for literacy, theology, or even language. They speak straight to the nervous system through colour, geometry, and space. And here is the kicker: once these portals are switched on, they never turn off. Whether it’s a Guge Kingdom farmer, a monk-translator (lotsawa), or a Tibetan queen who steps across the threshold, the uplink remains on.    

Peter van Ham’s work centres on the second diffusion, or the so-called Buddhist renaissance. The resurgence of Buddhism in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Yarlung dynasty was sparked by the great translator Rinchen Zangpo in the Western Himalayas. These monasteries were built as three‑dimensional mandalas: cosmic maps etched in plaster and pigments. Tabo Monastery, which Peter calls the most complete surviving Vajradhatu mandala on earth, is the gold standard.  

Van Ham’s own descriptions of his documentation sessions—losing track of hours, moving automatically, merging with his subject—are textbook signs of an altered state of consciousness. He wasn’t just photographing, but tuning in. Those temples are time capsules, and Peter, whether he realises it or not, has been dialling into their frequency for four decades. As we Buddhists say, there are 84,000 paths to enlightenment. Walking into a remote Himalayan monastery is one. Sitting inside a Himalayan cave in total darkness is another. Chanting, dancing, painting—all are portals. Legend says 108 monasteries were built miraculously in one day. Today not many remain, but the ones van Ham has immortalised through his lens are particularly magnetic, because they were deliberately wired to endure.    

The router that never reboots  

Let’s stay with the tech metaphor: a Wi‑Fi router doesn’t care if you hold a doctorate or are a toddler; if you have the password, you connect. Likewise, these ancient temples were engineered as universal access points to connect humans with the Buddha essence. The statues and paintings, in their vibrant colours, aren’t decorations—they are visual sutras, a translation of Vajrayana doctrine into an energy language older than words.  

Van Ham described the sensory overload from his first visits: the funky odor of yak butter and centuries‑old tsampa smell linger from a thousand years ago. The shocking contrast of colours from blue sky, grey landscapes outside the shrine, to the hypnotic relief of gilded plaster that makes the deities appear to float off the walls inside the shrine. This multi‑sensory overload is no accident. The monks who built these monasteries knew that human beings are sensory vessels—we absorb truth through our pores. By saturating every inch of the temple with mandala geometry and the serene gazes of the five Dhyani Buddhas, they created an environment that short‑circuits the intellectual mind and plugs straight into the spiritual nervous system.

Here is the miracle that Peter revealed: once consecrated, that power doesn’t degrade. Time doesn’t rust a portal. The original iconographic system, a gorgeous hybrid of Indian, Kashmiri, and Central Asian influences, retains its charge. Even when later Buddhist schools—Kadampa, Gelug, Sakya—layered their own interpretations over the foundations, the underlying mandala logic kept humming. The router remains online, even if the local caretaker no longer remembers the manual.    

Tapping the time capsule  

What truly mystified me was Peter’s confession about his own working trance. He spoke of climbing wobbly ladders, analogue film in camera, holding his breath for razor‑sharp shots of celestial beings in the dark. Hours dissolved. Hunger vanished. His body moved on autopilot, and he felt an unmistakable merging with the imagery.  

This is the portal in action. Van Ham entered those dark chambers not as a detached academic, but as a receptive yogi. His altered state was not a side effect of exhaustion; it was the temple’s primary function kicking in. These places were designed to induce exactly that—a dissolution of the ego, a slippage of clock‑time, and an induced psychedelic trace. With the ultimate objective is simply to have a direct dialogue with the divinities: Vairocana, Avalokiteshvara, Vadradharma, Prajnaparamita, and more. Perhaps asking for help in daily problems like health, marriage, life issues.  

From van Ham’s photos, it is noticeable that these monastic paintings are palpably more powerful than later Buddhist art because they preserve an older, rawer fusion of influences. That rawness of the second diffusion or renaissance of Buddhism is the key, standing as a witness to time for a millennium.

Today, even when modern monks don’t grasp the full philosophical meaning of these masterpieces from the 10th and 11th centuries—and Peter admitted many don’t—the site still works its magic. The villagers know it’s sacred; they feel the charge. You don’t need to understand electricity to flip on a light switch.    

84,000 portals, one Dharma  

Of course, the Himalayan monasteries aren’t the only gateway. Our Buddhist tradition generously insists there are 84,000 ways to wake up—one for every defilement, though I suspect it’s just a poetic way of saying “infinite.” Peter’s temples are one majestic route. But a yogi in a stark cave, with no statues and no pigments, carving their own inner mandala through visualisation, is working an equally valid portal.  

For the artist, the portal opens through song or the swirl of a brush. For the devoted monk, it opens through rituals and butter‑lamp offerings. And for Peter van Ham, it opened through the lens—a shutter click becoming a mantra, a contact sheet becoming a thangka.  

What unites them all is intention and presence. The Western Himalayan monasteries offer a uniquely generous gift: they democratise the divine. They do not demand scholarship or initiation. They simply ask that you show up, breathe, and let the colours wash over you. Peter’s relentless efforts—five, six, even ten years of trying to access certain sites—remind us that pilgrimage requires grit. The reward is that the door swings wide open for those who persist.

With climate change gnawing at ancient plaster and tourism threatening to close off the portals forever, van Ham’s documentation becomes an urgent act of preservation. His photographs are new portals, accessible to anyone with a screen. In digitising the mandala, he has spun a fresh thread from that original router, extending its reach to a global audience.      

The portal that never fades, ages, or dies  

With the muticolored imageries overloading my mind’s eye, I heard a whisper, “The divine has never been stingy with its divine transmission signals. At Charang, Nako, Ropa, and Poo, it broadcasts itself through stone, pigment, silence, and chants. The monasteries Peter has so lovingly captured are proof that when human hands weave sacred geometry into physical space, they create a hotspot that outlasts empires.”  

Peter entered those rooms as a documentarian. He emerged as a mystic, whether he claims the title or not. His altered consciousness was not a glitch—it was a re-connection. And that re-connection is still there, waiting for you.  

You don’t need to fly to the Himalayas to encounter the divinities. They may be found in a quiet corner for meditation, a piece of sacred music, a walk in nature, or the contemplation of a bodhisattva image. The portal is always there, waiting to be ignited. The only requirement is your attention. Let’s remember that once a portal is ignited, it never truly goes dark.

Related features from BDG

The Return of the Lotus-Born: How Odisha’s Diamond Triangle Recasts the Story of Vajrayana’s Most Revered Master
Writing Divinity: Mastering the Art of Gold Calligraphy with Lopen Kezang
The Unhurried Brush: How Master Locho is Reviving India’s Lost Buddhist Art
The Drummer Who Heard the Deities Whisper: Photographer Peter Van Ham’s Odyssey to Tabo, the Himalayas’ Secret Temple

More from Mandala Butterfly by Rebecca Wong