Lingshed Monastery

Lingshed Monastery is a Gelugpa monastery by Lingshet village in Ladakh, in the Trans-Sengge-La country between Ladakh and Zanskar, 84 kilometres north of Padum. People have lived in the village for close to a thousand years, and remains of a cave monastery and walls linked to the translator Rinchen Zangpo (958–1055) survive. The monastery, also called Kumbum, 'a hundred thousand images', was established in the 1440s by Changsems Sherabs Zangpo, a disciple of Je Tsongkhapa. Tradition says that, crossing the Hanuma-La from the south, he saw a light glowing on a hillside rock and built a chorten around it, which became the central shrine, Tashi 'Od Bar.

In 1779 the Ladakhi king Tsewang Namgyal granted Lingshed and its villages to the Ngari Rinpoche lineage, and it remains part of that estate under Rangdum Monastery. The anthropologist Martin A. Mills has written a study of its ritual life, and solar power reached the monastery in 2016.