KATHMANDU, January 25 -- The trans-Himalayan village of Halji is a small collection of about 80 closely packed mud-and-stone houses at the base of a moraine hill. Steep cliffs rise on either side of the village that is flanked by a glacial stream on its left. By contemporary standards, Halji is extremely remote. It is snowed in and cut off for six months of the year during winter and does not have mobile network connectivity. The district headquarters, Simikot, is a five-day walk away. And getting to Kathmandu involves an expensive flight from Simikot. But for centuries before, the three villages of Limi Valley - Halji, Til and Jang - were the focus of a vibrant caravan trade with neighbouring Tibet and part of the larger sacred landscape surrounding the holy Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar. Located in far western Nepal on the border with China, Limi Valley is an isolated but historically significant region where ancient Tibetan Buddhist culture thrives due to its proximity to Tibet. At the centre of this rich heritage is the famous 1,000-year-old Rinchenling monastery. Both the valley's largest village, Halji, and Rinchenling monastery - the cultural and spiritual centre of Limi - are threatened by climate change today. "Rinchenling is the oldest and biggest monastery in west Nepal," says Tsewang Lama, an anthropologist and the only parliament member from this district in Nepal. "Out of 21 students sent by the king of Guge in west Tibet to translate the texts from India's Kashmir, during the second renaissance of Buddhism, only two returned - one of whom went on to become the famous translator Rinchen Zangpo (958 - 1055). He built 108 monasteries in his life, one of them is this." Rinchen Zangpo is widely accredited with the second renaissance of Buddhism in Tibet and Halji's Richenling is one of the last few surviving monasteries from that period. The rest were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, which began in Tibet in 1959.
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