Kaza, the sub-divisional headquarters of Spiti. It boasts of a P.W.D. Rest House, a couple of small private guest houses, a branch of the State Bank of India, a school, a dry cleaners, post and telegraph office and a helipad. three kms from Kaza is the Rong Ting Hydel Project which generates electricity for most of the villages in Spiti. Also visit the new Sa-kya-pamonastery.

What to see in Kaza :

Ki gompa and Kibber, the highest permanent inhabited village in the world, situated at the altitude of 14,200 ft (3,303 m.)

Ki, a beautiful gompa perched high on a pyramid-like mountain, belongs to the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism and has almost 40 resident monks practicing meditation and other monastic rituals. Its main temple the Dukhang has some of the best murals, well preserved statues and tangkhas depicting different life stories of Guru Padmasambhava, the founder of Gelugpa sect.

Return to the main road and drive steeply uphill for another half hour to one of the highest permanently inhabited villages in the world. Located in a semi bowl-shaped narrow valley, Kibber has a population of about 200 people mainly involved in the farming of barley and wheat. The light is just perfect an hour before the sunset to photograph this unique village.

Komik village and monastery from Kaza. There are only two monasteries in Spiti which belong to the Sa-kya-pa sect. One of these is located at Kaza. It is a small monastery of recent date and of no historical interest. But the Sa-kya-pa monastery at Komik is of great historical interest and is also known as Tangyud Gompa. This name is significant in the context of the Sa-kya-pa enterprise to revise the Lamastic scriptures by the team of scholars under Sa- kya lama Ch'os-Kyi-O'dzer around 1310 AD. It is most likely that this monastery was responsible in some big way in the task of revision or propagation of the precepts of the Tang-rGyud i.e. the Tantra treatises which, in 87 volumes, form one class of Tangyur.

The name of this monastery may, therefore, be considered to be an evidence of the Sa-kya-pa scholastic legacy. This assumption also finds support in the traditional belief in this area that the Sa- kya-pa monks of this monastery are proficient in tantra and, on this account are feared by robbers and highwaymen. This monastery is considered to be quite ancient. But on the basis of circumstantial evidence and the architecture of this castle-like monastery in its present shape, it may be placed around the earlier decades of the 14th century when the Sa-kya-pa sect asserted its political supremacy under Mongol patronage. The architecture and layout of the monastery is particularly interesting. Built under the Mongol patronage at such a juncture when the Sa-kyas were an aggressive and militant group, they could not have thought of a layout other than a fortified one on the model of a Chinese castle. Located on the edge of a deep canyon, at a strategic height overlooking the Kaza township, the monastery is a well-defended castle. Its massive slanted walls of in situ mud look like impregnable battlements.

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