Bardan Monastery or Bardan Gompa is a 17th century Buddhist

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

 monastery, approximately 12 kilometres south of Padum

Padum

Padum is the largest town and administrative centre of Zanskar tehsil of Kargil district in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It is 240 km away from Kargil.-Description:...

, in Zanskar

Zanskar

Zanskar is a subdistrict or tehsil of the Kargil district, which lies in the eastern half of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The administrative centre is Padum...

, Ladakh

Ladakh

Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...

, northern India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. It belongs to the Dugpa-Kargyud monastic order and was one of the first monasteries of this sect to be established in Zanskar. The monastery also ran several smaller hermitages in the area.

The monastery consists of a large Dukhang or assembly hall which has some grand statues of Buddhist figures and several small stupa

Stupa

A stupa is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics, typically the remains of Buddha, used by Buddhists as a place of worship....

s in clay, bronze, wood and copper.