Resum Gompa

Top choice in Sikkim


This wobbly old temple is a peaceful, half-forgotten delight with appealingly naive paintings and an incredible 360-degree mountain panorama. There's no road so you'll have to walk around 20 minutes up from Rinchenpong gompa, climbing through the forest. En route you'll encounter occasional collapsing stupas and mani walls (Tibetan stone walls with sacred inscriptions).

The slightly confusing footpath starts from where the Rinchenpong gompa road dead ends at the monastery residence toilet block. Walk up to the left then, when the path starts to peter out, cut steeply up through the woodland till you reach the upper water pipe. Turning left here brings you to a small clearing and then to Resum Gompa (around 300m). Returning, it's possible to walk all the way back along the ridge and eventually work your way down to Kuluk in around 45 minutes. This walk is a delight, but don't attempt if you have a bad sense of direction – while the way is easy enough to guess, there are many possible turnings down through rural farmsteads. The most direct turning is the third right, a tiny cross-roads of sorts.