The whole area of the extensive compound in which the monastery stands is enclosed by a heavy teak fence with massive posts and rails, seven or eight feet high. The laity, when they enter, take off their shoes and carry them in their hands. This rule applies to the highest in the land. The daily life of the monks inhabiting monasteries of this kind in Burma has been already described (see pp. 311-314 of these Lectures). If we now pass to northern Buddhist countries we shall find that, as a general rule, the dwellings of monks are insignificant tenements of poor construction, attached to or built round small chapels or shrines. Sometimes the monks live in the rooms built over such chapels. Sir Richard Temple (Journal, ii. 207) visited a so-called monastery at Pemyangchi (in Sikkim), which consisted of a single building with two stories. In the upper some of the monks resided, and a chapel formed the lower. The temple-monastery I myself visited in British Sikkim, near Dārjīling, is similar. The exterior appearance might be compared to that of some small Dissenting chapel in an English village. The thatched roof, which once gave it a picturesque appearance, has recently been removed, and a roof of modern construction substituted. The shrine or temple is on the ground floor, while the upper floor is the abode of the attendant priests, and seems also to serve as a store-room with cupboards for their equipments. The contents of the ground-floor temple, with its altar at the further end and shelves for the sacred books on one side, are very indistinctly seen, being only lighted up by a ‘dim religious light,’ when the door is kept wide open. I noticed three images on the altar. The case is different when large numbers of monks congregate in particular places. In some districts of Ladāk, Mongolia and Tibet, monasteries (or Lāmaseries as they are sometimes called) have been erected, which for vastness, magnificence, and grandeur of situation amid splendid scenery, are unequalled in any part of the world. According to strict rule, retired localities should be chosen. Hence large monastic establishments are often found in solitary places[226] and elevated situations; for instance, in Ladāk those at Lāma Yurru and Hemis are more than 11,000 feet above the sea, and that at Hanle is 14,000 feet. They resemble romantic castles towering upwards in the midst of rocks, crags, and snowy mountains. Another monastery at Kīlang (Kyelang), in the British Tibetan province of Lahūl (contiguous to Ladāk), stands on the spur of a mountain, at an elevation of 12,000 feet, and is approached through grand ravines and glaciers, so that occasionally, after snow-storms, those who pass to and fro are buried in avalanches.