Ghum Monastery or Ghoom Monastery is the popular name of the Sampten Choling Monastery or Yiga Choeling Monastery located at Ghum

Ghum, West Bengal

Ghum is a small hilly locality in the Darjeeling Himalayan hill region of West Bengal, India. Ghum railway station of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is the highest railway station in India. It is situated at an altitude of 2,225.7 m...

 at an elevation of 8,000 feet, 8 km from Darjeeling in the state of West Bengal

West Bengal

West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...

, 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...

.

The monastery follows the Gelug

Gelug

The Gelug or Gelug-pa , also known as the Yellow Hat sect, is a school of Buddhism founded by Je Tsongkhapa , a philosopher and Tibetan religious leader...

 school of Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...

. There is a 15-feet high statue of "Maitreya Buddha" (Coming Buddha) in the monastery. It contains images of Buddha’s disciples, Chenrezi and Chongapa.

It was built in 1875 by Lama

Lama

Lama is a title for a Tibetan teacher of the Dharma. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term guru .Historically, the term was used for venerated spiritual masters or heads of monasteries...

 Sherab Gyatso and is the largest of the three monasteries in Ghum.

Amongst the Buddhist texts available are the Kangyur

Kangyur

The Tibetan Buddhist canon is a loosely defined list of sacred texts recognized by various schools of Tibetan Buddhism, made up of the Kangyur or Kanjur and the Tengyur or Tanjur .-The Tibetan Buddhist Canon:In addition to earlier foundational Buddhist texts from early Buddhist schools, mostly...

, the Tibetan Buddhist canon

Tibetan Buddhist canon

The Tibetan Buddhist canon is a loosely defined list of sacred texts recognized by various sects of Tibetan Buddhism. In addition to sutrayana texts from Early Buddhist and Mahayana sources, the Tibetan canon includes tantric texts...

, running into 108 volumes. The monks fly prayer flags in the Tibetan tradition.