It belongs to the Red Sect of Buddhist lamas. Originally a branch of the Nyingmapa sect’s Phodang monastery in Sikkim, it was built in 1761 by lama Dorje Rinzing.
The Yiga Choeling monastery, which is popularly known as the Ghoom monastery — a name it has earned owing to its location in Ghoom — is the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery to have been built in Darjeeling.
The two-storey white Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist temple in West Bengal’s Darjeeling town was built in 1972 in traditional Japanese style. Inside the temple, there is picture of Fujii Guruji, the founder and preceptor of Nipponzan Myohoji, a Buddhist order for world peace.
The site of an ancient Buddhist mahavihara —the Nandadirghika-Udranga Mahavihara, which is widely considered to be one of the first monasteries from the Pala period to have been excavated in West Bengal.