Buddhist Astrology Site

    Hi Everyone,
Well here it is May 20th. We have finished the retreat on May 14th. Most of the people on the tour left on or before that date. Candace and Dr Rob Chase left on May 13th to Delhi and onwards. Some of the people from California and Seattle had left a few days earlier.
Presently we are staying in Kalka Rinpoche's house with Carmen, Diane, Preston, Maureen and Scott. I described it to you earlier, but this time we are on the 3rd floor, which is a little cooler. The weather is getting hotter and hotter. Maria didn't drink enough water the other day and got heat exhaustion. One starts to sweat at 7 am with even the littlest walking.
We have had several wonderful thunder and lightening storms. The heat tends to build up over several days to be unbearable and then a storm comes on the horizon. Within hours it hits the mountains and dumps about 2 inches of rain in one hour. The light display carries on for about another hour and then things cool and settle down.
Carmen, Diane (from Edmonton) Maria, Aimee and I were planning a trip to Ladhak on Monday. We had rented a taxi for the 3 day drive (CAN$600) over several mountain passes, etc into Leh and even booked a flight from Leh to Delhi. On Monday the Musulim milicia put three land mines on the road and blew up three taxis and killed several school children. That being the case we immediately cancelled the trip. Now we will go to Manali and along the mountains to the east (where it is cool) until June 7th.
Then we fly to Kathmandu and stay there until July 12th. We are scheduled back in Canada on July 14th.
There is not much more news. With the teachings over the day tends to become a "one event" affair. You plan one trip or outing for the day and then collapse in the afternoon. For example today I went to breakfast, hired a taxi (for $4) to take me 10 minutes down the mountain to the Bank of Baroda. Got some money changed (taking 20 minutes) and drove back up to MacLoed Ganj. I then took care of cancelling the trip to Ladhak and booked the plane tickets to Kathmandu. Checked my email and had a small lunch of curried vegtables, bread and a mango lassi (curd whipped with fresh mango). Walked home to Takten house where we are staying and have sat on my bed since then. It is getting hotter and hotter outside now (1 PM), and so about 4 pm I will walk back up to town and send this message to you all. That is pretty good for doing things.
Some days you can only count on doing a few things. Take email for example. The email cafe may be open, but there is the question of electricity. If there is electricity there is the question of the phone lines working. Then there is the possibility of actually getting to hotmail or yahoo to read the messages. If all those are in place you might be able to deal with emails in 30 minutes. Not too bad. Many days any one of the above items may not be working, so you have to walk home and hope the next time you come up it is in place.
Well, several of us are getting slightly home sick, but we will manage the feelings and stay on. Preston and Maureen from Comox are leaving today, that is the main cause of the feelings of home sickness
India is exotic, but sometimes just a few mundane conveniences are nice. I must admit that MacLoed Ganj has lots of good things and excellent food. That makes it quite wonderful, especially when you consider the mango lassi's and such. It is mango season now!
Well, next check in after a few weeks.
Jhampa (Maria, Aimee and Carmen)
Hi Everyone,
May23rd
Thank you for the group card from the Dharma group. That was kind to think of us. As this periodic check in is being sent to quite a number of you now (about 14) some of you will have to bear with references to other email reciepients.
Well we finally got away from Dharmsala. The stay there was great. As it is the side of the Himalayas the walks up and down from the Takten house really streached the achilles tendons big time. Stair Master machines can't even come close to the exercise the hills offer.   We have all lost some weight due to the walking, periodic stomach upsets (not that often thank Buddha), and other activities.
Khakha Rinpoche was very sweet to us when it came time to leave. He gave Diane (from Winnipeg), Carmen, Aimee and Maria each a wood bowl from Mongolia. I got a tonka (paint scroll) of Avaloketeshvara for the temple.
India always challenges one for even the smallest things. Here it is 8 AM and we are taking two tiny little taxis up the hill to the Manali Bus. Half way up the road, which is very narrow and steep, we find a dump truck unloading a huge pile of sand onto the road, filling half of the roadway.   Our driver gets out and yells and discoures with the manager of the sand pile and we wait 5 minutes for them to finish. Then it is decided they can't finish that fast and we have to turn around. It is now 8:10 AM and the bus is to leave at 8:30. We drive back down part of the mountain to the only other route up to Macloed Ganj and try that road. Luckily it is open, aside from cows grazing on newspaper in the middle of it and hundreds of Tibetans walking down the temple road (which we are now on) to circumambulate His Holiness's temple and residence.
Anyway we finally arrive at the bus, loaded up the luggage into the back and then sat there for another hour.
There are thousands of Isrealis here in India. They have a mixed reception, as many of them like to be very wild and cause lots of problems. Many hotels will not accept them to stay as they are so crazy. Part of the problem for Isreal is all the fear and war preparation the youth have to go through.   It shows how much focusing on violence and the need to protect creates inner problems. These poor kids (mostly 20 or so) are just trying to let go of all the emotions related with the 2 years of military service in a hostile environment.
Anyway, when the bus had filled up, it was all young Isrealis. They were actually quite nice and the 10 hour bus ride was pleasant.   We covered 250 kilometers in 10 hours. That averages 25 to 35 K/hr. The roads are fairly smooth, but twist and turn as they go along the edge of the himalayas. Lots of land slides and wash outs, but also lots of wonder views looking down into valleys and little villages.
As we drove up the Manali valley the scenery changed. One drives on a very narrow valley with a fast flowing river below. The sides of the valley rise up extremely steeply, about 1000 feet or so. The road is literally cut into the side of the cliff. What is nice to see is the palm trees and other tropical folage growing all over and in impossible places.
As we got closer to Manali the weather started to get quite cool. This was a change as at the start of the valley it had been really hot. Even the shady areas were hot and still closer to the plains. Now the weather was cool and windy. A brief thunder shower came as we got closer to Manali, but it stopped by the time we got to the actual city.
We had to stand around the bus station for an hour as Maria and Diane visited hotels to find a suitable room. Lots of people come up and offer rooms, cheap rates, good views, etc, but one has to check the quality first. They went to 5 hotels and guest houses before they found the one we are in. What is actually really nice about India is how helpful the East Indians are.   Maria and Diane had connected with this 20 year old rickshaw driver (little three wheeled scooter with a seat for passengers over the engine) who drove them around to hotel after hotel. Many were full or undesirable. They finally found this cute little Indian bungalow just outside of the city. It has two storied buildings set around a garden with quaint little rooms in the old english raj style. Simple but clean. The flowers here are in bloom and colourful. The price for the room is $8 a night. It is quite like an alpine cottage with high mountians all around the valley.
This is the next morning and we have all washed and cleaned up. The weather is definitely cool. Just like the west coast!   We are going to spend 2 nights here and then travel on to Keylang, which is over a 4,000 meter pass. We were going to rent a jeep, but now have found the local bus goes there too, so we will take that instead. The valley and area we are going to is famous for Heruka Chakrasamvara practitioners. They say the great yogi Tilopa stills lives here in meditation!   There is even a monastery that was built by Padmasambhava as he made his way to Tibet. On the way out of here we hope to visit a place called Tso Pema, where Padmasambhava met his consort Mendarvara and exhibited many miricales. That is at the other end of the Manali valley, where we will be going after this.
Anyway, that is all for now. I doubt there are internet cafes where we are going, so until the next cafe, take care and have fun.
Jhampa (maria, aimee, carmen and diane)
Hi,
Update May 27th
Well plans change quickly, and there was no email access in Manali that let me use a floppy disk, so I could not update you on the trip.
Anyway, we are now in Leh, Ladahk. A sudden change in plans, plus the pass openning up between Manali and Leh made it possible. We crossed four passes to get here. First one was 14,500 ft, the second one 16,500, the third was 15,000 and the last one was 17,400 feet.
To start at the beginning. We found the pass was open the day after I typed the first checkin and so we investigated what the cost of a car rental was. We ended up renting a Maruti 4 wheel drive jeep for Can $250 for the two day drive to Leh. Between 5 of us it was not so bad. We drove on the 25th over the Rotang Pass, about 14,000 feet. The road was actually very congested, as there were cars everywhere. Manali is a favourate summer (hot season) resort for rich Indians, and going to this pass is one of the things they do. Therefore we were on a single lane road with no less than 100 cars at 10 am moving slowly up to the pass. On the pass everyone runs around and plays with the snow packs and skis (about 60 feet) and such. Silly to watch, but when you come from a tropical country it must be exotic.
As soon as we were through the pass the cars all dissappeared and we were one of only a few cars driving on the road to Keylang.    This is the first city before you cross the 2nd pass of 16,500. We slept in a dingy little concrete garage that night and left at 4:30 am for the first pass. The weather was cool and clear as we zigged back and forth on the road that crawled up the mountain pass.   We were over it by 10 am and down into a series of valleys for about 2 hours. The second pass was a litter lower, say 1000 feet and we got through it by 1 pm. The landscape is incrediable and our pictures will tell those stories. Most of the mountians seem to be rock with tons and tons of gravel on them. The land is bare and dry, with little patches of snow here and there. Periodically we cross a glacier or heavy snow pack the builds up in the valleys or ravens. From there we drove into Pang, a little tent city (about 7 tents) which are all restrauants serving the buses and taxi's that drive over the pass. We stopped there for an hour to aclimatize alittle. The first two passes that day were not too hard on us. I actually thought we were finished with roads over mountains and then discouvered the next pass is the 2nd highest in the world. The highest is in Ladahk also (as far as I know).
The drive now was on a long high plateau over basically moon scape. The attitude would be about 14,000 feet. We drove past yak herds and a periodic tent complex of locals with sheep and goats. There is no water to be seen anyway, which makes you wonder what these people do for water and drinking. The land is dry, open, no vegitation and windy. Dust devils swirl on the huge open areas. The only thing in this wide expansive high attitude valley is the ribbon of a road down the middle. We then started to approach the highest pass. It was a very long road with few switch backs, but a constant climb up the side of the bare open shoulder of the mountain. The road tends to be just rock and shale laid flat on a single lane pathway.
We all were gidy and dizzy even at Pang, and it only got worse as we approached the pass. Maria was in quite a bit a pain and Diane was getting headaches.   As we got to the pass summit we all had chest pain and were quite disorientated.    We spent 4 minutes on the top at 17,400 feet and then quickly moved for the descent. Even 10 minutes after the summit we were all quite disorientated. We stopped a few times to relieve the nausia, but basically were all uncomfortable. Even the driver was feeling the effects. The road was winding it's way down the mountian in long cross backs at quite a steep level.
By the 40 minute mark we were about 4,000 feet lower and the pain was diminishing. The hard part now was the next 2 hours it took to drive to Leh. We all were unhappy, tired (remember this had started at 4:30 am) and dirty. The high plateaus are cold, dusty and windy. The sun is stark and bright. We all had sun and wind burns on our faces and blood shot eyes from the dust. When we finally arrived at the hotel at 7 PM we only wanted to wash the dust off, drink some tea and go to bed.
This morning we are still recovering from the attitude sickness and can only venture out for short trips. The general scene in Ladahk is quite different. The landscape is dry, darren, dusty and stark with large masses of rock jutting up into the sky. On the top of most of the small abrupt rock hills are little temples and religious monuments. The houses and temples are completely in the Tibetan style, square with blackened windows in rows on each floor. All the buildings are made of clay bricks and mud. It rains once a year here and the roofs are flat and made of just dirt. Even in the winter the snow is so dry it just blows away after snowing. There is the Indus River flowing through the valley though, so there are some patches of vegitation and grass, but it is very scare. Once you are up on the edges of the valley it is dry dirt and rock. We hope to visit some of the temples up and down the valley over the next 7 days we are here.
We are actually contemplating a return on the same passes we came here on. Our tour book says the effects of attitude sickness are greatly deminished when one has acclimatized to the elevation. We are presently at 3,000 meters or 9,000 feet.
Well, I have to now pay Rupees 5 for each minute on the net. I will not be logging on as much as before. In Dharmsala it was a rupee fifty for each minute.   Granted that is still cheaper than Canada at 6 rupees a minute. THe other problem is the phone lines, electricity, computers and such. The phone lines are poor and one gets knocked off the line suddenly for no reason at all. Then the electicity is very unstable and goes off unexpectedly. The computers are old and don't work very quickly, some of them don't even have floppy disk drives, so I can't load the file onto the email program. Anyway, please be patient with me for emails. It takes me ages to get these to you. For example today (29th) there is no electicity, and so no email. Oh well, such is India.
Take care all of you and I will most likely check in after about one week.
Jhampa
May 30,
Today we went to Thiksay Gompa, a gelukpa monastery about 15 kilometers from Leh. We are now six people; Maria, Aimee, Dianne, Carmen, Dahan (a swiss air pilot on holiday) and myself.   We decided to take local transport to Thiksay and so walked to the bus station.
Leh is a small city and would cover about 10 square blocks of any ordinary city. Here as the landscape is so stark and bare, plus the population of Ladhakis small, Leh is large as far as the Ladhakis are concerned. There is the main street and a few side streets and back alleys in the central part. The bus station sits on the east end of the city at the end of a long street of small stalls and street hawkers.
What is nice about Leh is the Buddhist flavor.   They have build prayer wheels all over the city. These are large ones, about 5 feet wide and 8 feet tall. The prayer wheels are build in a small pagoda like strurcture with all four sides open. I have been taking pictures of different styles for Peter to have a look at for his prayer wheel in Duncan. People tend to sit on the two steps that lead up to the prayer wheel and chat as others walk up and spin the wheel a few times. All prayer wheels have a little bell that is struck by a pole with each full rotation of the wheel. Thus as you walk down the street past the stalls and periodic prayer wheel you hear the ring of the prayer wheel bell every few seconds. This is mixed in with the sound of the street hawkers selling their goods and the shoppers walking and muttering mantras and turning their prayer beads.
The Ladhaki population is mainly Buddhist with a small community of Muslims. There are both Kashmiri Muslims and Ladhaki Muslims here. Each morning at 4 am we hear the call to prayer from the only Muslim temple in the city. The prayer lasts about 5 minutes and then there is quiet until about 5 am when the Buddhist temple starts up their loud speakers and has prayers for about 30 minutes. One could call it a compitition between faiths, but whatever the case it is nice early morning sounds.
Thiksay monastery was built in the 1800's or so. It is on the top of a small rock hill and is a series of adobe mud buildings scattered up the hill. We arrived at noon on the bus after a two hour bus ride just as a huge wind and dust storm blew up. Luckily the monastery has build a modern (by Ladhaki standards) restraurant and guest house right where the bus stops. Visualize Thiksay as about 200 feet long, mud shops at both sides of the road with the monastery hill rising up abruptly behind the shops. It is dirty, dusty, bare and open everywhere else outside these buildings. We ran into the restaurant to get out of the wind and dust which was blowing about 20 to 30 mph. Inside the restrauant was wonderfully decorated like a temple and we found the proceeds went to support the monastery. We had lunch for about one hour until the wind storm blew itself out and then walked out the back towards the hill and monastery.
The hill is at least 700 feet high and one approaches it past a wall of mani stones (stone wall 4 feet high, 6 feet wide and 100 feet long made of stones with mani padme hum carved on them). The mani wall starts and finishes with a huge stupa. Past that is part of the village and then the hill of the monastery. There are stone steps leading up steeply past old temple buildings and small residences for the ordained. As one climbs higher and higher the buildings get bigger. Half way up is one huge stupa, 50 feet high with 8 small stupas right behind it. These have to be build on terraces as the rock hill is so steep. The trail zigs and zags back and forth past a few more buildings and finally one arrives at the monastery proper. It is like a castle built of carved stone and mud mortor. The main building must be 300 feet long and 100 feet wide and several stories high perched on the crest of the hill. We have to move between various sections of the building on stone steps that take us still higher and higher up the structure.   You finally arrive at the walled courtyard with two long prayer flag poles standing in the center. The walls of the courtyard are painted with Buddhas and such. One final set of stairs takes you up 20 or more feet to the entrance of the temple. It is actually quite small inside, but the walls are at least 4 feet thick. There is space for 100 monks to assemble for prayers in a dark temple with smoke coloured walls and ornamentations.
We visited the main temple and the side temples. The side temple has a huge statue of Maitreya Buddha. It is at least 30 feet tall and very attractive.   The art work on the statue is perfect.   You come in on the level of the face, which stands about 15 feet towering above you and you can look down on the feet of the statue on the floor below. The upper level is like a balcony around the shoulder level of the statue.
We returned to Leh that evening and washed up, etc.
A few days later we organized ourselves to go to Alchi, a monastery built by Rinchen Zangpo in the 11th century. It was build over 20 years while he was returning from Kashmir with Buddhist texts for Tibet. This was during the time of Marpa the translator, Milarepa, Atisha and such, famous inidividuals who brought Buddhism to the Tibetan people.
We took a 3 hour local bus ride (quite uncomfortable but bearable) to a side road that leads to Alchi. We had to walk for 4 kms to arrive at the village. Alchi has 1000 resident Ladhaki people and is small. The road winds up a small hill through gravel and dirt dunes and as we arrived a storm of dust came down from the peaks of the mountains surrounding the village. The peaks are at least 20,000 feet tall, as Alchi is at 7,000 feet. We made it to the first guest house in time and got two rooms for the night. The guest house was pleasant as it was literally just a Ladhaki house with spare bed rooms. We all sat around the kitchen and had lunch as the woman made the rice and vegtables. The only vegtables were mustard greens.   After lunch we walked to the temple about 6 minutes away.
The Alchi temple is all adobe brick (as are most structures in Ladhak) as there is about 2 inches of rain each year in the Ladhak valleys. This particular village is beside the Indus River. What is incredible about the temple is to look at wood structural members and mud bricks and think that those are the original adobe bricks put there 900 years ago.
The main feature is the Kashmiri and Tibetan pictures on the inside walls of the three temple buildings. There are at least 5,000 images painted on the walls. These are the original picture styles of the 11th century. Many of us are familiar with the Tibetan style of faces and such from tonkas, but here you can see the original source of the Tibetan style. There are wonderful details, dancing figures only 2 and 3 inches tall in perfect clarity surrounding Buddhas in various postures. Two of the temples have made 6 walls (three in each temple) with a thousand Buddhas on each wall surface. There are quite a few Tara wall paintings with her face turned to the side that are exquisite. A style never used in Tibet. The main deity of the big temple is Vairochana, one of the 5 Buddha family Buddhas. We found a book published from England that was worked on for 15 years with details of all the pictures for only US$200! It was exquisite, but beyond our budget.
In one of the temples are clay statues 20 feet tall of Manjursri, Avaloketesvara and Maitreya Buddha on three of the walls. The actual inner space is a room about 25 feet square. Every inch of these statues' lower garments are covered with figures deplicting the 80 Mahasiddhis (accomplished beings), gods and goddesses, monks in meditation, etc. Each character is only a few inches tall and yet perfect in detail. Remember, these are 900 years old and in a mud temple!
There are three floors to this temple, with mandalas, figures and deities on all surfaces. Each floor is actually just a balcony surrounding the stupa that stands in the middle of the lowest temple floor. The second floor has pictures and mandalas of Tara and Heruka. The top roof is a mandala that looks down upon you from 40 feet above.
We stayed two days here, as it turned out the monk running the temple was a student of Drepung Losel Ling Monastery, which was the monastery of Ven. Ling Rinpoche, my teacher, so the monk gave us a special tour the following day for 2 hours. The original day we came was late in the afternoon and he said the sun was in the wrong position to view the pictures. The individual rooms were quite dark with no lighting and one was not allowed to use a flash from the camera inside. I had 400 asa film, but would have done better with 800 asa and a tripod. Oh well, maybe in a few years several of us can come back here?
We left Alchi on the second afternoon. It was a 3 hours bus ride back with us sitting on the floor of the bus as there were no seats. That is typical of India as there are so many people travelling and not much public transport. We arrived back to Leh at 5 pm and had a wash down and such. The heat in the sun is quite strong as wind blows against you with lots of dust in it. We had to walk from Alchi to the bus stop 4 kilometers with the wind in our faces. The landscape in that area is again just rocks, dust, and bare ground and hills and steep mountian sides. Much like the moon. What is nice though is the periodic stupas and mani walls that just appear out of nowhere beside the dirt road. 1000 years of Buddhism in a harsh climate has done interesting things.
We are leaving Leh on June 6th for Keylong, Manali, Kulu and New Delhi. The bus ride will go over three passes ranging from 17,400 feet to 15,800, and the ride will take 14 hours on the first day. We will stay in Keylong for 2 days, as it is special site for the Heruka Tantra and the Mahasiddhi Tibulpa. From there we go to Manali to collect our luggage we left behind on the way to Ladhak and then on to Kulu for the afternoon to visit another Heruka site. We will leave that evening from Kulu for New Delhi on a night bus and fly out to Kathmandu two days later on June 12th.   Hopefully the email will be better as we leave this area.
These last few days in Leh are quite relaxed. We rise at 6:30 or so and do some meditation. Walk across the road for breakfast of a spinach omelet, apple juice, Ladahki bread with jam and tea for about $2. Then one takes care of daily business which for Maria and Diane is getting a plane ticket out of Leh. That takes one up to lunch time which will be a small meal of rice and vegtables for $4 or so. In the afternoon one has to rest as the sun is hot and bright. The elevation is 11,000 feet and so one gets tired quickly with any small activity. At around 8 pm we go and find a restrauant and all 6 of us get together and chat about the day and events. Dinner comprises of tibetan dishes, indian dishes, tandori bread and such. Bedtime is around 10 pm.   We are thinking of going to see a sand mandala in a local monastery (10 kms out of town) either Sunday or Monday.   Carman, Aimee and myself will take a delux bus (slightly better than the local ones) back to Manali on the 6th morning at 4 am. Maria and Diane will attempt to catch a flight to Delhi on June 7th and have a few days to shop, etc.   Carmen and I will arrive on the 11th morning in Delhi and fly out with everyone else for Kathmandu on the 12th. Sakya Dawa (Buddha's birth, enlightenment and parinirvana day) is on June 16th, and we hope to be at Bodha Stupa for that event. Thousands of Buddhists will converge on the stupa to make butter lamp offerings and such that day.
That's all for now.
jhampa
Hi Everyone,
June 6th
Just spent 15 hours travelling from Leh to Keylong. We were supposed to catch a "delux bus" from Leh and the hotel manager was working on the tickets. There is a funny thing in India which is like the first word processors they produced years ago, "what you see is what you get." In this case it goes like, "what you ask for is what you get."   Therefore he was repeatedly going to the delux bus stand (some private bus stand) and asking when the bus was coming in and for a ticket. They in response were saying they would not sell a ticket in advance but just the day before the bus leaves. What that meant in real terms was, if a bus came from Manali and they knew about it, they sold tickets. June is still the early season for buses and tourists in Ladhak, so there are not delux buses each day. Anyway, there had been no buses for a few days and so the manager kept saying no tickets were available until the 5th. We wanted to leave on the 6th. Therefore at 6 pm on the 5th he came and said no buses had come in and so we had to wait another day. This was after repeated promises he had everything under control and we were definitely getting tickets. Around 9 pm Aimee decided she really wanted to leave Leh and approached the manager about other alternatives. He said there were the, "mini delux buses" and so they jumped into his car and drove to the regular bus stand. Aimee found there was a bus and we could go on it. The manager claimed the bus left at 3 am and as we could find no one else to confirm or deny this, it meant we had to get up at 2:30 am. So 4 hours later (as it took us till 10 pm to decide we wanted to do this) we were up and stuffing ourselves into his car to be driven several blocks to the bus stand. We found two other people standing in the dark in front of the Leh-Keylong bus stand area discussing what bus was the one we were on. There were two buses in the area and everything was quite dark. Someone showed up with a ticket shortly later and it said the departure time was 4 am. It was now 3 am and the hotel manager left after giving us many assurances the bus had space and would take us.
As 4 am approached more people came until finally there were about 30 isrealis, nepalese and east indians gathered around these two buses. At 10 to 4 one of the buses inner light flashed on and 5 people started to be active inside the bus. It turns out the bus drivers of the two buses and the ticket takers slept in the bus each night before departure.
We did manage to get seats and actually left Leh at 4:05 am or so. The two buses left together as they keep an eye on each other during the 15 hour trip. The route is over 3 passes and through some very empty territory with glaciers and high peaks surrounding the valleys and the single lane road. Thus the double bus trips ensure they can help each other if something goes wrong.
This time the attitude sickness was not as severe but it still left most of us dizzy and nauseous on the 17,500 foot pass. What was nice was the view from the bus and the sunny weather. We managed to roll into Keylong at 7 pm covered with dust but more rested than the jeep trip 12 days earlier. We are presently in a beautiful hotel called "Hotel Tashidelek."
June 7th
The hotel is on the western slope of the large river valley looking east to the sunrise and the range of mountains above the river and valley. The mountain directly across the valley from our top floor balcony is believed to be the mandala of Heruka Chakrasamvara. The peak of the mountian is seen as the 64 deities of the mandala. Half way up the mountain slope is the monastery Kartang, that was established hundreds of years ago. We visited that today by walking down into the river valley and then climbing (steeply) up for 1 and a half hours to the monastery. It turned out the Lama was visiting some people in Keylong so we missed each other, but we got to see some extremely old wood statues of Tara, Padmasamvara and other saints.
We (Carmen, Aimee and myself, as Maria and Diane are in Delhi today having flown from Leh this morning) had stopped at an Indian sweet shop in Keylong to purchase three bottles of water and $2 of milk sweets before the expedition to Kartang monastery, and so having found no one to chat with at the monastery we walked along the side of the mountain and had a picnic on a grass slope looking back at Keylong. When we finished we noticed a small hut further up the open slope of the mountain. We asked two nuns who were walking by at that moment who lived in the hut and were told it was a retreat hut for a monk. He was no longer living there and it was empty. We decided to walk up to it, as it was beautifully perched under a huge boulder on the steep mountain side. It took 15 minutes of climbing almost directly upwards to reach the stone hut, but once there it was wonderful. It turned out the monk that had lived there had passed away some years before and the hut stood empty. The wood door was ajar and the little hut was about 6 feet by 8 feet. It had two nice little windows that looked back towards Keylong and the mountains on that side of the river valley. We stayed there for an hour, burned some juniper branches in a little fire and offered the smoke as a smudge to the past spirit of the Lama and the mountain of Heruka.
About 5 pm we descended the mountian back to Keylong. We met lots of school aged children returning from school. The faces are remarkably beautiful here and different than the Ladahki people of Leh. Everyone smiles when meeting you and says hello, namaskar or Julay, with means greetings in english, hindi or ladhaki.
This evening Carmen lead us in doing a tzok offering to Heruka and the mountain beside us. We had wonderful intention but bearable harmony.   Because the place has such a nice feeling about it we have decided to stay another day. That means we will not leave for Manali until June 9th. Tomorrow we will walk up to the monastery and stupa of Kunu Lama Tenzin Gyalsten. He was a contempory Lama from this area who became famous as an instructor of His Holiness Dalai Lama on Bodhicitta. There is a wonderful story about his course of study and travels in India. He was a strong teacher on the virtues of Bodhicitta. He died in the 1980's and they have built a stupa to commemorate his life. This is also a long walk up the side of the mountain, but this time on the same side of the river as we are on. More to tell tomorrow.
June 8th
Good morning. It's snowing! Here Maria and Diane are in Delhi with 106 degree weather and we are snowed in at Keylong. Keylong is at 7,000 feet. It is quite possible the Rotang pass will be shut down for a few days, as the snow here is wet but constantly falling. Last night it rained until midnight and then turned to snow. That means on the high pass (Rotang pass is 13,000 ft) it snowed non-stop. Put all that together and Carmen, Aimee and I may be here for a few days. We will miss our plane flight from Delhi to Kathmandu, the Saka Dawa (Buddha celebrations) at Bodha Stupa in Nepal and such.
Anyway, interesting to see snow and it's not Christmas time. Here we are at the latitude of Florida and it's snowing. Today will be spent home in our hotel room. I only have sandals and socks, so no interest to go outside. Aimee and Carmen have sneakers, but not other warm clothes. Oh well.   Hopefully this email will get out to you at some time, I have been told the satellite dish is covered with snow and the phone lines are down. They say the telephone technicans are slow to clear the snow away.
It is not 12 noon and the stone and mud 4 story buiding beside the hotel just started to collapse. They say it seldom rains here, so the roofs are flat and made of beams, branches, mud and straw. If there really is little rain there would be no trouble, but today it was snowing and raining quite hard all morning. The building was in disrepair and had some squatters in it. The walls are build of stone and mud, about 2 feet thick. It is 4 stories tall and the mud outer coating is falling off in quite a few places. I was on the top floor of our hotel when I heard a creaking sound and looked over just in time to see the 4th floor roof collapse down. Luckily no one was in it, but the walls on that floor crashed down on the street below. There was quite a bit of yelling and running around until someone who owned the building came over and put a rope on the remaining wall that stood over the street and pulled it over too. That removed most of the immediate danger, but the walls are swelling up with water, tilting out towards the street and have large wet patches all over them. Our hotel is new, made of cement and has steel reinforcing. At least this is what the owner Tashi claims. If the building across the street does fall down we should be save, but it will block the only single lane road in this part of Keylong.    Remember the village is build on the side of a mountain with a steep descent to the river that is about 1,000 feet below. The houses are all on little terraces dug into the hillside.
This afternoon we will walk to a small temple that is 4 kilometers from the village. In this temple is a hand print in a rock surface. It was made by a yogi hundreds of years ago as proof of his realization. In Buddhism if one realizes the nature of reality, one can manipulate any physical matter due to the power of the realization. Well, off of the walk.
Well I have lots of time on my hands, so writing for all of you is the focus today. The girls did not return this afternoon, so I walked to the temple 4 kilometers from Keylong at 2:45 pm. The area is wonderful valleys and high mountains to each side with glaciers and snow packs everywhere. The road out of Keylong runs along the north side of the valley. It turns up into a ravine that has a smaller river flowing into the larger river. I think this is the Indus River, but am not sure. With the snow and rain today many small land slides and rocks have come onto the road. I walked past boulders the size of a human head scattered all along the roadway. The big trucks just drive over them but the cars and jeeps have to weave around them. Granted there was only 4 cars and trucks that passed me during the 45 minute walk to the temple. As I came closer to the temple on could look up from the road almost directly above to a cliff that was about 1000 feet high. When one came equal to the temple one had to walk up a zig zag trail about 500 feet above to road to get to the buildings. They were set into a large indent into the cliff.
The local people had definitely put some time and energy into making the immediate area beautiful around the buildings. There were popular trees and wild roses growing everywhere on the shelf everything was built on. A little local woman met me as I arrived to the shelf and took me to the temple building. It was possibly 20 feet square. When I came out she said a Lama was there (as no one else had appeared). I walked with her to the next small building and she showed me a wood stairwell going up to the next floor of the building. I stood at the bottom of this and called a hello tibetan style. It took the Lama about 5 minutes to finally decide I was worth seeing or letting in. Once he had opened the door at the top of the stairs his eyes went wide with suprise as I was a westerner. He invited me in saying he thought I was a tibetan and had not been in a rush to come out. He offered me tea and we chatted about lineages and such. He was a Tibetan yogi, with short hair and a long white beard. He wore a brown chuba (tibetan male dress) and lived in a very simple room about 8 feet square. His only window looked out to the south and the Heruka mountain above and the river far below.   The middle of the room had a small square stove with the pipe going straight up through the roof. All these buildings were protected by the cliff above, as they were situated on the shelf that indented into the mountain.
We then returned to the temple and he showed me the two rocks that were supposed to have the indentations of the famous yogi of this area.   One was a rock in the shape of his foot and the other was a flat rock on the altar that had two big indentations in it. These were very smooth and parralel to each other. I could not really say it looked like two foot prints like in clay, but it was interesting.
After seeing these and making prostrations to the altar I left the temple and walked back down to the road. The walk back to Keylong was quicker and I made it to the hotel just as Aimee and Carmen arrived. They had left at 11 am for the monastery far above Keylong. It was the temple where Kunu Lama Tenzin Gyalsten had lived. It had taken them several hours of climbing to reach it. The ground was covered with snow up there and it was much colder than down in the village.
We all had dinner together, shared stories and then crashed in the hotel room. Walks at 9,000 feet are much harder on one than at sea level.   This brings to an end day 2 at Keylong on the longer journey to Delhi to fly to Kathmandu.
The snow seems to have melted enough that we might be able to leave on the local bus tomorrow if we are lucky. We have to be careful though, as the pass we are to cross tomorrow is 13,000 feet and may have lots of snow on it.
That's all for now.
June 9
Made it over the pass in the middle of a huge thunder and lightning storm.   Got a bus ticket for Delhi for the 10th evening.
June 10
Walked around Manali for the last day. Visited a Nyingma Monastery and enjoyed preparing for an all night bus trip to Delhi.   Aimee left for Dharmsala to continue her studies and Carmen and I went to the "deluxe bus" station.
Bus was okay and the trip bearable. It took us 14 hours to get to Delhi, slept a little.
June 11
Got two rickshaws at 6:30 am to the hotel Maria and Diane are staying at. Washed up and ready for a day in 103 degree weather. Tomorrow off to Kathmandu, Nepal.
jhampa
June 16th,
Happy Saka Dawa.
Well everyone, hi, we are in Nepal now. The plane trip was comfortable and we arrived in good time to seek out a hotel and get settled. We are now in the Lotus Guest House on the back side of Bodha Stupa.
What is the big event right now is Saka Dawa. It is a two week build up for the celebration of Lord Buddha's birthday, June 16, or actually the full moon day of the Tibetan lunar 4th month.
The Bodha Stupa is about the size of one city block. It takes 10 minutes to walk around. So for those of you from Duncan, it is bigger than the city hall block, so it might equal the size of the two blocks of Kenneth and Station street blocks.   It is about 100 feet tall, a huge dome like structure with a golden spire and crown at the top. On the lowest level where everyone walks around there are prayer wheels every 2 feet. These are little ones just the same size as the one at Thubten Choling on the temple wall. I have not counted them but there must be several thousand prayer wheels on that level.
Each morning and evening since we have been here the whole circumabulation area is full of people. As we got closer and closer to today the numbers increased. The walk way around the stupa is at lease 50 feet wide between the wall of prayer wheels and the fronts of the stores that ring the stupa area. That means each morning and evening there are hundreds and hundreds of tibetans and nepalese people walking as they chant mantras, turn their mala beads and spin portable prayer wheels. A huge concourse of poeple focused on the stupa and prayer. What is nice is this stupa has four sets of eyes on each side of the golden spire, and these watch over you as you walk around.
This morning is the big morning and so in the walking area are many small tables filled with oil lamps (butter lamps as the Tibetans call them) all lit up and blazing. This evening it will be even more colourful with lights all over the stupa plus all the little butter lamps.
The other thing in the Bodha area is the large numbers of monasteries. There must be a monk and nun population of two or three thousand ordained people. All the monasteries do morning and evening chanting which they accompany with horns and drum music. One can't really call it music, but it is loud and resounding. Each morning at 5 am we are awoken with the sound of conch shells being blown and then at 5:30 am the monks in all these monasteries start chanting, blowing the horns, beating the drums, etc.
Today Maria and I visited 5 monasteries in the area. They are all full of people making offering of money, oil for lamps and prayers. All this area is a cris-cross of lanes and small pathways between buildings. There are no actual wide roads, so the only cars are tiny little toyota corrolas and such that can weave in and out of these routes.
Anyway, more stories to come later. Lots of sights to see in the valley and holy places to visit.
Jhampa, Maria, Carmen and Diane.
Greetings everyone.
This should arrive in time for the evening meeting. Wishing you all a Happy Saka Dawa again. All the people running around the stupa and such is now subsided. The early morning and evening parade of people is smaller (as after Saka Dawa there is less merit) so it is not too crowded right now.
To give you a few details of Saka Dawa. In the early morning (say 3 am) people were already up and doing prayers and taking 8 mahayana precepts (day of fasting). By 8 am there were thousands of people walking around the stupa. They were stringing prayer flags from the top of the stupa to the outer ring (about 100 feet of prayer flags) and painting it and putting up new cloth on the crown area. I wish I could include a picture of it all to give you an idea of the magnitude of it all.
After Maria and I had breakfast we went monastery visiting. There must be 25 monasteries in this area. We went to the biggest first, a monastery built by Dilgo Kenste Rinpoche. It is ornate and colorful with the standard Buddhist reds, yellows and blues. There are 100 monks in this monastery and we unexpectedly met the abbot. He was wondering across the courtyard when Maria and I were taking pictures and started to chat with us. At that time we did not know he was the abbot, so we just walked around with him as he described things. He then invited us for tea and that is when we discovered he was the head monk as we went to his room at the top of the monastery. Nice surprise.
We visited a few other monasteries and saw huge statues of Maitreya Buddha, Padmasambhava and Lord Buddha. They are all wonderfully decorated and ornate. In the evening the stupa was lit up with hundreds of electric lights, butter lamps and people circumabulating.   We spent the evening either walking with the thousands of people around the stupa or sitting quietly at the side. There were people prostrating around the stupa also in amongst the walkers.
It all stopped about 9:30 PM or so.
Yesterday we attended a lecture by Chokyi Nima, a resident Kargyu Lama. It was attended by about 50 westerners and lasted most of the morning. The afternoon was rained out totally. The monsoon has finally hit Nepal, which is a nice relief from the heat of the sun. It rained most of last night and is cloudy this morning. The temperature has dropped about 15 degrees, which makes things bearable. Now one just has to take an umbrella with them outside. The rain is normally just for 20 or 30 minutes and then stops. Yesterday was unordinary as it rained for several hours.
Well everyone, wishing you the best. Next week a group of us will be going to Parping and other religious sites on pilgrimage. We are also looking at statues and tonkas this coming week.
Jhampa and Maria

Hi Guys,
Well this week has not been as active or exciting as the previous weeks. THat means you will not hear of snow storms at 12,000 feet or the heat of Delhi.
I was personally doing astrology most of this week, that means sitting in my hotel room and talking into a tape cassette. This is actually interesting though as the background noises are very unique here. Between the Nepal Airline flights over the building (we are close to the airport at Bodhna Stupa) taking people out into the mountains of Nepal there are lots of other interesting sounds. There are the three monasteries within 100 feet that all blow their horns and beat the huge drums loudly. So in the background of my voice droning on about astrological transits and such come the blair of long horns, the thrill of the small horns and the throb of the big drums.
We are still awoken at 4 am with conch shells. Here they do something I have not heard before. The first conch shell blows by itself for a minute and then a second one joins in. These two then carry on sounding for about 20 minutes, blowing various notes in one long long chorus.   Then at 5 am the monks, the big horns and the chanting start.
This may sound all wonderful, but what you don't know about is the yappy little dogs all over the place that "yap" all night long. We moved out of the Lotus Guest house to get away from one loud little dog that lived right behind us. We are now a block away from him but can still hear him when he gets really going. We have decided the owners must be deaf. When we approached the owner of the Lotus Guest house (the last one) and asked what he could do about it, said, "nepalese love dogs."   It appears that if your dog barks during the night it gives them a sense of security. No thief would dare come around, so they like the dogs barking. End of story. Thus for the last two nights we have not slept that well, even though we have moved away from one yappy little dog we have hundreds of other ones all over the Bodha area to contend with. Great for the practice of patience.
Yesterday Chokyi Nima gave his last discourse. He is the Kargyu Lama who gives lots of meditation programs and teachings in the Bodhna area. He has a great sense of humor and never stops to pick on someone in the audience to rib or single out and tease. He and Lama Tashi from Victoria would have a lot of fun together. Lets hope he doesn't find out about squirt guns. ( a lama tashi favourite.)
Yesterday after the teachings Maria, Aimee's uncle Uujen and myself went statue shopping. We spent $1,700 on about 20 statues!   A lot of them are for all of you. We have Buddhas, Vajrasattvas, Taras, Padmasambhavas, and Medicine Buddhas. The big ones you will have to wait and see, but they will impress you no end.   We have a couple of silver stupas also, but they were special orders. If people are interested in some of the statues and we don't have anymore, then we have arranged to be able to order them from here.
Today is Sunday for us, which means Saturday night for you. Hope you are all well. I have heard that Phil is doing a very good job. He may take over from me permanently!   Take care and we will be back in just over two weeks, which will end all the exotic stories from Asia. By the way Carmen has been approached for marriage by a Tibetan! Nice guy in his late 30's. This was after only meeting him for one day. I don't think she is going to do it right away, but there are lots of elegible fellows over here. More stories to come soon. See you all soon.

Jhampa, Maria, Carmen and Dianne.

Hi Everyone,
Well it is mid week here and things have been fun. To share a few odd stories. Carmen and Dianne live up behind Bodhna Stupa by a 10 minute walk. Maria and I are staying closer to the Stupa, about 3 minutes from it.
She said each morning they (Dianne and her) are awoken by a little boarding school close to thier house singing the Tibetan National anthem. Quite moving to hear with all their small voices singing sweetly.
Around the stupa we have the early morning circumabulation and the evening ambulation. Most mornings there are the fried bread saleswomen, beggars positioning themselves for the day and the devote Buddhists walking purposefully around the stupa. On holy days people set up little tables at the edge of the walking area with hundreds of butter lamps on them for people to purchase at rupees 3 a piece. They are organizied as when it rains they have little roofs they put over the lamps and they also erect wind shields to stop them being blown out. Each day we can join the the morning and evening walk around the stupa.
The cost of a 20 minute taxi ride from Thamel, city center for Kathmandu, out to Bodhna is about 100 rps. That is $2.30.   The other night Diane was coming back in the evening with a young taxi driver. He had to stop for gas along the way and after filling the tank he jumped in and drove away. Five minutes later he went into shock, he had forgotten the gas cap. The car was a newer Toyota. He started to get very upset beside Diane, and finally pulled over and burst into tears. It took a while for Dianne to calm him down, but finally came to understand the young fellow would loose his job the next morning when he checked the car into the owner. (most taxi's are owned by companies or rich individuals and the drivers lease them daily). The boy was from the countryside and could not get work easily, so it was devastating for him.
Anyway Dianne said to go back to the gas station, but when they returned the cap was gone. She then said to him she would buy him a new cap the next morning, which relieved him to some extent. They arranged to meet at 9 am the next morning and go back to an auto store and pick the cap up. The next morning when Dianne went outside the fellow was sitting there and said, "Madam, I have been here since 8 am, I was worried you would forget." She reassured him again and they went into town and purchased the cap, 500 rps, or about Canadian $10. Dianne said it was so sad to see how fragile a job can be for someone, and how upsetting something as inexpensive as a gas cap can be. The other side of the coin though is it might have been a scam, which is not uncommon. The stories one hears almost daily are quite incrediable. In this case Dianne felt his tears and grief were sincere, or at least he deserved an oscar for acting with such conviction.
As the monsoon season has started we get rain each day in the afternoon. When it rains it really rains here and most of our clothes are getting a damp smell. Carmen recent found a small family of frogs living at the edge of her door mat inside the door. She says there are 4 tiny little ones right now but a few days ago she found two big ones jumping across the floor. She swept them out the door but it appears they left some children behind.
Maria and I have been making little walking treks out of Bodhna into the country side. Once one is away from the immediate area of the stupa there are rice paddies, bamboo groves and rural settings. The ordinary houses are adobe brick along one laned dirt roads the weave in and out of fields and scattered houses. We attempted to fly into the mountains to walk around there but all the airports are closed for the monsoon season for repairs.   Most of the airports in the mountain areas are just grass fields that have been improved to allow a 20 passage plane to land at. Anyway they are all closed right now so we are stuck in the valley. It is quite large though and there are lots of things to see.
That's it for now, not much else to share.
Jhampa and Maria
Hi everyone,
Well, down to 10 days before we start flying home! The monsoon has been strong at times, which is just like a west coast rain storm.   Here it rains most afternoons for about 2 hours and then stops. It will drop about 1 to 2 inches of rain in that time and there are lots of little streams that suddenly spring up on the roads and footpaths. One carries an umbrella all the time, either for the sun when it comes out or the rain.
When the sun is shining it is hot but the rain cools things down nicely each day.
We recently visited Choje Trichen Rinpoche, the main teacher for Sakya Tritzin. He is in his 80's and quite a character.   He receives visitors in the afternoon for about 2 hours.   I mentioned I was Lama Tashi's translator in Victoria and he flashed back quickly, "I'm keeping my eye on Lama Tashi." I said Lama Tashi was in fine form and he smiled at that.   We chatted for a few minutes and then he gave us all 100 rupees as a a gift. We tried to refuse but he said we had to have tea with it. As I had just lost my umbrella I purchased a new one with his gift.
The beggars are difficult to bear sometimes. There are lots of children who beg in both Kathmandu and around Bodhna. One of them here at Bodha is particularly difficult because he whines so much. He is possibly 8 years old and wears a ragged little suit jacket and pants. When he first finds you he starts tagging along at your side and has this slightly audible mumble of "give me something." As you walk further it increases with crying and pleading, as well as him touching your foot periodically to really say he is begging from you. If you continue to ignore him he then stops following you and just cries in the middle of the road.   As soon as you are out of ear shot though it all stops and he walks off looking for someone else to do it too. It is particularly uncomfortable because of the crying and whining. Aimee, who has been there for 2 years told us that the children should never be given anything, as it just reinforces the lifestyle of begging. These kids could do other things and there are programs to take them off the street.    The adults are a different story. One tends to find crippled adults mostly around the stupa. These people will have either no legs or arms, or severely whithered ones. They crawl along on the flag stones around the stupa area and take up regular positions. They are quite well supported by the Tibetans and others. Each full and new moon plus on special holy days they will come in large numbers and take positions around the stupa. There are other people who sit at the entrances to the stupa walkway and have large piles of 1 and 2 rupee notes to make small change for the people circumabulating. One gets 100 rps changed and then can disburse 1 or 2 rupees to each of the many beggars. It is all organized in a nice orderly manner.
Yesterday we left the city of Kathmandu and drove to Parping. This is a prilgramage site for both Guru Rinpoche and Vajra Yogini. The small village is beautifully placed in the Nepalese countryside with rice patties everywhere. It is the start of the rice season so most fields just have the short stocks of rice coming up. The patties are everywhere, right up to the side of the adobe 2 story houses. That makes the whole vision wonderfully green. The side of the jungle hill where the temples are is covered with prayer flages. These can be up to 400 feet long running from the crest of the wooded hill to the base. The highest temple has right behind it a cave that Padmasambhava lived in for a short period of time on his way to Tibet. It is small but clean and dry. Just below that is a temple for Ganesh and Tara. The temple is built right onto the rocks and one rock has a carved Ganesh statue chiseled into it. Right beside that is a small relief that everyone claims is a self appearing Tara image. It just started to appear on the surface of the rock by itself.
We then walked down to the Vajra Yogini temple below that and visited there. The Nepalese own the temple and will not allow westerners to recieve a blessing. They say the Guru of the temple has not given permission yet. We were allowed to offer prayers though. The actual inner sanctum is only 6 feet square with a 4' silver statue of Yogini on the back wall. Only the Pujawali's (priests) are allowed in there. On the roof of the temple is a wooden mandala that is possibly 1000 years old. That is when the Pamping brothers brought the Yogini tantra to Nepal from Naropa in India. This is in the lineage prayers for those who practice Vajra Yogini. It was quite wonderful to be at a place that has so much history of Buddhism, especially when you consider that Canada or the United States are only 200 or 250 years old as far as europeans are concerned.
Today is a rest day. I have a sore throat and flu. It is Sunday, which for all of you back there is Saturday night and the end of Canada day celebrations.
Here there was a small Canada day celebration given by the resident Canadians. A luncheon and party was offered at some NGO office. We went to Parping instead.
That concludes todays checkin. Hope all are well.
Jhampa and Maria

Checkin July 9th
Hi everyone. Well the countdown to returning is coming. 4 days to take off.
We recently attended the birthday celebrations of His Holiness Dalai Lama here at Bodhna. It was a big event and hundreds of Tibetans came from all over the valley. The sad thing was the monsoon rain decided to rain all day and dampen the events. Luckily they had put up Tents and many of the people could sit under the cover and protection of those to watch the dances and performances put on in honor of His Holiness.
To back track a bit though, the stupa is a wonderful central focus point for all the people in this area. It takes 5 minutes to walk around and has a huge area for those circumabulating it. About 40 feet wide from the 8 foot wall of prayer wheels to the two and three story shops and houses on the further side of the walk way. I only describe this to give you a clear mental picture.
So on the morning of the celebrations the organizors had all the monasteries and schools in the area come for a parade. At this point it was not raining. The start of the parade at 8 AM was a certain monastery with the monks all decked out in brocade and the lama hats. The hats are either red or yellow depending on which monastery they are from. These lead monks had two huge long horns, a set of 4 shrill horns and 4 conch shells as the openning sound for the parade. They started the procession around the stupa and up to the school where the dances and such were to happen. Behind them came 100 or so monks with brocade parasols and banners. Then came a marching band of the local high school with drums and marching band instruments. The school followed that with the kids all in white and blue uniforms marching in single file. Then came a second band of tibetan flute players with huge banners flowing in the wind. Behind these came the nuneries with 200 nuns also in brocade, with horns and trumpets and brocade banners. After those the remaining 500 monks from 3 monasteries also in coloured hats and with horns and brocade buddhist banners. Finally came a line of 20 dignitary monks, the abbots of the local monasteries and a huge picture of His Holiness protected from above with brocade umbrellas and banners.
While all the marching was going on sets of 4 monks went up on the second level of the stupa (remember it is about 300 feet across with 4 levels people can walk on) and set up the long tibetan horns and blew ceremonial welcomes for everyone. During this time hundreds of Tibetans were up on the Stupa running new prayer flags from the crest of the stupa to the outer ring, so the sky is full of red, blue, yellow and green player flages fluttering in the breeze. At the main entrance to climbing up on the stupa there is a huge smudge fire of juniper incense that fills the sky with fragrant smoke.
The whole affair took about 30 minutes to complete.
We are still running around trying to find the last few items we or other's have requested. Taking care of small details as the days slip away.
Today we will go to a temple for Vajra Yogini that is about 20 minutes away from Bodhna. The afternoon will be spent recovering from the morning outing.
See you all soon.
Jhampa

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