March is the best month ever! (plus a picture bonanza)

Forget Best Day Evers, March is the best month ever!

March has been unbelievable busy and amazing!

Beginning March 1st Lha (the school I have been teaching at for the past 6 months) went on a two-week holiday.  This was a delightful and much-needed break as I had not had a real break since I began in September.  The first big event was Losar, the Tibetan New Year.  The holiday was spent visiting with friends, playing many card games, lots of Tibetan dancing and eating an unbelievable amount of Kamtze (a Tibetan fried treat).  Next was Tibetan uprising day on the 10th, which celebrates the famous day of unsuccessful uprising in 1959 which resulted in a unprecedented violent crackdown by the PRC and the eventual flight of H.H. Dalai Lama into exile.  The I took a three-day holiday to Amritsar (a city in Punjab) where the fabulous Golden Temple is located.  The Golden Temple is the holiest site for the Sikhs (a sect of Hinduism).  Along with a trip to the India-Pakistan border, which is not only surprisingly safe but actually a tourist lure at this particular spot.  The past two days His Holiness was back in town to give teachings.  In between all of these activities I have been working for Tong Len in an Indian slum in the valley below Mcleod Ganj.  Long story short it has been an amazingly fun, although completely unrelaxing break!

Many pictures to aid this lazy/busy writer.

Our snow monk, borrowing Dorjee’s robes

Honoring our snow monk

Bonfire in the mountains

Yangchen and I

Gurmey’s mohawk, stylest your’s truely

Laundry day at Bagsu, doing one’s laundry is infinitely more fun when done in a river!

The joy of doing laundry!

Mid-laundry chicken bar-b-que, as unsanitary as it appears

Tashi Dorjee devouring an entire chicken carcass

Kamtze making

Yangchen, the Kamtze cook

Kamtze

Lamas at the temple on Losar

Losar performances in the temple

A young boy getting an early start on prostrations

The temple’s Losar altar

Butter sculptures

Butter sculptures

In the temple on Losar

Yangchen and Tashi Dorjee on Losar

Chang soup, also described as alcoholic rice soup

Kunchok and Lhamo, below their Losar altar

Tibetan dancing

Young monks, at the temple on Tibet Uprising Day

Young monks

Young monk

Foot baths, preceeding entrance to the Golden Temple

The majestic Golden Temple

Worshipper at the Golden Temple

White marbel complex surrounding the Golden Temple

Sikhs at the Golden Temple

Devotees at the Golden Temple

A young Sikh

My companion for the trip, Tashi

Evening prayer at the Golden Temple

The Golden Temple under the lights

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

Tong Len children

*an apology for horizontal pictures, wordpress was not cooperating.

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