Monasteries

Over the past few days I went to five monasteries and they were all surprisingly interesting. For the first one I actually took a public bus, which was an adventure in itself, and luckily I met some Ladakhi girls on the way who put me on the right bus. The first one was Thiksey monastery and it was HUGE. It felt like I walked up a mountain to get to the temples at the top and it was really warm and my calves were aching by the time I got down. But, it was a fascinating place and the first monastery I've ever seen so a very cool experience.

The next day the British guy and an Italian girl and I went to another three monasteries and they were suprisingly different in some ways. The first one, Rizong, was more like Thiksey than the others with the mountain of steps and similar looking temples. We saw a group of people who looked local and ended up running into them at the other two monasteries that day too. It was so funny to see a monk taking pictures for them and using their video cameras. The picture below is from Rizong.

After Rizong we went to Alchi monastery which had some amazing frescoes that were about 1000 years old. Unfortunately, the main temple was closed when we were there, but the grounds were realy lush and there were no stairs! We saw some smaller temples and one of the monks had us light oil candles for good luck. Last, we went to Likir monastery and ended up just sitting on the roof a bit near the monks relaxing. It was a bit unreal, but a very nice afternoon.

That evening the three of us ate the most wonderful dumplings and soup at a Tibetan restaurant and then followed that up with 'special tea' - i.e. beer in a teapot with a cup and saucer. Good times, though two teapots of beer between two people is a bit over my limit of late and I fear I may have swerved a bit on the walk home.

The next day (yesterday) Alice staged a miraculous recovery from her stomach ailments. She seemed so afraid of staying in one place too long that I think she willed her body to feel good enough to sit for a long car trip. Either way, it worked out well for me and she and I went to the Nubra Valley. We stopped at Sumur monastery and this one was really beautiful. It had red tiles on the ground outside and a golden-colored pagoda at the center. Again, the main temples were closed and supposedly the monk with the keys had gone to another village for the morning. Strange, but still nice grounds.

More about Nubra in the next post...