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Published: August 3rd 2008
Yesterday morning Jason and I woke early and walked down to the Dalai Lama's temple where we were able to get our malas blessed (prayer beads) by the Dalai Lama himself by the afternoon! As it was a rare sunny (partially) morning we took the opportunity to do some hiking around the hills surrounding the town. We headed up a forest path towards the small village of Dharamkot. The forest looks amazingly similar to the redwood forest, but unbelievable as it may be, the forest here are even more lush with fern and little flowers growing from all the cracks and even sprouting directly from all the tree trunks. There are even rhododenrons here as well but also different--most are very old trees! Not thick bushes but graceful trees. So we continue up the path till it broke open to a pleasing green farmland dotted with colorful houses and the random corner store. We saw a baby goat. We were heading up the mountain and then stopped to rest and look out on the valley from a large rock when a very old man approached us making demanding gestures for us to move quickly down the path. My first thought was
that we had perhaps made the mistake of sitting on a sacred stone but no! He made a funny hand gesture that looked quite similar to one mimicking an explosion. So we went to encounter another man, knowing english who said bomb! Yikes! Why? By who? I had just been reading about all the political unrest in the paper and the violence ensuing. So we ran. We came to a huddle of small houses and hid under a rock shack with a baby calf and some children to hide from the possible spray of rock hurtling through the air. " How big could it be???" I thought. I heard a loud bang. No flying rocks. They just blew a very small chunk of earth from down the path to access more rocks for building their houses and paths! What a scare! The afternoon proved more relaxing as I have proceeded in my thangka painting classes. I spent the afternoon learning how to draw a white Tara. it is quite technical and quite difficult. I must run to my next lesson. I will post more pictures later on today.
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Virginia Mills
non-member comment
Good-day!
What a scare! Hearing the word "bomb" gets scary... especially when you don't know the whole story. I am happy to hear your taking up lessens! I can just picture you in India with pencil in hand drawing!!! That makes me happy to picture! I look forward to seeing some of your work... You should take a picture for us of the white Tara, and post it?!?! Hope you continue having a beautiful day and night!