Love, curry and diarrhoea pills.: The Day before the mountains began

We have kinda managed to sort out the virus issues and so here are the photos of the day we spent in Sikkim visiting monasteries with Keyren (actually spelled Kiran).

Because i suffer from a bad memory, I cannot remember some of the names of the places that we visited (which also goes to show the extent of their impact on me).

Anyway, we started off our day with a visit to some sacred waterfalls. The locals believe that the waters here are holy and life giving. This area is also populated by various tribes who practise shamanism.

This is how traditional medicine men look like in their gear.

The sacred waterfall in all its glory.

According to local myth, this is the husband and wife tag team of yore. The crone on the right makes people sick (cos she likes to do stuff like that) and the guy on the left heals them and makes them well. Kinda like America, although America does both. Still, its a remarkably effective business plan; they did end up as folk legends after all.

This is a friendly Nepali lady who was serving me tea after we finished sightseeing and I asked to take a photo with her cos she looked really stunning. At first she smiled and then walked off behind a curtain and i thought that meant "no", but after a few minutes she came out and we took this photo. She looks a lot more stunning when she is smiling but i guess she decided we meant serious business here. Actually, one thing that i've noticed about the women here is that there is a certain hardness behind their friendly smiles. You can see it in their eyes because they lead such hard lives upon hard rock.

Finally we get to the monasteries. This is one of the oldest and most distinguished monasteries in the area. The courtyard view.

How a typical prayer room, with Elgin in it, looks like.

Monks undergoing what looks like a hair cut. One monk is consoling the other on the loss of his hair. Much like how we felt when we went to Tekong on the first day.

A line of prayer wheels, which is a marvelous invention. Turning the wheel one revolution means you have prayed once. Turning a line of about a hundred means you have prayed a hundred times in the matter of a minute. Remarkably efficient.

Suicide rock, so named because the local population comes here to do their suicides.

The view that someone sees before he bites the dust. Not too shabby eh?

Monks holding books.

One of the newer and grander looking monasteries.

In the middle of the courtyard of one of the monasteries is a tablet with the names of the monks who died in that monastery.

The doors to the remains of the Panchen Lama, one of the holiest Tibetan lamas. He lies in a stupa made of pure gold. Cameras were not allowed so you can't see the room, but it was filled with incense, smoky and had one monk in the room sitting guard.

This is my favourite monastery photo, mainly because i took it myself. Seriously, one of the monasteries, Lingdam, has armed guards deployed on its temple grounds because of a prior incident where there was conflict between a Tibetan monastery and another monastery.

The living quarters, not of the monks, but of people who stay within the monastery grounds.

Our simple but absolutely delicious lunch. Vegetable servings, pure pork fat, dal, and 4 mountainous bowls of rice washed down with Coke.

A young monk challenging us to a prayer wheel race, which never happened.

The so called national stadium of Gangtok. This is where the youth team plays their matches. To get into the youth team, you must either be a relative of the coach or be favoured by him. It is otherwise simply impossible, according to Kiran, who used to be a candidate for the youth team.