From Brahma to Buddha, Spring 2010

It was nice to go to Deer Park in Bir and finally see something other than a ridiculously busy city and be in the mountains.

When we first got to Dharamsala we visited a neighboring town called Norbulingka and saw where to go learn various arts like wood carving and Tangka paintings.

McLeod Ganj is my favorite place so far. It's nice to be in the mountains after being in busy Jaipur and Delhi for so long.

The Tibetans are extremely nice and it is lots of fun volunteering at the Tibetan Hope Center and talking to people who traveled here from Tibet, evading Chinese soldiers.

We are staying with really nice home-stay families. It's slightly less luxurious than Jaipur, no servants. Our house are mostly just a few rooms: a kitchen, one or two bedrooms, and a living room. My living room is outside and we eat dinner on my home-stay parent's bed in front of the tv. I like it better than Jaipur though.

We have heard from many speakers on the China in Tibet issue. Including Ahma Adhi:

Ahma Adhi lead protests in Tibet for three years after 1959 and was imprisoned for 27 years, for peaceful protesting. She was one of four women who survived long enough to be released of the 300 initial prisoners. They were extremely underfed and all of them died of starvation. They took turns eating each others shoes for nourishment because they were made of yak leather. We have heard many horrible stories of life in Tibet from many different people, from the daily speakers to the people we talk to in conversational english. It's ridiculous, the things that continue to happen even today. Many Tibetans in exile cannot talk to their families back in Tibet because if the Chinese find out they will imprison their family.

We visted the Karmapa, who is like the Dalai Lama but of a different sect of Buddhism. He blessed us all and rid us of our past seven lives of bad karma. he also blessed my kendama. This is his monestary:

My house has a cage to keep out monkeys and one day a monkey came up to it and we stared at it for a while. My home-stay dad Karma gave it some bananas. When we looked at it wrong it glared back with a look like, "you talkin to me?" and then angrily smacked the cage.

Most of us have been going to the Tibetan Hope Center for conversational english everyday. Conversational english is just westerners talking english with tibetan refugees who need to hone their english speaking skills. We get to meet many interesting people and usually hear about their story of traveling here from Tibet. Some have been caught and sent to jail and when they got out they try again. One 18 year old I talked to had been caught three times by the time he was 15 but finally made it to India two years ago. The Tibetan Hope Center is a school started by Tibetan youths. The people who run it are very friendly and every conversational English class is followed by a game that usually involves dancing and music. This is Kusung and another Tibetan Hope Center staffer:

We got a chance to check out The Tibetan Parliament in Exile and hear from a member. The Tibetan Parliament in Exile is exactly that. It's the Tibetan Government ready to go into effect the second they get Tibet back. Here is Peter in the Parliament:

We hiked up to Triund this weekend. We hiked six hours and stayed in a guest house at the top. Some of us slept outside. We had an amazing view of every single star and we even saw a few shooting stars. We ate lots of Magee which is basically Top Ramen. The view from the top was absolutely amazing, we could see all of Dharamsala, Norbulingka, and more. There were some massive snow covered mountains behind us also. There were thousands of butterflies fluttering overhead all day long:

We saw some snow on the way up! and did some glisading. This is Eliot about to eat it:

More new photos on Flickr too!