Heading home to the Vihar

So, the traveling as been smooth the paper is printed (I can email a copy to anyone interested) and tomorrow we begin to go back to Bodh Gaya, via Kolcata which is extremely out of the way. Since I lasted posted Alex, Chimi and I have stayed four days in Ralang Sikkim, one day in Tashiding Sikkim, six nights in Gangtok (the capital of Sikkim), and one night in Darjeeling (in the West Bengal hills).

Ralang is extremely remote and absolutely gorgeous. On a clear day we could see the entire eastern range of the Himalayas centered by Kanchenjunga. Palchen Choeling is the resident monastery of Gyaltsap Rinpoche, one of the four regents(teachers, kinda) of the 17th Karmapa. The interview with him was pretty powerful. No one spoke English except a monk that traveled with us from Rumtek named Lekthong. We are very fortunate to become friends with him for many reasons. For instance, he broke down my ideolized stereotypes of the buddhist monk with his macbook pro, his knowledge of American pop culture (from which he taught himself english), and his attitude towards buddhist philosophy and retreat. Other then a few interviews we hacky sached with the young monks, enjoyed the views, took a day trip to Tashiding (perhaps the most sacred place in Sikkim as it was blessed by Padmasambhava in the 7th or 8th century), and worked. We had all meals in the monastic dining hall, which provided us with a lot to look at. After cabin fever became intolerable we traveled back to the capital to finalize our papers.

Gangtok is, from what I have seen, the nicest city in India. It is very clean and has, by far, the largest police force. Money is poured into Sikkim by the Indian government to keep its residents happy and keep the security high because it borders China. The outfits of the officers are quite funny: french berets, thick white belts, high boots, and green woolen sweaters. There is a nice wide walking mall called MG Marg where you could get into a lot of trouble for spitting or smoking. During the day I wrote, either in a cyber cafe or on the top floor of Yeshe Dorje's house, where we stayed. The Dorje's have the most beautiful shine room for meditation. If anyone is interested in traveling to Sikkim or Bhutan tell me so you can join a travel group led by his son Pema. The family is extremely kind and extremely influential in the Tibetan Buddhist community. They technically hold the lineage to the teachings of an esoteric form of yoga and are considered royality amongst Tibetans. We were extermely fortunate to stay with them. Also staying at the Dorjes' was a student pursuing a doctorate degree in Indo-Tibetan 'treasure texts' who graduated from Naropa and got married at the Shamabala center in Boulder, small world. While I wasn't writing we went to many bars throughout Gangtok, the funniest was a karioke bar. Five days later we were off to Darjeeling.

Darjeeling is totally anticlimatic. Both yesterday and today have been extremely gloomy and overcast. The remains of the once luxerious colonial summer retreat have not been upkept. There are many Tibetan curio shops, which are fun to look through, I finally bought a singing bowl. The forest surrounding these hills is dense and the only crops cultivated in this part of the world are some of the finest teas in the world. I'm looking forward to getting back to the Vihar. Robert, hopefully, has set up a private audience with the HH the 17th Karmapa.