Greetings from India

Greetings All from the sunny south of India. Well arrived safely with all parts intact after a fun filled trip full of late flights, missed flights and cancellations. Of course my bags are not here. With any luck they will be here on tomorrows flight. If not I'll just have to borrow some robes. But Ill not bore you with the details of my trip.

I was met at the Bangalore airport by Jamyang Tashi and Thupten Derje, both of whom Andi and I have sponsored for many years. The ride to Sera Je took about six hours through some smelly city full of noise animals and people and some amazing country side. This area is called the deccan plain and was once seafloor (it seems as though everhwere was once seafloor). As you would expect by the name it is pretty flat, but it is surrounded by mountains that if you have ever seen south Indian architecture where it looks like mounds and of giant rounded off pillars extruding and building from one another you can some idea of what these mountains look like.

The Tibetan settlement and the monastery have grown tremendously. Sera Je is just one of many in the the area. When Andrea and I were here in 95 it barely had 2500 monks. There are now nearly 5,000. Geshe Tsulga's house was pretty empty since everyone was at lunch or at class. I spent some time with Jamyang Tashi's student all of whom are from Ladak. Ladak is one of the most remote places in India sitting on the far northern border with Tibet. It is inaccessible in winter. They greeted me with beautiful Kata's ( a silk white scarf often with Dharma symbols) and with a shyness that is almost unsettling. It is not unusual for some to hide behind one another and for some of them eye contact is not even a possibility. Fortunately I was able to get them to smile with my mispronouncing of Tibetan and other social gaffs.

With the monks that knew me from previous visits it felt like a homecoming. Ngawang Trinley said that this was my second home. The small boys (I'm talking boys as young as 7 or eight years old) in robes walking the streets from one class to another laughing and playing as they go, the chanting of prayers booming from the temple, the older boys sitting under trees or walking the streets reciting the books they are memorizing all feel so comfortable and make the feeling of homecoming more poignant.

Well I haven't had much sleep so that's all for now.

Bilbo