final total: 66

Oy. All sorts of tedious technical problems: intermittent wifi, disappearing posts, having to reinstall the blog app 6 times, and much much more. However I am still taking lots of pictures so I'll put up some of those, with explanations.


Claire, wearing robes for the first time. She came to my room for help in putting on her shamthab and when I demonstrated, Pema Zangmo told me I was doing it wrong because I only had one fold in the front. Who knew. There are others among the pre-ordained getting a taste of wearing robes here and if the tailor hurries up and finishes some orders there will soon be more. Our group has gone fairly bonkers about tailoring, with new arrivals literally running to the shop to get their orders in immediately.


Just before 30 people arrived on the 15th the guest house put up a tent to hold a heater and more tables for us to use during breakfast. The furniture has been moved out of the lobby and it's now filled with tables and more tables to hold the food. What we get for breakfast each day is hard-boiled eggs, chapatis, some kind of sweet bread or pancakes, butter, cheese, honey, jam, peanut butter and yogurt with bananas in it. There are bananas all over the place here for some reason, though I can't imagine they're grown locally.

Lots of people arrived on the 15th, some of them, like Garwang, wearing the new fancy robe boots.

A bunch of us assembled in the guest house lobby to wait for Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen and their party, who arrived somewhere around 10pm.

Finally, they appeared. Bar-ché went over to the Double Dorjee and got them some chow mein. The guest house supplied beer, tea and water.

Rig'dzin arrived wearing a replica of Brad Pitt's jacket from Fight Club that he got on eBay.

People waiting for breakfast to begin.

Mé-sèl with Martine, who, along with her husband, owns and runs the guest house.

Raechel found one of the cats.

Isabelle, taking the air situation seriously.

Santeri (autofill tried to make that Santeria) with his teng'ar strung on five-colored string which he describes as "infested with mantra".

Rig'dzin and I ran into Ngakpa Jig'mèd, whom I first met on the 1998 'Three Witches' pilgrimage.

Another interesting encounter.

Lots of colored flags for some local festival.

More tomorrow, I hope.