total eclipse

Yesterday there was a big police presence, which made it feel like a real Occupation. The Nepali police are generally small. They wear strange blue camouflage uniforms as if they're planning to be sneaking around underwater, and they were carrying big rifles and riot shields. It turns out it was the anniversary of the Dalai Lama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and the authorities were worried about Tibetans demonstrating or protesting or something. Chö-ying, who spent the day at Kopan, said the monks and nuns were confined to the gompa for a time because of this.

Yesterday was also the full moon so there were tables of butter lamps all over the place as Pema Zangmo, Lékyi, Chö-ying, Jens and Scott walked to the Double Dorjee for dinner. We violated one of the precepts of the Double Dorjee (or rather, my rules for dealing with the Double Dorjee) which is 'No Groups Larger Than 4 People'. As a result of this violation it took over 2 hours for dinner to arrive for all of us. I had vegetable momos, excellent as always. Lékyi and Chö-ying had a noxious concoction of french fries with live chilis crawling all over them. Lékyi demonstrated her Darth Vader dust mask.


There was an eclipse of the moon which we thought we had missed,but when we walked out of the restaurant we could still see it looking like an orange ball with a crescent of white at the bottom edge. We stood and stared at it for a while, then went back to the guest house and fell into bed.