Howdy friends. Today I’d like to update all of you about an adventure we went on for a four day weekend a few weeks back that our trip leaders referred to as “the pilgrimage.” It wasn’t a pilgrimage in the sense of having a particular objective or destination. For many of us it was more a break of routine and a chance to get outside our academic minds for a while. But it was certainly a pilgrimage in the sense of a journey with a variety of experiences; some significant and others insignificant, some exciting and others boring, and so on.

In the spirit of that kind of pilgrimage, I am going to make a couple of stops in this post by splitting it up into two, because there’s a lot to say. So without any further stalling, here we go!

Once upon a time I went to Japan with my parents, and we went to a whole lot of temples. As a kid it was a little exhausting, and I’m sure there was much complaining. On this trip we also visited a lot of temples, but as an adult they were much more interesting. The first non-food or restroom related stop of our journey was Tashi Jong, one of the first Tibetan refugee communities established in India. I was carsick during this stop, so although I guarantee there was a temple my memory is mostly of digestive crackers and some cute puppies that were running around so I don’t have a lot to say about that.

Our second stop was a monastery called the Deer Par Institute, In Bir. This particular site was created in order to allow for balanced and friendly practice of all the different sects of Buddhism and Indian thought. It had a temple where I never had a chance to take photos, but we did have two really nice meditation sessions there. Both times a bird somehow wiggled its way through the wall and then just sat inside chirping loudly until someone got up and opened the door. I’m sure there is something very Buddhist that I should say about that, but mostly it was just a little distracting and a lot funny.

We had to work for the privilege of seeing our next destination. The walk wasn’t terribly difficult, but we did get to see some more of the beautiful Indian countryside, which really is hard to get enough of:

Our hiking destination was the Palpung Sherabling Monastery. I hope my lack of descriptions of the temples so far hasn’t made you think that they are not spectacularly impressive in every way. They are, even though the photos I have are not particularly impressive (they tend to be dark inside, which makes things a bit more difficult. At a later date I will see if I can get some better ones, but for now these will have to suffice:

Those last sculptures are made out of butter that is dyed different colors and then carved/sculpted into some pretty amazing shapes. Alright folks, that’s all for this time. Light on text and heavy on pictures, as usual. Don’t worry though, part 2 will be coming up shortly! For now, look at these last two photos from the excellent walking we did during this portion of the trip: