We went to the border of Tibet this week.  Jhamtse Gatsal is getting ready to accept 20 new students next month, so they have begun going to villages in the area to survey for children to bring, and we got to go along on one of the visits.  We followed the route that the Dalai Lama took when he fled Tibet 50 years ago, and our first stop of the day was to visit a big, beautiful stupa in the village of Zimithang, where he was given sanctuary on his first night in India.  The villages and the people we visited were beautiful.  Traditional, stone houses, built on hillsides just above the raging river (the one we can see that’s flowing out of Tibet), surrounded by high, steep mountains, big gardens, and fields of rice, and with an immediate backdrop of sheer rock cliffs.  Like something out of a movie, really.  And simple people, carrying on about their lives: cooking on a fire, working in a field, scrubbing clothes.  Just about every little stream we see is being used at some point to turn a prayer wheel.

 

There is a huge Tara (feminine form of Buddha) statue being built on top of a temple, on top of a hill above Lumla. We can see it from Jhamtse Gatsal, and we walked there today to check out the work in progress. Pretty cool. 11 photos.

 

July 6th was the Dalai Lama’s birthday, and Buddhists everywhere were celebrating….I think.  At least WE were throwing a big, festive party, with good food, new prayer flags around the community, lots of music, colorful costumes, important guests, and most of all, dancing.  The children practiced their dances for a few weeks before.  They love dancing, and would often stay up late, whirling and stomping in the meditation hall, even though they get up really early (4, 4:30…5 am at the latest) to play and do chores before school.  It was a rockin’ good time, with one of the highlights being the last act, where all the adults attempted to do the same Bollywood dance that some of the girls had just performed.  40 photos.

Check out a more complete photo gallery (than ours) of the day at www.jhamtseinternational.org/blog
The blog is one of the projects Heather’s been working on, along with teaching people to use it.
In fact, check out the main website.  It’ll tell you a bit about the place that we’re at…Spence is currently heading up a complete overhaul of the site, another one of our projects.

 

We’re always behind.  I thought that when we only had our little point-and-shoot to take pictures with, the amount of pictures to deal with would be much more manageable.  But then I found out that JG has an SLR….and different lenses.  And somehow, I ended up as the sort-of-official photographer.  Plus, there’re lots of crazy bugs here, and they’re usually obliging models.  Aye yiyi.  So here’s my plan: rather than trying to catch up, I’m going to start uploading current stuff, and then work my way backwards.  So look for new stuff soon!

The monsoons have finally come.  It’s raining everyday, and most mornings we wake up in the middle of a cloud (you can do that when you’re up on a mountain).  Sometimes it’s cool to watch them form way down in the gorge below, and then work their way up to where you are, slowly covering your view of everything – the distant hillside villages, that waterfall over there in Bhutan, the river below, all the surrounding peaks – until everything is completely white and you can’t even see the school buildings up the hill, and the nearest prayer flags are just fluttering ghost-forms.  And then the cloud will move on and there is sunshine and blue skies and a great view again.  The place where Jhamtse Gatsal is situated is quite unique.  It’s on a green ridge, full of life and vegetation.  We’re completely surrounded by big mountains, and perched just so that we look down into two very deep valleys, with two different rumbling rivers – one flowing out of Tibet, and the other flowing into Bhutan.  From here I can count many little villages.  Most don’t even have a road going to them – you’d have to walk.  The climate is milder than most of the surrounding areas, because of a slightly lower elevation and something about the way that the winds come up from both valleys.  Good for growing lots of kiwis.  ☺  P.s. I think we’re in a good place see the solar eclipse that is supposed to happen on July 22nd.  We’ll keep you posted.  Check out 28 random photos of our first month here:

 

Our first trip into the town of Tawang, the nearest anything of the sort (2 hours away). We had lunch at Lobsang’s mother’s, and did some shopping.  11 photos.

 

Good night madam, good night madam, good night madam, see you too-mado, have a sweet dream, good night madam.  ☺  Fifty polite little kids parading by, 3 times a day to the family kitchen for meals…all eager to get their English greetings out as they go by.  If I’m sitting on the porch with anyone else when the line comes, there will be a whole chorus of hellos in Tibetan or Hindi or whatever else fits.  The kids here are all from surrounding areas, but the staff come from many places, and speak many languages.  In class, the children learn Monpa (a local language), Tibetan, Nepali, Hindi, and English.  In discussions at dinner (we all eat as a big group after the children are finished), I used to have high hopes that I would start picking up on what was being said.  Then I found out that at any given time with the adults, there are typically 2-4 languages being used at the same time, and so I’m starting now with trying to learn enough of each to at least be able to differentiate which is which during a conversation. One of my jobs is teaching English to staff-members.   During play time with the kids, I get to be the student, and they love teaching me words.  Today I learned that the Monpa word for bum is ‘ninten.’  And then they proceeded to teach me a game that they called ‘ninten-do.’  ☺  Haha.

We’ve found a little oasis…can this really still be India?  After months of hot and dirty traveling, after a long crowded train ride from Delhi, after running into crummy luck with the foreigner situation and accommodations in Guwahati…it was sooo nice to spend 2 days winding through the mountains on narrow roads, almost rediscovering that there are clean, cool, refreshing places, even in India.  We are now in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, living in a small Buddhist children’s community, called Jhamtse Gatsal.  It’s very isolated – 50 children and 20-ish staff live here.  The nearest town is a 2 hour drive.  It’s also very beautiful, surrounded with green things, and clouds, and mountains.  We’re tucked right in a corner near the borders of both Bhutan and Tibet.  We plan to be here for at least 2 months, working on projects from building a greenhouse and composting system, to teaching art, English and computers, to creating videos and web content.  We’ll be busy, for sure.

 

It took us 2 days of driving on windy, mountainous roads to reach the little Buddhist children’s community / school – our next volunteer opportunity. This is my attempt to take pictures with all the bumpiness and fast driving. Some are pretty blurry…sorry!   36 photos.

 

A few things we could’ve purchased from vendors coming through our car, without leaving our seats, on our last train trip: 40 hours straight in sleeper class (translation: the cheapest and most colorful ticket option, where convincing the 3 people who are already sitting in your reserved seat can be an adventure in itself) from Delhi to Guwahati, in no particular order:

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  Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 • 12:05 pm
So, we're back in the USA... ...for now – and these are the adventures we still need to fill you in on: rice farmin' in Malaysia, wedding fun with the fam, Ouray Ice Climbing Fest 2010....and more if we keep procrastinating this!

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Spence & Heather...
...are two like-minded souls who have an itch to really live, no matter where they are. They are currently living out of a backpack, traveling the world in search of good experiences and adventure. This is their personal blog, and everyone is welcome!

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