Tibetan Villages

July 17, 2009 | Category: Arunachal Pradesh, Volunteering | by: Spencer

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.

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