Following Buddha

The bus arrived at Yushu, (or Jaykendu in Tibetan) about three hours earlier than expected. It was pitch black darknes and no one else in the city except the taxi driver. He had a small van in which he drove me to Changu Gompa, the monastry where I will be staying for 7 days. The ride was bumpy and nothing was visible. I found the gate of the monastry, only to hear several dogs running towards me. I had heard the stories of the ferocious Tibetan mastiffs. I fumbled with the door to find the knobs or handles so that I can close it. That one instant was very long and extremely scary. At least three dogs were barking at me from the inside. There was no light to figure out anything sensible. I had both my bags on my back, with I dont know how deep of a trench two steps behind me. After standing there for an hour I was losing my patience. My body was hurting. The dogs had stopped barking continously, and would bark for few seconds each time I would make a noise moving my hands on the door knobs or when I would change the position of my feet. Finally I thought that I should call for someone. "Hello Hello Hello!," I said pretty loudly. The dogs went crazy. No one came out till five minutes when a monk inside turned the light on. The dogs were silent, I took the courage and opened the door and asked for Jonathan.

Jonathan had been teaching English in this monastry since the last two months. He has made a pretty good relationship not only with the people, but also the place and its altitude. They say that he had rough start in this Gompa because of altitude sickness. he was on oxygen. His room is tidy and big. I will be spending the next month with him travelling to lhasa and beyond. I am glad that he is a very experience traveller and knows how to make decisions.

I went to the English class where there were about 15 monks. Little kids with sparkle in their eyes. Except two, their english was very poor. After their lesson it was decided that they will be going to a swimming class today, they were all super excited about this.



Scott is a 30 year old australian, and has been travelling the world since he was in his twenties. He is a very cool character who is volunteering in this monastary with some other interesting people. They made me breakfast and we had nice conversation. I look forward to talk to the other people in the monastry, they all seem very cool.

Jonathan had planned something really big for the day. We both went along with a Lama from the monastry to buy a motorcyle for me. It is a small machine that i got with a supposed-to-be 150 CC engine. It sounds slightly funny. The name of the company doesnt matter because it is hypothetical No-name Chinese brand. It cost be about CAD 550. A new bike for 550. It was exciting. We plan to goto lhasa on our bikes from Yushu which is about 1200 km of dirt road. I also have Canadian license plates to put on them in order to bring them in nepal. However their are many variables for that to happen. Right now I am enjoying my new black coloured bike that also says TASHIDELE ('Hello' in Tibetan).

On our bikes we ride through one of the most beautiful valleys. The mountains are huge with no trees. A carpet of beautiful shade of green grass covers them all. Their folds make them look like a huge frozen blanket. The road is running parallel to a river. The water is running fast and is of a cyan colour. it is one of the most incredible rides. The swimming pool was about a 20 minutes ride in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The roof of the pool hall was made of fibre glass, and the walls were made up of thick glass so that there was a green house effect. Because of the intense heat inside, the water felt amazing. All the monk kids were already in there and they were having the times of their lives. No one knew swimming. For the next few hours I had loads of fun teaching the boys to dive straight. Some of them picked it very well.

I was supposed to attend a lama-debate in a temple nearby. It was to start at 7. It started at 9. I had a broken body from the bus ride the night before and all the swimming. It was sad that I had to leave. The pitch black night was chilling and not very welcoming. It is going to be like this for the next month.