Welcome to Gangtok 

Children playing outside of the school 

Tenzing Tulku Rinpoche with snake. 

Tenzing Tulku Rinpoche with a cobra. 

Tenzing Tulku Rinpoche recorded the snake charmers music on his phone. He then tried to do his own snake charming by playing back the recording. 

On Monday there was a snake charmer outside of our monastery. All the monks and local children gathered around him to watch the show. 

Some monks playing with hale-stones on their day off at Shamar Rinpoche's monastery. 

Rice patties 

A small village in the mountains with rice patties. 

Prayer flags on the hill above the Nunery we visited. 

Just over those snow-covered mountains is Tibet. 

This is a painting of me playing guitar. Just kidding. It is a painting on the wall outside of the monastery. 

Statue of the 16th Karmapa. No, he is not at an Ozzy osbourne concert. 

View of the mountains. Notice the rice patties on the side of the hill. 

The monastery that the 16th Karmapa stayed in while he built Rumtek monastery. 

This is the family we stayed with while we were in Sikkim. Yeshi knows them from when he was a monk at Rumtek monastery as a child. They were very hospitable. When we arrived they jumped up to get tea and biscuits for us and made us feel right at home. Later, they tried to get me drunk on Sikkimese alchohol. It was a lot like Saki, and like Saki it is made from rice and is served warm. In the morning they fed us breakfast and sent us on our way, but not without begging us to stay one or two more nights.

This is my friend Yeshi. He and I traveled to Sikkim last weekend to do do some sight seeing.This picture was taken in Gangtok. 

Kalimpong -or- How I learned to stop worrying and love India

Many people have been asking me to give more detail about where I am living, what foods I eat and what kind of people live here in Kalimpong. Better late than never, I thought I would take this opportunity to shed a little more light on my surroundings.

I live in the "foothills" of the Himalayas. However, the word " foothills" is a joke considering that they tower way above the Blueridge"mountains" where I grew up. I guess in comparison to the actual mountains of the Himalayan range they are foothills. The weather has mostly been like spring here. We never get snow, but I hear in December and early January it does get pretty cold.

I have a very comfortable room with a bed, a couple small tables and my own private bathroom. I feel a little guilty about the royal treatment I receive here. I even have hot water, which most people here don't have. All of these luxuries are provided free of charge, and are tokens of their appreciation of me giving up so much in the states to come here and teach.

I eat with the monks, but I have to sit at the Khenpos' (teachers) table. The food we eat at the monastery usually consists of some kind of curried vegetable and meat combination with rice and dhal. After dinner we, the monks and I, do kora (walk in a circle) around the monastery and talk about life in the east and west or various other philosophical rantings.

The community in Kalimpong is a mix of Tibetan, Bhutanese, Nepali ( or Newari ), and Hindi cultures. Basically all Himalayan nationalities live in Kalimpong. Each culture stays pretty true to the way they lived in their respective countries. They all, of course, live as a community here, and children may have friends from every one of these backgrounds. However, they usually will only marry within their cast, and families of the same cast usually live near each other in groups.

You can see heavy western influence in the younger generations here. The dichotomy of old world Himalayan culture and American "bad ass " attitude is a little uncomfortable to witness at times. The monks are very innocent, but even the large majority of them love EMINEM and American style Hip-Hop. We (Americans) sometimes don't realize the affect a mass marketing capitalist society can have on some of the more fragile tribal cultures of the world. If some of the youth do not maintain an interest in the ways of their predecessors, their way of life will fall by the way side of our ostentatious, money obsessed 21^st century American culture. Of course, there are arguments for the other side. I do think most people here enjoy the amenities they have thanks to western progress. But somehow I think there can be a "Middle Way", or a blend of the progresses in our western society with the traditions of the east. But I digress. To put it simply, life in the Himalayas is as bountiful in cultural influences as it is in curried rice and bamboo.