Little Tibet

Nnna, after a couple of days of food poisoning symptoms we are both back again kicking! Today we jumped on a bus and shook ourselves for 3 hours to get from Mysore to a Tibetan settlement in Sera and Namdroling villages. What a refreshing experience! First of all it was not only posted on signs as all over in India, but it was really clean, quiet and neat. It is home for over 5000 Buddhist monks and Tibetan refugees in settlements built like little Tibet - as we can imagine it. It surely adds to the urge to see the homeland, too! However it is signed all around the place that foreigners may enter only with a P.A.P permit under the threat to be jailed, we just walked our way innocently without any harmful disturbances and without having a clue what this permit is. We received some shiny smiles from monks - from the age of 5 to who can tell how old - but still, till now, no other nation can beat our Indian friends in their undisturbed curiosity towards primarily white female species; this time I got a nice photo with a Muslim girl tip to tow veiled in black. The temples are jaw dropping, especially the Golden Temple with its 20 meters high golden Buddha and its wall paintings depicting the various representations of Buddha - also the way how elephants go to heaven.:) We were lucky to witness a traditional ceremony with drums and all the chanting of young kid-monks, but also to see them playing cricket or simply to run after a circle. When we got enough of watching this ancient-like scenery we made our way to the garlands of small streets in the village, where we could see monks - mostly only monks - outside the monastery walls: riding rickshaws, talking on mobile phone, bargaining for their crimson color cotton garments in a store or drinking Pepsi in the local monk hang-out restaurant. Now that is a noodle soup I will remember for the rest of my life! After silently and peacefully finishing our soup we observed a strange thing happening first time during our 13 days here: surrounded by twenty plus monks and being the only non local customers they were totally undisturbed in their manners, only rarely and very decently peeping towards us every now and then. So long one old Indian fellow entered and came right away to us...