Monastery Roadtrip, Part II: Mindroling

After our detour to the Yumbulagang, the rest of the ride from Samye was uneventful. My next stop on the itinerary was Mindroling Monastery, whose founder was famed as a scholar and eventually became the teacher of the 5th Dalai Lama back in the 1600's. I got off at kilometer 147 on the Lhasa-Tsetang highway, where there was a dirt road leading 7km up to the monastery. There was a Tibetan family sitting in the shade at the intersection; we communicated through hand signals that we were both going to Mindroling. We waited to hitch a ride for about half an hour, but then they eventually decided it was time to start walking. Luckily, part of the way up we got picked up by a big white van and got a ride the rest of the way. We got let off in the surrounding town, which was a collection of cement houses, dirt streets, chickens, dogs, and pigs - nothing too out of the ordinary. I met a monk halfway up who took me to the monastery office; I ended up waiting there for an hour while they sussed out the room situation. In the end they brought me to a compound next door owned by a google-eyed pig farmer who showed me to a bare room of dirty cots and scuffed up walls with piles of grain (and a large resident rat population) in clear view outside the window.

I wandered around town a bit and ventured up a neighboring hill, but there wasn't too much interesting around. I went to check out the main assembly hall of the monastery, where there were several men painting newly cast statues of Buddha and other important historical/religious figures. Most of the smaller chapels were closed, either for restoration work or because there wasn't anybody there to guard them. After a dinner of a snickers bar, a peanut butter sandwich, some raisins, and two plastic-packaged sausages, I resisted the urge to read in my room and instead went back to the monastery's main courtyard to write in my journal. I ended up in a conversation with a few of the monks there who could speak Chinese, and they invited me in to watch the chanting sessions that were about to be held. I sat in the back row next to three or four teenaged monks; it was funny to see that teenagers are teenagers, no matter their religious status. The row of boys just kept asking me questions and asking to see my books (which had pictures of Tibet) rather than following along with the older monks' incantations. Of course once one of the more senior monks came in and gave them stern looks, they all hid the books in their robes and started chanting studiously.


[1 - The family that hitched with me up to Mindroling, 2 - Painting new statues in the main assembly hall at Mindroling Monastery]

After a bit I went to go sit outside and write in my journal. Coming out of the chanting session, one of the older monks started up a conversation. Communication was difficult as Chinese was neither my nor his first language, but we got through some of the basic questions. Then he asked me if I'd been there before; I said that I hadn't, and he immediately took me up to his room to feed me a dinner of beef (yak?) noodles. This didn't make much sense at the time, but later I realized that he'd been asking if I'd eaten ("chi guo le ma?"), not if I'd ever been there before ("qu guo le ma?"). Neither of the sentences really made grammatical sense - "Chi guo le ma?" literally means "have you ever eaten before?" "Qu guo le ma?" literally means "have you ever gone before?" (i.e. referring to somewhere else; the correct way would be "lai guo le ma?" or "have you ever come here before?"). Oh well, if that's the worst of my language misunderstandings on the trip then I'll consider myself lucky - I got a second dinner out of it, as well as my first yak butter tea that didn't taste awful (I think he added about a cup of sugar to it).

Once I finished my second dinner I went back out into the courtyard to write in my journal, which I had not yet managed to do (darn those pesky friendly monks). Instead I ended up in another conversation with some of the younger monks until it got pretty dark and I decided to head back to my room and try to catch some sleep. It took me a while to drift off, as I was listening to the rats and wondering how long it would take to get me medivac'ed to Kathmandu for rabies treatment if I got bitten.


[1 - A young monk lighting yak butter candles, 2 - My friend, the "chi guo le?" monk, making me some tsampa]

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