Day Two

By the time I eased off the couch every member of Dorje's family had finished their prostrations in the adjoining shrine room. As I washed my face and teeth, hands and feet on the upper patio, which opens down the length of the long pastoral valley, I really noticed it's simple and meditative quality. I wondered if when growing up Dorje had ever gotten tired or failed to notice the gentle ochre hills backdropped by more impressive stoic snowcaps, or the practical grace of the wheat plots set against the idle river. I knew that in a weeks time I would not. I climbed to the roof to get a better view, and I allowed my thoughts to mingle with the morning incense smoke rising from his home, and ever other house, stupa, and mountain deity shrine I could see.

We breakfasted on tsampa, a staple of ground roasted barley mixed with the low-quality nomad brick tea to make a very palatable ball of dough. They offered me butter, dried cheese, and sugar for flavor, and insisted I eat more boiled eggs and drink more fresh unpasteurized milk than my weak and shrunken stomach could handle. They were very insistent, as they would be the entire week, and also very successful at making me rather bloated by the end of each mealtime. By the end of the meal my pants were covered in a fine barley powder from my amateurish attemps at molding my breakfast ball of dough.

Not long after breakfast word came upstairs that Dorje's robed uncle had invited a number of Chinese tourists from Chongqing to tour the home. I stood at the top of the steep stairs and listened to their clean hiking boots stamp out their ascent. Upon reaching the second floor they greeted me with a hearty "Tashi Deleg!" before realizing I did not look as Tibetan as the rest of the family. Everyone was introduced, and I enjoyed bantering with a couple of them as they toured the family home and the shrine room. One of the tourists pointed to the upstairs outhouse door and asked if it was a staircase. They seemed very happy to give their respects to The Venerable One, who's face peers from multiple directions in the elaborate wooden house. They gave gifts of terrible tasteless Chinese candy, and I was given a pack of cigarettes, a special Chongqing brand. I explained that I don't smoke, but they wouldn't take them back. "For bribing taxi drivers not to cheat me," I concluded to myself.

Soon the tourists moved on, giving Dorje's mother a ride so she wouldn't have make the hourlong walk to town. Dorje explained to me that his parents worked very hard and do not like to waste money. He hopes to learn English and make money abroad, so that they will not have to continue their manual, agricultural tasks into their old age. The hardships of half a century are already visible on his mother's dark wrinkled face, and his father's broad body and curled hands. As we waited for a cab to town, we turned a large prayer wheel suspended in a nearby earthen shack.

We met Hannah, my other student, in her cousin's noodle shop, and immediately set out for the monastery. We peered into each shrine room, and I was surprised and how many statues and images we continued to find. Many of the carvings made from colored yak butter had begun to melt with last summer's heat. I made a few donations here and there, and Dorje showed me the rooms set aside as "bedrooms" for the previous Panchen lama and the current Big Lama. I especially enjoyed His Picture set in a spiral of shiny plastic, making it appear as the focal point of some crazed hypnotist's device.

As we did one large korwa, a circumambulation, I snapped photos of the view of the city and the outside of the monastery. I prefer not to take pictures inside temples, though I'm not exactly sure why. I really love looking at the detailed thanka paintings, my favorites being the ones painted on black backgrounds with colorful subjects like burning skulls and vajrayoginis and protector dieties. I just feel a little strange snapping their photos. I also felt immediately ashamed when I clandestinely took the picture of a monk, about my age and wearing a brazil soccer jersey beneath his maroon robe, as he walked up a path between the low, mud buildings of the monastery. The complex is a rather beautiful combination of a simple monastic style and the specialized wooden structures of the Daofu area homes. I have heard them described as giant Tibetan chocolate cakes covered in white icing, but I don't really think that does them justice.

After lunching on the thick Tibetan noodles at the restaurant, we grabbed a cheap taxi across town to see the large Daofu stupa. It reminded me quite a bit of the one in Boudha, Kathmandu, at which Mike and I spent many an afternoon in ambling korwa. You could actully go inside of this one, climbing a series of narrow wooden ladders to get to each of the smaller, cocentric levels. From the inside, one can see the small buddhas placed in each small, glassy archer's window. At the top of the stupa we took the customary photographs in front of the Buddha Eyes and the mantra arranged on the hillside. Dorje and Hannah pointed out to me which local mountains were worthy of "mountain gods," hold-over deities from the pre-Buddhist religion called Bon that were recruited by Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava to protect the Dharma.

During the afternoon Dorje informed me that he had been asking around to borrow a motorcycle for us to ride up over one of the mountains to a local nomad community. His sister is an English teacher in a very small town called Yuke, and that afternoon I purchased a maroon stocking cap for $0.75 in anticipation of the ride. After saying goodbye to Hannah, we took a cab to an orphan school about halfway back to his house. The school was established by a network of do-gooders from Germany, and there was very tall and very friendly Swiss English teacher, near my age, on a two or three month stint in Daofu. The students were typically over-fond, and one of them with the English name Sunshine asked me if I knew Karma Sonam, one of the students in my program and a classmate of Dorje's. Karma is one of my favorite students, and his cousins Tashi Nema (Lucky Sun) and Tashi Dawa (Lucky Moon) offered to show me around. After seeing the thanka and weaving classrooms, Dorje and I set out to his home accompanied by four or five of the local schoolchildren.

We ate momos backed on the wood-fire and more thukpa soup, and put all of the warm clothes we would need in my backpack for the trip the following morning. I had no idea what to expect.