An ancient place dating from the 16thcentury is perched on top of a narrow ridge that juts out from the mountain range that towers over the valley. The climb up is only about a 100m but is steep and is like going back in time through the ages. The monastery is in different states of repair and ruin. Some parts of it have dissolved with the ridge over time as it looks as if they where created with the ridge, some of the dwellings are actually built into the soft rock and seem to be part of it.
It is a small place but the views it commands are grander then any palace or cathedral I have ever seen. This is where god resides, not in churches or temples but here in the vast expanse.
We head down to the valley and pass the hottest part of the day in a grove by a babbling brook.
As the heat of the afternoon passed we start to head back up to the monastery stopping to explore the ancient ruins along the way. Going back in time with these crumbling relics. Children come and play around us, their beautiful faces, some though only sullied by the slightest sign of inbreeding, some more so then others (the place is cut off for most of the year, not much else to do). They do their games and play about us. Slowly we make our way to the top often loosing our selfs in the maze of abandoned half decayed reminisces of lives lost. An old school house, empty for an age or a roofless kitchen leading to a little orchard. All the while winding our way to top. We pass the late afternoon sitting in dusty places catching the monastery from different angles and different ages, messing about.
By evening we make it to the top again and sit and watch the sun set from the steps at the door of the monastery. For a while the head Lama comes and sits with us to watch the show, a great big man with a hardest soft face I have ever seen. As the sun plays out the last of his light show, flaring and bouncing colours around the range of mountains with the first stars in the sky the Lama's in the monastery give it a soundtrack from inside the monasterey, filling the air with chanting and the beating of drums and symbols with the blowing of great long trumpets. The religion here is based on circles or cycles and to worship the faithful walk around the monistery in a clockwise direction spinning the prayer wheels as they pass. Women and men some that look as older then the ruins pass us repeatedly on thier rounds.
A great feeling of gratitude fills me and I know I'm in the prescience of god.
As the light dies and more stars appear we head back down to our guest house and feast on roasted stuffed tomatoes, dal, popadom and rice. One of the best meals I have ever had.
We end the day on the roof of the guest house watching shooting stars. There is only electricity after 11pm so it was totally dark with the only light was coming from the stars and the Milky Way.
As the LSD wore off we drifted into a deep restful sleep (Wait!! LSD, flash back to 10 days earlier. I met a guy in Visthest, a Russian selling liquid LSD. We had nothing to put it on so we broke off 2 bits of chapti and dripped it onto them and wrapped them in plastic, very Indian but I thought a trip to finish my trip would round it off well.)
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