A Stupa and a Dzong

We started the morning in Kathmandu.  After breakfast we went to a stupa.


This was the biggest stupa at least in Nepal.  A stupa is a solid object, like a building, but with no inside.  It is build around, or to contain, Buddhist relics.  For example, after the Buddha died, he was cremated and his ashes divided into many parts and sent to Buddhist temples.  So this stupa might have been built around some ashes of the Buddha.

There were a lot of people, walking around the stupa in a clockwise direction, burning incense, feeding the pigeons, and turning prayer wheels.  All things that are meant to improve your karma, so that you will be reincarnated as a better person. At the top of the stupa was a square with the eyes of the Buddha watching you from all sides.

And around the stupa was a set of shops where you could buy particularly religious items, like prayer wheels and prayer flags and incense and so on.  Plus just stuff — like hats and gloves and tee shirts.


Then it was off to the airport.  We took a Bhutan Airlines jet from Kathmandu, Nepal to Paro, Bhutan.  To fly into Paro, you need special certification.  And as we approached Paro, we learned why.  Paro is surrounded by the Himalayas

And Paro is in a valley.  So you come in, drop down, make some significant turns and land.  The passengers all applauded and whooped as we landed.  One shouted “do it again!”.

Once we were down, we want to a Dzong which is a fortified castle/temple.  The castle has massive exterior walls around an inner courtyard with a big tower.


But you can go around back of it and down some stairs 


And there is a temple you can go thru.

Then we went to the hotel and had lunch.

Then back out to see another monastery and a farm house, to get a feel for how people live.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Angkor Temples in Cambodia

Image
 Linda signed us up for a sunrise photo trip to Angkor Wat, so we were up at 4AM, and on a bus to be there before sunrise at 6 AM.  But it was a cloudy morning, and if the sun came up (pretty sure it did), I couldn’t even tell which direction it was coming from. But there were a lot of people there.  It’s clear that this is a popular thing to do. We went back to the hotel and had breakfast, and then tried it again.  In full light, even on a cloudy day, you can see a lot more.  And there is a lot to see.  Angkor Wat is large. The grounds are surrounded by a rectangular moat.  There are a series of walls and courtyards, with the main towers in the middle. The walls in the galleries are covered in carvings like this one showing Vishnu using a snake to churn an ocean of milk. A lot of the temple site is undergoing restoration. When you work your way into the center of the complex, to the main central tower, you can climb the 30 steps to the second level, and then another 48 steps to get to
Read more

A Day in Marrakech

Image
We started the day with a tour of some spots in Marrakech:  the Majorelle Garden (Jardin Majorelle) and the Museum of Berber Arts. Then we went to the old town (medina).  At first it looked like it might have been gentrified, but a short walk in and it was a bustling market place of vendors of all sorts of stuff. I had been looking for a caftan since the mid-1980s (after watching the movie Fletch) and figured Marrakech would be a good place to look for one.  We found a shop selling several different types and picked a linen caftan for 700 MAD (Morracan Dirhams) (which should be about $70).  It’s actually a caftan with a hood, which is called a Dejellama. Then we walked back to the hotel. Once you got out of the rabbit maze of alleys and shops of the medina, you could look for the minaret tower which is right across the street from the hotel.   After lunch, we went back out to the markets to find a caftan (or Djellaba) for Linda. We found her a heavier weight caftan, in dark purple, and
Read more

A day in Panama

Image
 We had a number of possible options for our first full day in Panama. We chose to visit the Embera Quera community.  This is a village of native peoples about an hour plus outside of Panama City.  A bus took us to a spot on the Gatun River where we piled into a set of canoes for the trip to the village.  The canoe trip took about 30 minutes. Once we were there, there were various presentations on the history of the Embera people, and their customs, and walks around the village, including up to a new building they were putting up to use as a school.  There were songs and dances and a lunch of fish and fruit served on banana plant leaves. Then it was back on the canoe  And back to the bus and back to the hotel.  After a short break there was a guided walk around the hotel neighborhood, called Cisco Virgo (the old quarter), back to the hotel for another short break and then to another dinner, this time at the Biomuseo. The Biomuseo is a science museum that tells the history of Panama fro
Read more