DAY 12 - Bylacuppe

Today is Saturday, our day off practice, and Geoffrey and Melissa and I have hired a car to take us to Bylacuppe, a Tibetan refugee settlement about 2 hours from Mysore. From what little information I've managed to gather, it seems that there are at least 15,000 Tibetan refugees living here, and 3 monastaries. We are excited to see the huge Golden Temple, and hope to catch the monks chanting or maybe observe a debate!

On the way there we pull over to "use the bathroom" (on the side of the road) and I manage to get my flowy dress covered with about 1008 tiny little seed-like burrs. I spend the next hour or so feeling grateful for my good yogini patience as I pick them, one by one, off my skirt. Ha! As I remove the last of these uninvited little hitchhikers, I look up and realize we must be arriving; there are prayer flags hanging EVERYWHERE. I don't mean like the little ones we see here and there at home, I mean there are hundreds of them, all colors and sizes at different stages of fading and fraying, strung from building to building, to trees, fences, everywhere you look. It's pretty cool and makes me smile, again, happy to be here.

The driver parks and as we head toward the monastary gates we are approached by beggars, the most I've seen since I've been here. Little girls are carrying babies so small and skinny they look like tiny dolls, and asking for food and money. We enter and the view of the Golden Temple is amazing, just breathtakingly beautiful, and the vibe here is interesting, too. It's a strange mix of hundreds of tourists from all over the world, and hundreds of monks wandering around in their robes, going about their lives. I wonder how the monks feel about the intrusion of all these visitors every day but then figure it's very Buddhist not to mind it at all!

We visit a few temples here and are surprised to find that we seem to be as much of an attraction as the temples. Between my blond hair, Melissa's fair skin, and the fact that Geoffrey is about 6'4", we are drawing quite a bit of attention. Groups of Indian schoolchildren keep stopping Melissa and I and asking to take photos with us! When we've seen the temples we head out, give a beggar our oranges, and then stop for chai. We didn't manage to catch the monks chanting today, so we'll have to come back again another time. The temples were amazing on their own, so I know it will be really powerful to experience them full of all these beautiful beings chanting! Melissa and I both doze off in the car on the way back and the next thing we know we're back home in Mysore, ready to settle in for our usual routine of dinner and bed.