Climb, Gompa, and the town

Mornings are pretty cold in Keylong. Very sunny, bright, and yet cold. With the help of our Outlook Traveller and the advices from the hotel manger, we zeroed in on Khardong Gompa(Gompa means Monastry) which lies about 2kms from Keylong, on the other side of the River Bhaga . Khardong gompa is a major monastry of the Kagdyup sect of Budhism. It seems the highest lama of the sect always wears red-hats only. We did get to see one of their big lamas that day: he was visiting this monastry for some function.
We were just about to start from the hotel when a young Italian couple approached us and enquired whether we'd like to share a taxi with them to go to the gompa. We couldn't even think of missing a chance to trek up: so we declined and invited them to trek with us. But the girl seemed to be having a breathing difficully that made climbs impossible. So we set off walking. Path through the village

We walked down to the bridge across the river from Keylong and started climbing toawrds the gompa. The climb was slightly difficult because of the loose soil and the steep gradient. As we climbed higher, the views were getting more and more spectacular. The climb was slightly more difficult for M owing to the fact that he used to smoke a bit. He was getting out of breath very often and soon he took a vow that he'd never smoke again (which he broke very soon, of course!)The gompa was too crowded that day. There were so many vehicles climbing up the road to gompa, carrying people coming from faraway places to attend the
function. We met quite a few foreigners also out there, and after attending the prayers at the gompa, we went around the place clicking pics and rotating the numerous prayer wheels placed all over. The concept behing rotating the prayer wheels is interesting: They believe that everytime the wheel is rotated, the divine mantra inscribed on in, "Om Mani Padme Hum", will be spread to the environment, like someone chanting it out. So we went around rotating it till our hands ached :) We met the Italian couple at the gompa and came back to Keylong with them in the taxi. Slept for sometime in the hotel and went for a walk in the evening in the town.

Snow-capped Himalayas Prayer wheels View from the Gompa

Though its the HQ of a district, Keylong is a very small town. Our hotel was situtated at the centre of the town, right opposite to the Asst. Collector's Bunglow. The town is situated on the slopes, which means to go from anywhere to anywhere else, you need to do quite a bit of climbing. There are a couple of small hospitals, a few hotels including a HPPWD guest house, some government offices, lots of shops selling shawls and other woollen items and two internet cafes (I resisted the temptation to check my mails: why should I let technology interrupt the peaceful trip?)

By 11pm or so, Alessandro and Monalisa came to our room. They were just back from a walk outside. They were from Milan, Italy, and had been touring India for a month. They were in Keylong for two days, on their way to Haridwar from Dharamshala. We chatted away for a long time: about India, Italy, our people, politics, sports etc etc... With sports(especially football) and world politics in hand, talking to any national was fun. Monalisa was very much interested in Indian Classical music and she said she was planning to attend a week's Drupad (a hindustani classical music form) workshop at Haridwar. When the conversation turned to politics, we found out that they hate Berlusconi (their PM who is notorious for his recent pro-Nazi comments) and they wanted us to write "I didn't vote for Berlusconi" in whatever languages we knew so that they could make a big collection of this sentence in various languages and print it on a T-shirt. We wrote it in Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi and taught them how to pronounce them too :)

That night was the best one in our whole trip. It was so much fun talking to them. But we made a blunder that night: forgot to take pics with them...