This shot was
taken from the same spot as the last photo. I just turned around to
face Leh
(southwest).
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This
is looking back toward the Japanese stupa
(west)
. It's the white building on
the little hill across the valley. We hiked down from the hill then
way up to the right and around the valley before we climbed to this
spot, which was obviously higher then the stupa. No wonder I got a
blister.
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This is looking
directly south over Leh from the temple. Apparently I just
missed the closing of the main tourist season in Leh.
Amber was saying this area was a complete zoo (for Leh
I guess) just a few weeks ago with
frestivities.
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I suppose I could have sequenced these a little
better. This shot is just slightly left of where the Japanese
stupa is, so the stupa would be to the right. I like this shot
because of the errosion in the hills.The lighter colored material is
softer rock that has erroded down the hillsides. I think it would
have been cool to hike out there and get a closer look, but not this
trip.
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This
is looking north up the valley we hiked around. The stupa would
be located to the left. The road running up the valley is the one
that leads up to Khardun
La.
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Finally inside the
temple. This Buddha was two stories Without someone
standing next to it, you don't get a true feel for it's size.
It's all metal too. There was a monk in the temple. In addition to
the Buddha, he took us to another room with statues of smaller
dieties, but the room was very dark and the pictures didn't come out
very well.
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Back in the valley I took this shot of the tree
protection. I had been seeing trees all morning with tin cans
wrapped deep into the bark of trees. They put cans and water bottles
around the trees as sapplings to keep the animals from destroying
them. In most cases it appears they forget to remove the protection
and it becomes a permanent
part
of the
tree. After this, we hiked
back for lunch.
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After lunch we took a drive to the Thiksey Gonpa. A gonpa is a buddhist
monastery. I realize even the link spells it Gompa (as it's
pronounced), but the sign out front spelled it gonpa, so I will
too. Like the Leh Palace temple, this was located high on a
hill, though we drove to the top for this one. This was the gate to
get
inside.
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Here's the prayer wheel at the gonpa, with a
beautiful view of snowy peaks in the background. Something I was
told, but couldn't confirm until today is these things have paper in
them with the compassion prayer written over and over on it. It's
the prayer on the paper that gets "performed" when you spin the
wheel. The more times the prayer is written, in addtion to the
number of times the wheel is spun, the more powerful the wheel is.
These things have even gone high-tech. They're creating wheels with
microfiche in them so more prayers can be contained. Add some high
class bearings to the spinning mechanism and you've got the ultimate
prayer
wheel.
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This is a shot across the valley. To the
left you can see some of the exposed rock strata I was talking about
at the
beginning.
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