It has been a long time, over a week I think, since I last updated this blog.  For me it has been a time of change and adjustment, I've left the town of Boudha and the Kathmandu valley for the Rinchen Palri monastery in the foothills of the Himalaya. (the picture above features some of the very young monks studying for an exam on the steps in front of their classrooms.)  The monastery is really not that far from Boudha,, just over an hours drive by car, but a world away in terms of surroundings and especially in terms of air quality.  The Kathmandu area, being in a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides, it is an ancient lake bed, holds all the smoke and exhaust fumes that it generates and a clear day is rare indeed.  It is bad enough that after a week there you  start to wake up with a cough.  And so, though I really love the quality and pace of live in Boudha, I was ready to head out for another slice of life in Nepal.

And, so at 4 PM on Monday the 25th of November I met Jo at  the gate in Boudha that marks the
transition from the, mostly, traffic free old town to the very much not traffic free balance of the town.  There we negotiated with several taxis before finding one that would take us to across Kathmandu to the north side of the hill called Swayambhunath for a price not to much higher than the locals would pay.  The hill of Swayambhunath, another World Heritage Site, is packed full of Buddhist and Hindu holy places, but we were not going there today for the sites, we were going to meet the car from the monastery that would take us up into the foothills north of there to the monastery.  Our ride was there waiting when we arrived, a local driver and a young monk with the monastery vehicle.  We soon had out things loaded and were on our way up another hill, at the bottom there were lots of houses and shops, we were still in the far outreaches of Kathmandu, but as we climbed the houses became less frequent and before to long we were in a small pine forest.  About a half hour after starting up the hill we came around a sharp bend in the road, calling it a road is actually quite a compliment, and there was the gate to the monastery.  The driver honked the horn and soon the gate was opened for us and
we drove in.  I had no idea what to expect, I only knew, from Jo, that the monastery was quite new,
What I didn't in my wildest dreams expect is what I saw (see first picture on the left below for the view from the gate we entered).

Rinchen Palri monastery was built mostly with German and Austrian donations and, it turns out, the architectural designs of an Austrian firm.  It makes extensive use of red brick, an important element in traditional Kathmandu valley houses, and rather than asphalt or concrete it uses flagstones for all the paths and plazas.  I would soon find out the the monastery, which is perched on the side of a quite steep hill flows down the hill, moving from the spiritual at the top, the shrine hall, and the large
prayer wheels, then down a long series of steps to the next level, the intellectual level, which includes classrooms, the library, a school office surrounding a beautiful plaza which has a wide view of the
Kathmandu valley.  Below this level, actually under the plaza is a communal dining hall (this is the
level at which we entered the monastery), then down another flight of steps, below the dining room
sit the rooms of the monks and a bit off to one side are several buildings for the use of guests, which
is where I would be staying.  Below.and above are pictures of the grounds, I tried to put them in some order but Blogger won and I wasn't able to put them in order. You can probably figure out most of the order from the description above. Sorry.