Tsurphu Monastery

We headed out to Dulong County to interview more Amchis. The interviews went well and then we gave one of the amchis a ride to her home. She had walked four hours to get to the township clinic for the interview. Since the Tsurphu Monastary was on the way we all headed there (including 2 amchis, ONEHEART staff member, driver, Chris, Reini and me).

The Tsurphu Monastary is where the Karmapa Lama (17th lama)is from. The 17th lama left the monastary and moved to India to practice in 1999. The history is very complicated/controversial and I cannot explain it here. The monastary was located at the end of a valley that was full of pristine rivers and fields of barley. Along the way we stopped at one villagers house along the way to taste some freshly "popped" barley and checked out how they used hot sand and fire to cook the barely and water power to grind the barely into a paste (tsampa). I cracked my molar on a not so cooked piece of barley.

We finally got to the monastery and it was beautiful. Because of the proximity they do not get very many visitors. There are about 300 monks at this monastary currently the majority are on vacation visiting their families for 2 months. We got a very individualized tour by the monks. It was great to have translation provided by one of the ONE HEART staff. The monastary was one of the more beautiful and magnificant ones we have seen. During the 1950s over 6000 monastaries were lost and now there are around 2000.