The hilltop monastery was up many steps lined with 100 or more prayer wheels. We did our turn at turning them. The locals supply the monks with their food so there were chickens, a lamb with a broken leg, big bags of rice, vegetables, yak butter, and other food stacked all around. Other gifts scattered about were scarves, candles made of barley butter, cats, money, and of course prayer flags. It sort of made the monastery look like combination farm/trash dump. The monk slept and ate in one dark smoke filled room with very little ventilation. The monks take rotations at the different monasteries and this one must have been at the bottom of the list.
There was another small Hong Kong tour group here at the same time. Since Hong Kong people generally speak Cantonese (not Mandarin) and English, the guide spoke to his group using excellent English. He also was very knowledgeable about the Buddhist faith. Our hard to understand guide Marching knew all about the barley butter candles but very little else. We kept trying to listen in on the Hong Kong guide’s speech but Marching kept pointing out more barley butter candles. We were very jealous!
