From Monastery to Herbal Clinic

We had breakfast in the courtyard to catch the heat rays of the early sun. A big bowl of ''tsampa'' (buckwheat) porridge, chapati and tea with the gentle hum of morning prayers in the temple. After some photo opportunities and jovial banter with the monks, who had just completed their morning pooja, we left the monastic hideout.

Covering a lot of ground on the descent from Mu Gompa all the way down to Domje

Some of the melted puddles on the way down had frozen over and other spots were very muddy. However the downhill was quite a trivial affair. We were losing altitude for once. The only big hazard was a 2 plank bridge over a stream that had frozen over last night. Krishna got to work brushing off the slick of ice and laying a bit of dirt to add some traction. With the help of a pole from Amir on the other side, we all carefully made the crossing. I must say that for a brief second I thought that I was going to perform my frozen sequel to the Ruwenzori slip of 2013. The grassy part of the valley on the other side of the river was very busy with grazing yak, some crossing down to the river to drink some water.

Sometimes even the backpacks need a rest from sweaty backs

We were going to take the same route we took going up but with a detour after Gho. To speed up the downhill trek we took a riverbed route. We once again ate lunch at Chhokang Paro. From then onwards it was a tortuous drop all the way to Domje,  at an altitude of 3200 metres. There we stayed at the Tsum Shenphen Clinic, a clinic that applies Tibetan medicine and doubles as a monastic school and teahouse. This clinic is one of two in the Tsum Valley that was built with the support of a local charity called the Nepal Seeds. You can learn more about the work of the Lower Tsum Clinic, where we stayed, by watching this video link.

We were welcomed by the usual resident dog barks that one encounters in the villages here and an entrance abuzz with kids in saffron robes. It was going to be a proper student dorm room experience, sharing with a group of young Israelis that had just descended from the viewpoint just above 4000 metres near the Gompa Lungdung Monastery. We planned to do a long uphill hike into this viewpoint the following day.

Tsum Shenphen Clinic sign in Tibetan, Nepali and  English

There was not much of a communal room but Amir, our guide, managed to get us a few spots next to the kitchen fire.  It was all little hands on deck as the kids prepared "momos" (steamed vegetable dumplings) for a special guest tomorrow - a visiting Lama (Tibetan Buddhist monk or priest), at the same time dealing with the overwhelming needs of the guests tonight. A big pot of rice was on the fire. A kid struggled to get enough water for the rice, and Amir contributed to the stirring. He got a jokey reprimand from the Ani (Tibetan Buddhist nun) for stepping over the line of authority. She waved the hot end of a plank of wood in his direction! One of the admirable aspects of the Buddhist way of life is the consideration of humour as an integral part of well-being.

We ate in the classroom. We were meant to sit cross-legged on mattresses and eat off the benches but with my inflexible legs I chose to sit one end of the long bench, risking the release of dal bhat projectiles. Later on I was alone in the classroom reading a novel. A couple of the young boys started checking out what I was doing. I showed them the novel, and got one of the lads to read a few simple sentences (spell out the letters, more like). Soon enough all the children were standing in front of me. We had a brief moment of banter. Their basic English was good. It became clear that this is where they sleep and they were too polite to kick me out. They asked me questions about my parents, including whether I had any, which led me to realise that some of them are orphans, something that was not obvious and goes to show that the communal nature of the place does not nurture discrimination.

Thanks in Dutch, Canadian (lol), Slovenian, Aussie (lool), Hebrew and Japanese....I forgot to add Asante (Swahili) :-(