Bagsu photos

Sunday in pictures. Quick recap: On Sunday, I woke up, had a great breakfast of freshly made eggs and bread and this Tibetan chili sauce which is a combination of chili and cheese and some round black pellet that my Amala didn't know the English or Hindi word for, but it was great. After breakfast I met up with Julia and Nellie to go for a walk to a waterfall. We found Eddie and Ryan on the way, and walked to Bagsu, which is another town very close to Mcleod Ganj.

Eddie, Me, Nellie, Julia, Ryan at the waterfall. Indian people are not always great at showing things in the background in the photo. Also, I am not taller than any of these people in real life.

Waterfall! We had to walk up a million stairs to get here, but it was really fun. Eddie and Ryan then hiked to the top of the waterfall. 

Julia makes great faces

Eddie dunked his head in the water because he ran up the mountain ahead of us. I really like this photo.

Julia also left, so Nellie and I chilled in Bagsu. We saw mongeese! They look like a cross between a ferret and a squirrel. They're kind of far away in this photo, but there are two at the base of the tree. 

Then Nellie and I walked around Bagsu. We found a temple, so obviously we had to enter. It was perhaps my favorite so far.

There were four huge cobras surrounding a stone mound, which was clearly sacred because people were pouring water on it.

This was also the first temple we've been in that had other religious figures inside. It made me smile to see the temple promoting harmonious relations.

Jesus. He looks like he has bullet holes, but whatever. 

We were unsure who the other three were, but our guesses were Mohammed, Moses, and maybe an important Sikh guru. Unclear.

Now comes my favorite part. There was a huge tiger mouth with stairs leading to a fake cave. You entered the mouth, walked up, and saw:

The mouth is open, and you look through and see more statues and important figures. It's awesome. Nellie almost made me pee my pants because I looked through and then she popped up on the other side of the mouth, since the cave curves around. Very scary.

Once we finished taking photos (these guys wanted to talk a million photos with us), Nellie and I set off for lunch. We tried to find a falafel place, because there are a lot of Israelis in Bagsu and Sam (the guy in the last post with Julia. Sorry, Sam, Julia doesn't feel that it's important to put your name up, but now you're famous!) told us about a falafel place. Unfortunately, they don't start making falafel until March, so Nellie bought me lunch at an Indian daba. Where she got the best soda in all of India (so far):

Beautiful. It started raining, so we wrote postcards until it stopped, then walked back. I made Nellie stop at a lot of tanka shops along the way (the Tibetan painted or fabric applique art that shows Buddhas or mandalas or whatever). Nellie is going back to Norbalinka to get a fabric one. They are so beautiful that I can't even decide which one I want. Right now I'm debating between one with a thousand Buddhas (more Buddhas equals more merit) or a mandala, which is the sacred house of a certain deity. There are also mantra ones, where mantras (prayers) are written in a circle. We saw this great black one with gold writing, with a really colorful Buddha in the middle. If you need room decorations for next year, please send me an email because tankas are beautiful and I would like you to have one.