The trip to the Buddhist Temple (Seto Gumba)

 

 

Yesterday we again had a great and very long day: we took a trip to an amazing Buddhist Temple, up in the mountains, near Kathmandu – I think the name of it was Amitabha Monastery (or Seto Gumba which means white temple). We went together with our hosting organization: Yagya, Yamkala and some Nepalese CCN volunteers.

After taking a bus from the center of Kathmandu and again experiencing the crazy Nepalese transportation, we arrived to a temple with lots of monkeys by it, Swayambhunath. It was a really interesting expreince to see this beautiful temple with golden statues just right by one of the busiest road of the city, where buses, motorcycles and tons of cars were passing by loudly.

But this was still not our final destination, actually our journey just started right here. It took from here about an hor of walking and climbing to get to the monastery. During the way, we passed by village-like places, with people sitting in from of there shops and children playing around, while looking on the other side, we could have a pretty nice and far view of Kathmandu as well. At the end of the road, the traffic was getting crazy again: although we were walking up to the top, there were quite a few others who were taking a taxi, so on the narrow road leading up to the monastery, there was real traffic jam because of this.

But at last the climbing was really worth it: we arrived to the monastery, where actually monks are still living and meditating and which is only open to visitors on Saturdays and which looked like if were in some tale on in another dimension… We could see giant Buddha statues, beautiful buildings, not even talking about the view from the monastery and the temple itself. The temple inside was so richly decorated and colored that it could easily beat even some catholic churches. On the wall, there were little cabins all over with small Buddha figures in them, on the floor, there were comfortable mattresses for mediation, and in the middle, huge columns were holding the roof, richly decorated with colorful motives. It can imagine that without the tourists, how peaceful place it can be.

During the excursion Yagya also gave us a chance through a “mini interview” to talk about our plans while volunteering here, and our future plans, too, as well as about how volunteering here can be useful for our future careers. What made me really happy is that he seemed to be interested in all the ideas I had about what I could do here: it seems that I will have an opportunity to teach photography to the children, while I can also work with CCN in different collages and universities, too, if I make a good project for them, including psychodrama and also some groups about conflict management and other topics. So now I’m really looking forward to starting this kind of work. Right now, we will still have Nepali lessons next, but after that we will start visiting the schools and working on our projects will – so I think a very interesting part of being here will start then! :)

ps. Maybe it was too early to say the other day that I don't have stomach problems, no I do... But I knew that I would have to deal with this, so I guess it's better now, than later..:)