So the northeast of India is predominantly Hindu, as might be expected. But the local population is largely Nepali, and the local language is Nepali, rather than Bengali or Hindi, and Tibet and Nepal and Bhutan are only a short drive way, so it is not surprising that Buddhism is also significant. (Our guide does not mention Muslims much, except to say that they are sought after as construction workers since they work harder and ask for less than the others around here.).

Anyway, our guide has been showing us a lot of Bhuddist temples and monasteries as we’ve wandered about. And for good reason: the temples are rich with colour and fabrics and decoration and illustrations, especially compared to the one large Hindu temple we have seen so far. We have been learning the differences between the red, yellow and black hat streams of Buddhism (and even went to one of the two blue hat monasteries in India, where a monk was on the roof trying to fix the satellite TV dish. And we have been memorizing the sequence, element and associated prayer for the five colours of prayer flags that flap everywhere.

What follows are some of the scores of pictures we have taken in and around the monasteries and temples. (Some thoughts on visiting a Hindu temple and a Catholic Church are below that.) Some highlights for us: being allowed to sit in on a service in one of the monasteries; seeing so many collections of beautifully bound prayer books, including those brought with him by the Dali Lama when he responded to the Chinese tightening its vice grip on Tibet by going to the corner for cigarettes and forgetting to come back, all behind colourful glass fronted cupboard doors; watching young monks and monks in training playing a soccer game on a sunny day that we realized was what we always called monk(ey) in the middle but what people here call mouse in the middle; starting to figure out that a red hat temple can be identified by the moustache on the dominant statue of the Guru who brought Buddhism to Tibet; watching a crew of monks wrap papers imprinted with thousands of prayers in tiny print around a central drum as they build a huge prayer wheel…

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We have been taken to a grand total of one Hindu temple. This one was big and empty, except for wall paintings and diorama of various stages of the life of Krishna, who is an avatar or manifestation of Shiva. We have been to lots of small and colourful and icon heavy Hindu temples on other trips but not one that seemed like a suburban banquet hall in the GTA.

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And we went to a Catholic Church. The land it sits on was donated by the local Tibetan community on the condition that the church be disingenuous along the lines of a Tibetan temple. Seems reasonable. We are not sure if the bargain included the iconography, but Mary always sits cross legged on a lotus leaf, Jesus’ birth was attended by a yak, and his sermons clearly depict the elongated earlobes and local looks and lotus platform of a sort of Christian Buddha.

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