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Asia
There was this special display of Buddha statues with offerings, set out in one of the courtyards.
These huge iron caskets contain a mound of ash. People light a bunch of incense sticks, pray and stick them inside.
Wenshu Yuan is a temple complex, with multiple courtyards and prayer houses. This is one of them. Feel the incense?
The very Indian sounding Manjushri Monastery (named after one of the Boddhisattvas) was my first site of visit here in Chengdu. Locally known as Wenshu Yuan, this is a pretty place, if you ignore the high commercialization outside. Once inside the temple premises, it’s calm and peaceful.
Chengdu right now is freezing. The temperature is hovering around 6 to 7 degrees Celsius. The skies speak for it. Slate grey is the only color I have seen so far in the three days that I have been here. This is the centre of the city, near Tianfu Square where I went exploring today....
From Luang Prabang, we traveled onwards to Phonsavan. This was a last minute choice for ease of connectivity.
Just a short post to say that today was a complete rest day. After yesterday’s gruelling exercise we needed to give our battered bodies a rest. So all we did was lounge around, sleep, eat and shop at the night market. And it was also a no bicycle day. Also, so far in Luang Prabang,...
I have not known the meaning of true tiredness for a long time until today. But then bicycling 60km is not a joke. I even doubted if I was up to it. But K/G said we must give it a shot after our newer fitness levels and I thought yes we should. So we set...
A good night’s sleep restored my tired limbs and muddled senses. Since we had not planned on anything concrete today we took bicycles again and went around town. Visited a couple of Wats or temples. The highlight of the day was cycling all the way to Ban Pho, which is a village of weavers. The...
Our bus tickets to Luang Prabang were booked. After a long wait, a van finally came to pick us up at our hotel. There was a further wait in the bus itself but at last it left around half an hour late. For the first time in my life I found myself not shivering in...
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