We have been to the Wall

There have been so many parts of my personal journey and our adventures as a family from the last year that just haven't made it into words, once conjoined with my camera I find the dust settles on it as days go by. 

Discovering instagram didn't help this, as I kinda love it, a picture and a few words the cathartic ease of sharing and connecting.

Today for some reason I began to write and that intense flow that had me tapping out page after page like I once used to do, returned.

I have a lot of things happening in my life, a lot of changes that will take me out of the gypsy mode here in the Himalayas and into a nest that I'm weaving via emails and phone calls back in Australia.

We haven't experienced the seasons in natural order for over 3 years now, I haven't had a garden or an adequately filled book shelf for too long. Dakini wants to learn to surf and get consistent music lessons, Chimme wants to go outside and play without monkeys leering at him and Urgyen he wants to work with his friend in a new business. I have a yoga teaching gig for a few months while the usual teacher (my mother) recovers from surgery, it's been 10 years since I taught yoga and this I would like to do too.

I sometimes question if I really can relax into it... settle down for a whole year cycle and ride the waves of close to home adventures. 

I think I will need this space over the next few months and so it's time to catch it up a bit.

Today reflecting on the travels we have been on, I thought to share a part that missed the blog...

CHINA

China is a place I had never really felt the urge to visit and which was a means for getting into Tibet. 

I sat on the steps of The Great Wall, in one of my trademark dark and deep moods thinking how lame the tourist trap was and a bunch of other things that I shouldn’t mention here in case I ever want to go back.  

I was a touch polluted with paranoia, war crime stories, sweat house images and recent history atrocities in the first days, especially considering my husbands culture, but once we got out of Beijing and into the countryside I began to experience a change of heart a softening towards the experience and a deep love of the expression earth has taking here. 

We took a chartered bus to a particularly beautiful place called Ti-Shan mountain one of those picturesque sacred valleys were Buddhist masters and Chinese saints seemed to find sanctuary throughout the centuries, it was a village amongst dreamy leafy birch trees and oh my, the way the golden light filters through a birch wood forest is beyond pretty.

Glamoured by the filtering lights and convinced I would find the little people, I took of into the woods only to stumble upon a Mongolian yurt and here is my number one experience of China walking into this yurt full of big smiling, pipe smoking men who looked at me like I was some enchanted creature from another dimension we had similar expressions on our faces!  

We were in China for about a week, Tiananmen square, the Tibetan Medical Centre a bunch of museums, more temples, this and that seen, done, and check off while twiddling our fingers in wait for the the Tibet trip to begin. 

The people were friendly, helpful and easy, the city is quite and clean the air is dirty and their are too many cameras when you begin to look around but i'm really glad we went.

Photo description-

1. Chimme and me at the Wall

2. The chain of locked love a Wall tradition.

3. The Wall

4. Buddhist retreat house of the 8th Dalai Lama

5. Birch leaves

6. The Birch woods and Mongolian Yurt

7. Inside the Yurt

8. self explanatory

9. Manjushrimitras Stupa

10. Rescuing captured squirrels and releasing them in the woods.

11. riding cable cars over the forest up to a temple

12. Dakini on the cable car

13. Tiananmen square
   14. Tibetan Medicine Spa Beijing

                                                                   

*most photos taken with a phone

Bless