Hikin’ into Bigu

Our first view of Bigu monastery in its beautiful Himalayan setting

For the past two weeks I’ve been in a tiny village called Bigu. It’s based around (take that to mean, it is) a Tibetan Buddhist gumba (temple) and nunnery that runs here. If I had known about this placement when I first arrived I would have spent all four months of my time in Nepal at this monastery; I would have come here first, I would not have left. It is a beautiful setting, with a large ridge rising straight up behind the nunnery grounds from which you can see mountains and a little Tibet (see one of the next posts!); the nuns (the youngest of whom is age 9), doctor, and lama are the kindest people I’ve met; the water gushes from a mountain stream and you can drink it straight from the tap here; and there’s tea, literally, 24/7. There’s so much to write about! I’ll break it up into a few blogs…

Ever think I would trek anywhere? Neither did I.

First, our journey here was eventful--we took a jeep, but the driver was less than keen to take us the whole way in and he dropped us off before he was supposed to (we didn’t know the location of the monastery, precisely). So we ended up hiking two days in, instead of one. Luckily we found a house near where we were hiking when it fell dark (we had only seen one other all day) or we would have had to spend the night on the mountainside. A family of women (an old mother and two daughters) took us in (there were 6 of us!), fed us and gave us blankets and a floor to sleep on. It was terribly kind of them. We made it into Bigu the next day with all arms and legs attached.

The Bigu gumba and grounds

The main nun here looks like a friend of mine (Gail Fuhrman), especially when she smiles, so that always made my day. She greeted us and showed us to our big room, right above the classroom, and we were given a tour around the complex by the Tibetan medicine doctor (Dawa--who also treated my sinuses… I can breath now!). There’s a kitchen and garden, several classrooms, a gompa (temple), shop, meditation room, two giant prayer wheels, and several small stupas, plus facilities for nuns who go on silent retreats for 7 months to several years. All of the nuns (and monkettes or nunkies, as we called the wee little ones) are incredibly kind and always laughing. It’s a beautiful place to be.

The gate and the chortens with prayer wheels.

Some of my students. The two in the front are what we would term nunkies, the rest monkettes.