Around Sera Mey monastery

A collection of observations from my first few days at Sera Mey monastery, South India...

Every morning at 7am I hear a tractor collecting rubbish. It starts from the guest house where I am staying, then chuggs its way around other buildings and into the distance. I use it as an alarm clock so that I am out for my morning run around the time I hear it sounding its horn. Twelve hours later at 7 in the evening the monks begin their debating sessions. Masses of monks sit in temple courtyards posing, and answering, philosophical questions in Tibetan. They clap their hands together with every question posed with a theatrical movement.

There's a beggar man who lives on the corner of the pavement outside a monastery restaurant where I take breakfast. I see him every morning in the same place, in the same clothes, with the same things around him. He is small, wrinkled and hard to age, but I would guess at least 50 .. maybe. He has stumps for hands and toes and he shouts at people that pass by. He shouts at people for food. He shouts at people who bring him food. Generally he shouts. At night he sleeps on the rags and blankets that he sits on during the day.

At school there's a dog that sleeps in the corner of the concrete stair case. It's a narrow shaded space and this medium-sized dog squeezes itself into the wall, sometimes stretching out its legs which makes an obstacle for those using this passageway. It got up today from its sleep and came into the staffroom where it went back to sleep again.

Sera Mey has two temples, or Gompa. On the oldest one, which is large, tall, beautifully painted and with many ornate overhangs, I counted 31 curtains of the wild large honeybee, Apis dorsata. These bees are declining in the wild as honeyhunters take an annual harvest of the honey, but here they appear to be thriving. At school the taps at the outdoor sinks are often covered in bees taking water.