The Enchey Monastery, located on a hill top looking out over Gangtok, is a wonderful place, with a great atmosphere. The complex is a lot smaller than the Rumtek Monastery, with fewer buildings – fewer tourists, too –, but somehow it breathes a serene peace. Sunlight and a threatening sky also help.
Even though this most important of all Sikkim Buddhist monasteries, the Rumtek Monastery at about an hour’s drive from Gangtok, come across as pretty sterile, new, with a lack of atmosphere – and not only because military is ever present, protecting the Golden Stupa, as they say -, it does provide lots of opportunities for … Read more
To get from Darjeeling to Gangtok, in Sikkim, the only form of public transport is the dreaded Sumo, the jeep that fit ten passengers, kind of. Two rows of four, and two in the passenger seat next to the driver. We buy four seats next to each other, a whole row, and so travel unexpectedly … Read more
Just because it is such a photogenic place, I have selected a few more photographs of the Tawang monastery, in Arunachal Pradesh, and close to Tibet and Bhutan. It is the biggest Buddhist monastery in India, with some 560 monks in residence. It belongs to the Gelug school of Vajrayana Buddhism and had a religious … Read more
We take two days to drive the 350 km from Podgorica to Sarajevo, again not along the shortest route, but definitely a more scenic one. Taking in some historically relevant sights, as well. (Two days, scenery and sights, so brace yourself for a lot of photographs again….) The Moraca River Just north of Podgorica we … Read more
Uncinj I didn’t know that the coast of Montenegro is a popular tourist destination, of the sun and sea variety – there is very little sand along the Adriatic coast. Ulcinj is the first of a series of coastal towns that cater for the summer vacation. The town is built against the mountain slopes, with … Read more
Here is another fabulously decorated church of a monastery, the one belonging to the Patriarchate of Pec, near what is called Peje in Albanian. There are in fact three churches, connected by a common narthex. The middle one is the 13th C Church of the Holy Apostles, flanked by 14th C Church of Saint Demetrius … Read more
Already on the way to the Visoki Decani Monastery we notice all along the road small cemeteries adorned with the double-eagle Kosovo flag. These are the graves of the martyrs, or, as they are also being called, the heroes of the liberation: those who have fallen during the Kosovo war of 1997-1999, when Kosovo wrenched … Read more
The Kosovo monasteries are only the Kosovo monasteries, because they are nowadays located in Kosovo. But make no mistake, for all intents and purposes they are just as Serbian as the earlier ones I have shared with you. In fact, they are so Serbian, that they have to be protected by KFOR, the UN peacekeeping … Read more
The Crna Reka Monastery is unique amongst the Serbian Orthodox monasteries in that is consists largely of rock-hewn rooms connected by narrow stairs and passage ways. Nothing like the big complexes we have seen elsewhere, in Zico and in Studenica. Also, they are a lot less hung up about taking pictures inside, which gives me … Read more