I know the pull of the full moon.
We were all making our way to Tengboche Monastery: Nepalis, Tibetans, Europeans, Americans. The Mani-rimdu festival, held during a full moon in the fall, is a Buddhist celebration that draws families from the most remote villages, people walking for days to gather in Tengboche to receive blessings from the lamas and to socialize.
It was beautiful but also a bit haunting to be up with my camera at dawn and to see the moon set over the monastery and Mt. Khumbila--a peak that is sacred to the Sherpa people who live in the region.
We camped near the monastery for three days, taking-in the color of Mani-rimdu. We received blessings from the Rinpoche, the venerable abbot of Tengboche.
If there is a Shangri-La, we had found it.
(Note: We recently returned from a month-long trekking trip in Nepal. This is my sixth posting from that trip.)
