Nepal + India 2022

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After several years of global lockdown and immobility, we were eager for a breakout pilgrimage in 2022, and we certainly went all out! We began with our pre-trip extension with helicopter rides up the high Nepali Himalayas close to the Tibet border, to the Rachen Nunnery in the Tsum Valley, home of our master Geshe Tenzin Zopa, where we toured holy sites and sat in meditation caves. Then our group of thirty pilgrims assembled for the main tour, hitting all five of the Vajrayogini shrines along with other notable power places scattered through the Kathmandu Valley.

If that weren’t enough we then visited all four of the main sites associated with the Buddha’s biography: his birthplace in Lumbini, Nepal, crossing the border into India and Kushinagar where he passed away, then on to Varanasi and Sarnath where Buddha gave his first teaching, and finally to Bodhgaya where he attained enlightenment. Geshe Tenzin Zopa taught the pithy lam-rim text Foundations of All Good Qualities along the way, connecting the spiritual sites with the stages of the path, and concluded by offering us refuge and Bodhisattva vows under the Bodhi Tree in Bodhgaya before sending us home physically weary but spiritually ladened with blessing! — Dr. Miles Neale