This is the entrance to the Padmasambhava cave near the temple in the last picture. This is also the one where his head imprint is. I love this picture. Notice the rainbow colors on the wall outside the door? For you non-Buddhists, one of most depicted forms of Padmasambhava is one where thousands of rainbow rays are emanating from his body.

This is a little temple near the other Padmasambhava cave. The guy who was showing me around said that there was another cave behind this temple, but the Hindus took it over and put a Vishnu statue in it. He also said that at one time all the caves were linked up. You can see a weird looking stone formation hanging over the temple here. It's said that it was a snake that was disturbing Padmasambhava, so he turned it into stone. The Hindus have another story for the formation, but I don't remember it.

This is the temple to one of the four Vajrayogini temples in Nepal. No pictures are allowing inside the temple. It's a very ancient building, and going inside really felt like going back in time.

And here is the outside of the cave. You can see the hand print to the left of the door. The cave is in a Nyingma nunnery complex.

This is a hand print just outside the cave that was made by Padmasambhava. There was another in the cave, but I didn't take a picture of it as I thought it wouldn't turn out. Next time I'll try it anyway, as the statue at the end of the cave certainly did turn out, and it was at the darkest part of the cave.

I met a man who took me to the Padmasambhava cave I wasn't able to visit the last time I was there. That cave was very special. The statue you see here is from that cave. I sang the Barched Lamsel there, a haunting moment.

This is a close up of the small Taras. This day was much less intense with the vendors trying to get me to buy their stuff. I was able to meditate in the grotto for a bit undisturbed.

I visited Pharping for a second time before my orientation started. This is a picture from the Tara grotto. You can see Ganesha and some small Taras to the right. These are the self-arising ones I mentioned earlier. This is quite a famous place, and you can see other pictures of this on the internet.

During my orientation, they took all of us to Kopan and Pulahari again. I didn't see these stupas the first time I was at Pulahari. This time I got to take a guided tour, and was able to visit the second level of the temple. Unfortunately, the pictures I took up there didn't turn out so well.

I got a little lost on my way to Pulahari, and despite someone showing me the way back, I got lost on my way back home. This is the gate I took to leave the monastery. I ended up walking through rice paddies and getting quite sunburnt on my walk back. I was so tired that day.

This is a protector in a little side altar with offering bowls.

This statue of Padmasambhava is pretty intense looking.

This statue is of Shakyamuni Buddha, and the throne below has a picture of the young Karmapa on it.

These are the Buddhas at the altar.

These tormas are really huge, and particularly beautiful and detailed.

This is Dzambala, a wealth Buddha, holding his mongoose that spits jewels. I see this image outside the door to many temples here.

This is on the ceiling in the entrance.

Here's a close up of the entrance to the temple. There were lots of little monks there the day I came. Inside the temple there were about a hundred of them doing a drubchen, a long 10-day ritual.

This is the main temple.

When I arrived at Pulahari, the first building I came to had this beautiful stupa of the late Jamgon Kongtrul. His whole body is interred inside.

One my way to Pulahari Monastery from Kopan, I got a bit lost. But I found this cool and very eerie shrine that local people have set up. It seems like every few blocks on the street you can find a small temple, and every large tree is smeared with sandlewood and vermillion powder from people worshiping the spirit in the tree. You can see in this pic a lot of rocks lined up with strewn flower petals and sandlewood and vermillion powders dabbed on, and one of the rocks has a goddess of some type carved into it. I don't know if you can see it, but the second rock to the right of her has what looks like a Ganesha self-arising from it.

At a prayer wheel house at Sechen Monastery here in Boudha, the 21 Taras are painted on the wall. This one is a yellow/gold Tara with a jewel in her lotus, so she grants prosperity through the practice of generosity.

Kopan Monastery is a Gelugpa center, which is a different lineage from the one I practice. This is statue of one of the Twenty-One Taras they had there. For those familiar with the Nyingma tradition, you might notice that this version of Tara has the symbol in the right hand instead of the left. Everywhere I go, I encounter different versions of the 21 Taras. Some have lotuses in their hands, but no symbols on the lotus.

This is a scene from the path to the monastery. Rice paddies like this are all over the place. Everyone tells me that just a few years ago, all around the stupa in Bodhanath where Iive where only rice paddies and a few buildings just circling the stupa. Boudha has had a huge building boom, which is still going on. There's new construction everywhere here in Nepal.

And this is a bit of the garden around the stupa and the statues from the previous pictures, with a bit of scenery in the distance of the mountains. You might be able to see from this pic and the next one why I think that, at least in the countryside, Nepal reminds me of Hawaii. Lushly green and tropical.

This is eleven-faced Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, in a fountain in front of the stupa.

And here's the stupa itself. Inside it is a thousand copies of the Kangyur and Tengyur. For my non-Buddhist friends, let's just say it's a massive amount of Buddhist texts. I've been attending my orientation for school for the last two weeks. It's been pretty grueling. Beyond the Nepali and Tibetan classes, there were a lot of lectures on various topics around how to deal with living in Nepal, and still do well in school. Then afterwards, I was looking for places to live. I'm so ready to start school!

At Kopan Monastery, they have the most detailed and elaborate stupa I've ever seen. You can see the spire of it here over the head of a beautiful statue of Maitreya Buddha.

This was also on the wall to the nunnery temple, and shows the six worldly realms of samsara (cyclic existence), with Mahakala, the Lord of Death and Time, gripping the wheel.

On my trip to Kopan Monastery, I first stopped at the Kopan Nunnery. This is a shot of one of the paintings on the outer walls of the temple. It's called the four friends, and is a popular Buddhist symbol to put on doors or on the wall.

I took this picture just around the corner from the guesthouse I was staying in. It's so normal to see cows everywhere, even in the middle of a busy street. This one was a little freaked that I kept stoping to take her picture.