The reason Nicolas and I went to Tashiding was because of an old monastery from the sixteenth century on the top of a mountain near the village. On the way up, we saw vast spiderwebs with up to 20-30 spiders in it. Nicolas said he heard about these spiders on a documentary. They are social spiders, and when they're done eating what they can get in one area, they move on as a group and make new vast webs somewhere else. This one here was one of the bigger ones, at least three and a half to four inches big.

Here is one of the many mountains we were surrouned by there in Sikkim. Like I said before, there's no way for a camera to take in the vast scope of the mountains surrounding us, but here's a slice...

This is the room Nicolas and I stayed in in a village called Tashiding. The room was so nice, I had to get a photo. Hardwood floors, clean, and nicely painted, with a nice view of the mountains.

This pic I took on our jeep trip through Sikkim. It's just a little stupa, all by itelf on the river, so idyllic looking, I had to have a photo. Everywhere we went in Sikkim, the road ran along the most beautiful river. Most rivers in Nepal and India are polluted and trash lined, but in Sikkim everything was clean and well preserved. There was a lot of road construction everywhere, which you also don't normally see, and the roads were pretty flat and unbumpy, also quite unusual. They are very environmentally conscious there too.

This is a sign that is just before the bridge. Here in Darjeeling and in Nepal are many Gorkhas, who are famous for being fierce warriors in the British Army. They are fighting here for a separate state within India, as they aren't happy being a part of the state of West Bengal. They have a lot of ethnic pride, and you see people here all the time wearing the traditional Gorkha clothing.

Here is the bridge that takes one into Sikkim. Whenever a car would go over it, the street underneath would dip down, kind of weird to see, but traveling over it in the jeep, we didn't feel anything special.

Here's Sam and some friends in Rajgir, where the Buddha gave some important talks. I will be putting up all my old pictures like this one, including some pics of my trip to Thailand, but until then, there were a couple pictures of friends that I wanted to get posted in the meantime. To the left the little guy there is Josh, a close friend of Sam's who I was glad to get to know and be able to hang out with for a while, and Beatrice and Matthew, a very nice couple, both of whom went to the shedra I attended in Nepal. They were also teaching and translating at a shedra I was attending in Bodhgaya. I had Matthew as a teacher for an intermediate classical Tibetan class there, and he was excellent, and I wish he was still around (instead of going off to, was it Norway?), because I would love to take another class from him.

My friend Sam in front of the Dalai Lama's temple in Dharamsala. He's another close friend I made in Nepal/India. We traveled around a lot in India together, and had a great time doing it. Here he's in full mountain man mode. He's since cleaned up his act a little bit and gotten himself a girlfriend.

And a few other pics I want to put up from the past, before I move on to my Sikkim trip pics. Here are my friends Rasmus (who we all nicknamed Moose) and Ryan, who's getting his hair dredded by Moose. There was a lot of this sort of thing going on while studying, listening to music, or watching movies. Moose dredded a number of people's hair while he was here. They would use tiny crochet hooks to pull the hair into each dredlock. It's fairly easy to dred hair, I learned, but takes a lot maintentance, so there was a constant twirling of crochet hooks at almost all moments of the day.

And here is my kitchen. Nice green marble counter, sink, stove, and to the right with the magnets on it, my fridge.

Here is a pic of my old place in Boudha. It was pretty nice. All new furniture, completely renovated, nice carpeting. Most of the pics I took of it didn't turn out too well, but here's two that did. This one shows my wardrobe and the bamboo shelving served as my pantry and dish cabinets.

Here's Nicolas and Mark, another student from my school, studying in a cafe. When I'm in this cafe, I can almost forget that I'm in India, it's so western. The coffee is pretty good, but expensive by Indian standards. We pay $1.50 for a latte or some such concoction, and love to complain about the high prices, knowing full well that in the west we're going to pay four or five times that price. And the place is warm, almost too warm, which is so nice in a cold place like this that rarely has any heating. My school in fact is usually like an ice box, because the floors are all marble corridors and staircases, or concrete walls and floors in the classrooms.

This is a full view of Kangchenjunga which I took on my way to school. It's hard to get into pictures how everywhere you go here, you are surrounded by spectacular mountains. Someone told me that in Darjeeling you can look 2000 feet down into the valleys, and 6000 feet upwards to the highest peaks.

This is me, Nicolas, and one of my teachers, Gen Lobsang in class. I met Nicolas in Boudha through my friend Erick, who some of you Chagdud Gompa types might know. We became fast friends, having a lot in common even beyond our interest in Tibetan, and hung out together constantly, studying eating lots of mangos, pancakes, and Kurekure together, and watching many movies. Gen Lobsang is my tutor outside of class, and has been teaching me kyug yig, a type of Tibetan handwriting that's very beautiful.

These are pictures of Avril Lavigne on the wall of the restaurant. No matter where you go, in Nepal and India you see her posters everywhere. Other westerners like me are totally puzzled by this phenomena, as you don't see Brittany Spears or Madonna or any other pop stars around.

This is the kitchen of one of my favorite spots to eat. Many of the places in this part of the world locals eat look like this. The food is surprisingly good at this spot, and the people working there are very nice. No matter what you might think, I've never gotten sick eating here.

Here is another shot from my balcony of Kangchenjunga, the third largest mountain in the world.

This is a Hindu temple next to the building I live in. When I first got here, they were blasting music and chanting for about 10 days, which was sometimes very beautiful, and sometimes very annoying. Their speaker system wasn't the best, and it seemed that it was when the sound was the crackliest when they would crank up the volumn. The temple lit up at night was very beautiful, but unfortunately all those pictures didn't make it, as they were on my old camera that finally gave out on me.

My friend Nicolas in my room, watching a movie. My place is pretty simple, as you can see, good enough for study and crashing afterwards. I hesitate to make and put any more pics of my place up, because it's not too interesting...unless you want to see what a squat toilet looks like.

Here's a view of a sunrise from apartment balcony in Darjeeling. I have a pretty incredible view of the mountains from my windows, when we have a clear day.