Day 2 of Study Tour- Coorg Part II

Ok, so it was another waterfall, and quite a big one too. The main attraction of Irupu falls is its fall height and the fact that its located inside the wildlife sanctuary. Getting there is quite hard and so is going back as we found out. The roads were so narrow and winding with hairpin curves,that we lost a considerable amount of time. And being a  Sunday most of the restaurants were closed.So that meant no lunch for us. After some agonizing hours in the bus(during which i found out that i had a leech on my foot) we reached a town in Coorg. By now it was almost 4:30 pm and we ran to the nearest hotel.

The gates of the Nunnery

Our next stop was at NYINGMAPA NUNNERY a monastery for Buddhist monks. It was quite a wonderful place, with all the gardens,huge bells, gongs and sculptures, and monks with shaven heads walking around in saffron colored robes.....The gate to the nunnery looks like this(right >>>)

The main entrance....

 The main entrance has got a huge photograph of some monk (must be some important guy..like a Lama?!) placed on top of a structure which has a wheel on the background.They have many buildings inside the monastery, like prayer rooms, hostel/boarding for the kids(i.e the young monks), a school for them and many more.To the left of this main entrance there's this huge prayer hall which is decorated with statues of small guardian lions on the steps. These steps lead towards three doors, the one in the center considerably larger than the other two. Inside this prayer hall we can see three large statues of Buddha.There's also some large benches put across the length of the hall which reminded me of the main hall at Hogwarts.Its a really sacred place for them and so around 6:30 the monks asked us politely to leave as it was time for their evening prayer.

Here's how the inside of this prayer hall looks like.....

The prayer hall

Oh i almost forgot about the paintings,yup the main highlight of this place was the intricate yet colorful and attractive paintings.Each of them were different from one another and we had no idea what they meant. So i decided to get one of the monks to explain the paintings to us. And in order for this to work i had to use Harish, because i cant speak or understand Hindi very well and those monks knew only Hindi. 

Lundup and Sange....

We met two monks Lundup and Sange, from Bhutan, who were kind enough to explain to us the different paintings, and even more patient enough to answer all our stupid questions.We would tell our various queries in Malayalam to Harish who would in turn convey these to Lundup and Sange.They explained to us a lot about the four guardians of the four cardinal directions, about the various levels of hell and other stuff.Before leaving we asked for a photo together and they were only too happy to oblige...

Crash course in Buddhism.... 

7:45 pm and we are going back from this monastery. Harish had with him a Cadbury Rum and Raisins, which disappeared '   ' just like that,as soon as the wrapping was removed. And i found out that rum can also be eaten! Anand Raj, Harish and i thought seriously about joining the Buddhist Monastery, hell why not? Free food, schooling and accommodation and a life of peace..ah..yes! Harish seemed all pepped up and  a bit more eager that the boht of us. He might go through with it.......

The road ahead leads to Mysore where our third day will be spent. But before that we'll have to stop for dinner. By the highway there were two hotels, Highway 18 and Hotel Monarch. Very few chose Highway 18. The majority of us the latter. The food in both the hotels were comparable, but there was a tiny problem with the Monarch, which we overlooked. We became aware of this small detail when the bill came. It was a three star hotel and they charged us about Rs.1200 as service tax. Oops...!

Anyway we check into a hotel and again my roommates are Pai, Binu, Akhil, and Biju.... Tomorrow also have an Industrial Visit, almost forgot about that part. Funny cause isnt that the reason why we have this (Study) tour?