Chillin' in Chobar

This cute little village sits on a hill about 40 minutes by bus from Pharping (yes I take the bus on a regular basis because it makes me feel like a local). I have an Irish acquaintance who runs this school for nuns and she had kindly offered to show it to me. The nunnery is right at the top of a hill (as all old fashioned boarding schools seem to be) so there is a bit of huffing and puffing to go through but the view is fabulous and totally worth the effort.

The view from the roof of one of the school buildings

The nuns range in age from 4 to in their early thirties. They usually come to the school because their parents are no longer able to support them financially so this is the best way of getting an education. Traditionally in Tibet, the middle daughter would always become a nun however this rule has relaxed in recent years and there is now more of a choice than before. The classrooms were small but much nicer than the ones I had in high school! They take part in regular nepali classes along with tibetan and their shedra studies (the study of buddhist philosophy). They have exams in both grade 8 and 11. I was told fervently that the grade 8 exams were ridiculously hard and didn't really believe it until I was helping Kumar's nephew prepare for his english exam. I can now attest to It's unnecessary difficulty. Most of the girls don't really go home during the holidays but their relatives sometimes come to visit them. While I was there, the girls were on their holidays and most of them were playing in the yard. They found us europeans fascinating and although they were shy for the first few minutes, they made up for it by being extra cheeky the rest of the time. By the end of the morning I was considered one of the sisters.

The girls wait in line for lunch 

Our tour ended around lunch time and I took a peek in the kitchen and saw that the food was being prepared by the younger nuns. Our guide told us that it had been a real struggle to get them to eat any vegetables which they call "rabbit food".

The smiling one kept calling me her sister

 After seeing the school, my friend vey kindly showed us around the village where we encountered some seriously cute puppies who waddled after us as we wandered through the streets. Our last stop was a Newari temple with an interesting story.

Da puupppiiiiiesssss. 

The walls were covered with plates which were hung in remembrance of people who had died or to celebrate the nuptials of a happy couples.

Rumor has it that one day a local man was walking down to the river when he came across a statue sitting in the river. He asked the statue what it was doing there and the statue told him that she had been thrown there by another town who blamed her for all their misfortune. The man was devastated that a god would be treated in this way. He noticed that the god was looking upward towards Chobar and so he called the village folk and got them to carry her up the hill and place her where the temple sits today. 

me taking a picture of the plates