Okay, this is not from the trip but it was on the camera card and so here it is.
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Husking corn and setting it out to dry
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Building a mosque. There are tons of mosques in the area dominated by the DX minority.
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Morning in XH. I won't be using full names of places because I don't care to have people stumble across the blog by searching keywords. If you would like a glossary of abbreviations, email me.
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Prayer wheels around L monastery
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Artisan workshops across from the monastery
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The next shots are all from in and around L monastery
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Pilgrims circling.
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Russ takes a break.
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Newly constructed housing on the right
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Frost-covered prayer papers
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A view of L monastery
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Monks' quarters
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In the town of XH
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Pilgrim prostrating himself
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I walked up and along this ridge
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Pilgrims circling a stupa
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L monastery was very empty. There were hardly any tourists, as you can see from the parking lot.
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The hills are strewn with paper squares
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A ruin on the hill above L monastery.
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A few monks walking down the main road there
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A couple tossing papers to the wind
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Prayer flags
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The part of XH where most non-monk T people live
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Army troops practicing martial arts
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Free car wash
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In the T half of XH
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Back in the monastery
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Using whitewash/chalk to draw on the ground
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Dusk in the monastery
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If only the hotel we stayed at put as much effort into their bathrooms as they did their ceillings...
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Sheep on the hills
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Yaks on the hills
Govt provided housing, ready to resettle nomads
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LMS
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The sky was blue when we arrived and by evening it was grey and snowy
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Washing clothes in the stream
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Supervising the cattle
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Horses at pasture in the valley
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Russ is down there at the bend in the road.
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Fairly common style of T house. Two doors, glassed in front to catch the heat of the sun, solar cooker...
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A little temple on the SC side of LMS.
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Looking from the SC side of the river to the GS side. There are two monasteries, one in each province.
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A wall
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Prayer wheels
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Cows and schoolchildren heading home after a long day
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SC side of LMS
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Very interesting rig to keep the wall from collapsing outward
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Not reading T, I can only guess that this says "om mani padme hum."
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Having departed T areas and entered Hui areas
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Threshing beans
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The dusty, dirty town of LT
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An old building right next to the church
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On our way out to a hillside village, about to cross the Tao on that bridge
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The bridge - iron frame laid over with logs and then rocks and dirt
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LBS
A friend's house in LBS
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On the way from LT to another LT
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Traffic jam
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Mountain at rest
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Trying to figure out where the new rattling clunk is coming from
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Russ calls me back to the car
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The village repair shop
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Decent scenery while we wait for repairs to be finished
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Stoves for sale
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At LT
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They built a new church in 2006 but salvaged and reassembled the roof from the original building, which was built in the late 1800s.
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Big plastic chickens approve of Russ.
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Boxes of tea
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Russ makes a baby happy.
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Russ manfully resists the airport parking lot pear-seller's insistent pitch to buy more pears.