I am in Manali staying at His Eminence Sey Rinpoche's residence, enjoying his company, just like those old days. As usual, he was with me all the way through to Garsha or Lahaul valley. Despite the long journey, bad road conditions and all the difficult circumstances, he took trouble to come along with us. I appreciate his long-lasting friendship and closeness. We used to grow up together under the guidance of my beloved guru in Darjeeling. He was such a smart guy and I was such a stupid one. As young boys, we used to be quite mischievous, trying our best to avoid Nyungnay because we were very hungry in the middle of it and etc. He always managed to escape punishments from our guru through all kinds of tricks, and I would be just like a dumb boy beaten all the time, not one time was spared. We always have such a good time together, not only because of us growing up together, but also I guess we sincerely have trust and are open about our relationship, there is no pretentiousness whatsoever about this. Of course, some people said that me being Tsangpa Gyare and him being Gotsangpa in the past, this must be the reason for our closeness. I don't know what to say, except that in this present life, I know he is among the very few colleagues that I can truly rely and count on not only for professional activities such as lineage, etc., but also for genuine support that comes from his loving heart towards me. Despite having a family and many difficulties of his own, I know he is 100% supporting the lineage and my activities.

We accomplished all the small projects whatever I was supposed to do in this short trip except Nyungnay practice. Due to this being the harvesting season of potatoes and the villagers needing to bring the crops out of the valley, many people could not join. Besides, we also performed the opening ceremony for the newly established Lahaul or Garsha Druk Gawa Khilwa (DGK, Garsha/Lahaul). My 48 nuns were there to participate. All the villagers were so happy since this was the first in their history to have a nunnery. I came to know that they are always so excited about all the activities of the Drukpa Lineage since the people of entire Garsha valley have been practitioners of the Drukpa Lineage since more than 700 years ago.

There were about 10,000 people at the talk I gave in the local National playground, they were attentively showing their love and affection. I guess many of them were from different Drukpa villages in very remote area. As usual, language is a problem, three translations had to be done simultaneously, there were Keylangian, Hindi etc. Sey Rinpoche was helping me to translate. He was not only translating but he was also helping us in various corners of different matters. I want to thank everyone in Garsha for keeping their firm devotion towards our Pel Drukpa Lineage and I can see a very bright future for our lineage in Lahaul or Garsha in Himachal Pradesh.

By the way, yesterday we had a such a good weather on our way. We stopped few times on our way to have picnic. We had packed lunch and so on so forth. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of human and non-human crowd of Garsha. Well, the strange thing is that the day I was about to leave, everyone said that we would have a very difficult journey on the way back because there would be a heavy snowfall on the passes on 10th and 11th according the weather forecast. These two days were the exact days we were supposed to be on our way back and we definitely had to go through the passes. I was asking how accurate the weather forecast is and all the senior and junior government officers, monks and lay people said it has never been wrong so far. I said, "Oops, that's not a good news." But I tried not to worry about it too much, since I also heard many people saying, "With this man (Gyalwang Drukpa), things should be okay." As I said, apparently, the journey I had was very relaxed and wonderful for me and my entourage.

Since connection is not so good, I will put up some photos when I get back to Delhi or Kathmandu. There are more news to share. Stay tuned (whatever it means)...