Madikeri (Karnataka), India - December 25th, 2006

Since the sightseeing agenda was ging to be busy today, I just had some coffee, bundled up, and left to visit the Golden Temple, located in the Nandroling Monastery. Some of the kindlest people in earth live here in many Tibetean refugee settlements. The Golden Temple has 3 huge statues inside and the middle one is an 18 meter high golden plated Buddha. There are thousands of monks in this area with their orange, maroon attaries (robes).
Sera village just 2 kms. from there, houses 5,000 monks. They were painting their nice village quarters and homes because on January 8th the Dali Lama is coming to visit. It was very pleasant to see so many monks with their sweet and smiley Chinese faces.
In the afternoon, I went to visit Abby Falls, a nice 7 km. hike from the town centre. There were hundreds of Indian people there, and maybe only 5 or 6 foreigners. The Indian ladies were playing in the water while wearing their saris.
I came home and shared the photos with the family and they really enjoyed it!