Billie Woods: Celtic Harp, Lead Vocals
Deborah Schmidt: Classical Guitar, Harmony Vocals
Valarie Young: Cello
We visited many monasteries in Tibet, all special in their own right. But one in particular brought us a bit more hardship than expected. Tsurpu is known as the monastery of the Karmapas and is considered an auspicious site for Tibetans. We were to spend 2 nights there, but as with many of our other plans, things changed.
Due to a Chinese entourage of officials arriving the following morning, we were unwanted guests as Westerners. Evidently, Tsurpu had been receiving a lot of money in donations from Western visitors and the Chinese authorities were very suspicious. For obvious reasons, the monks did not really want us to be there, but they relented and agreed that we could stay one night only, with a promise of a 10:30 a.m. departure the following morning.
As we walked around the monastery grounds, the atmosphere was very tense, unlike any other monastery we had been to. The monks avoided our greetings and made no direct eye to eye contact. They didn’t speak to us and were very uncomfortable with our presence. We were clearly not wanted.
That night, the 11 of us were crammed into just 2 rooms. We were in the room of 6. Accommodations were quite austere and it was very cold. Three of us had strange visions, each similar to the other, during the night, which was quite unsettling. It proved to be a long, cold and uncomfortable night, which begged the question: “Will There Really Be a Morning?”