Nalanda Buddhist Institute is a Buddhist monastic school (shedra) located in the western part of the Punakha Dzongkhag, Bhutan. It can be seen from main East-West highway while driving from Dochu La to #Punakha.
The original Nalanda University was located in Magadha which is near present-day #Patna in India. The Bhutanese used to make extravagant exertions to visit this sacred place in 17th century. There were no roads and people had to walk to #India. The journey was very unsafe and they faced many difficulties in dealing with differences in food, culture, and language. Gyalwang Shakya Rinchen Rinpoche built this monastery in #Bhutan and named it after the Nalanda University of India.
I am lucky to be amongst the friend list of the present day principal of this university and thus we were allowed to stay in the Hostel. The monks were very receptive and friendly. Though most of them didn’t understand Hindi or English, they made best effort to understand our requirements and made us comfortable. The principal told us that Friday night is reserved for the monks to learn English. We were all requested to spend time with monks to teach them English after #dinner. For some time, we tried to interact with them in #English and later the session turned into merry as we all started dancing and singing on #Bollywood tunes. I was surprised how some of the monks managed to remember the song lyrics even though they don’t understand #Hindi.
#DGA, #DarkGreenAdventures, #Backpacking, #Wanderlust
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