Sunday, January 23, 2005

Tibetan priest with broken watch, Minya Konka, 1994


minya monk, originally uploaded by mutikonka1.

The problem with foreign aid: This monk at the Minya Konka gompa had been given a watch by a team of American mountaineers who had used the gompa as their base camp some years before. He liked the watch but it was an electronic one and the battery had run out. He didn't realise this, and asked me to fix it.

Given that it was about a week's journey to the nearest town, which probably did not sell the batteries anyway, there wasn't much I could do. I said I would try to bring him one on my next visit and kept my promise. Sadly, on my return to the gompa in 1999 I was told the old man had died. Time waiteth for no man.

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