Good news - all the monks have arrived safely from India after a long flight direct from Bangalore. They are finding it quite strange that it stays light until 10pm and is light again at 4.30am - very different from Bylakuppe! Tomorrow we start the preparations for the tour, and our first performance which is in Genoa, Italy on 3rd July. Back to the airport again!

NEARLY HERE...

The arrival of the main group comes nearer: two of the party are already here, and yesterday saw our first major shopping trip of the tour. It seems strange to be buying 20kg bags of rice and vast quantities of chillies, garlic, ginger and flour to satisfy the culinary needs of the monks! On Monday we took part in a fund-raising concert in aid of Nepal following the earthquakes in April and May. We offered prayers for those who had been affected, and a blessing. The concert, in All Saints Church, Middle Woodford, near Salisbury was a mixture of summer music from ancient plainsong to Mancini's 'Moon River' and a spirited rendition of 'Tea for Two', and the retiring collection raised just over £1,000 in donations to two charities. Now we are looking forward to the arrival of the full tour group next Tuesday 30th June, and to the tour really getting under way.

PREPARATIONS AT GAUNTS HOUSE FOR THE DHARMA FESTIVAL

I have just come back from a brief visit to Gaunts House to further the preparations for the Dharma Festival there in July. As usual, the gardens were looking wonderful, and because there was a course going on, I was able to see the set up for the dining room tent, which may well become the place for evening showings of our films. The Theatre is going to work well for the Kathakali workshops and the performance of their extraordinary sacred dramas, and I have promised Gaunts' staff that I will bring the full tour group over on 2nd July to help put up the tent. We have decided to encourage people to camp on the main lawn so as to be close to the 'action' and it is all beginning to feel very good. We are hoping that more people decide to come - especially now we have 'Evening Only' Tickets available, giving access to Gaunts from 3pm each day and entry to the evening talk and performances Wednesday to Saturday, and more Day Tickets including entry to any of the activities during the day. It will be a lovely event, and we are getting quite excited!

TOURING IN 2015

We are coming back to UK! Our group arrives in London on 30th June, and we will be touring for the next three months. Final details are being sorted out by our UK office, and we are looking forward to a busy tour. We start in Italy with a performance in Genoa on 3rd July. Then it's the Channel Islands with visits to Jersey and Guernsey, followed by a unique five day 'Dharma Festival' in Dorset with Kathakali artists, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, singing bowl workshops and much more. Keep in touch with us by following our blog - and by checking for up to date details on our website at www.tashi-lhunpo.org.uk

2011 TOUR

Our 2011 Tour Group arrived in the UK in mid-September, and we quickly got to work. In the first two weeks we have performed in Aldershot, made Momos at Salisbury International Food Festival and given workshops at The Burgate School in Fordingbridge and a short performance at Guys Marsh Prison in Dorset. We have also given two performances for Artsreach - both sold out - and we are now in Brighton at the Sallis Benney Theatre, where we are making a Tse-pa-meh Sand Mandala (the Buddha of Long Life). The exhibition will continue until Saturday 8th October, when the destruction ceremony takes place at 10.30am.

We have also travelled to Turkey where, in the home of the Whirling Dervish, we became the first Buddhist monks ever to perform the Cham Dances as part of the Mystic Music Festival in Konya.

Our new CD, Wisdom and Insight, is now on sale celebrating the reestablishment of Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in exile.

We will be touring until December so please check our website for details of all the venues we will be visiting.

Ladakh Trip in 2011

With the monks safely back in the monastery it is now time to start planning the visit to Ladakh for next summer. Based at Thiksey Monastery just outside Leh, we will be taking a group of 12 people to visit the monasteries of the Indus Valley, travelling to Zanskar where we will do a short trek along the river to Phugtal Monastery, and returning to visit Disket Monastery and the beautiful Nubra Valley. Dates are still to be finally confirmed, but likely to be leaving UK around 27th July, so that we are in Ladakh to coincide with the visit of HH the Dalai Lama for anyone who might like to attend one of the days of teachings. Details are now up on our website at www.tashi-lhunpo.org.uk, Ladakh Trip. Please do get in touch if you might be interested in coming along.

Nearly at the end...

The final few weeks of the tour have been a whirlwind of activity, involving a huge number of minibus-miles (Salisbury-Kendal-Salisbury-Reading-Hexham-Halifax-Manchester-Salisbury). We haven't yet done the annual mileage count, but we seem to have covered quite a lot of ground in the past three months. Now, with just one more fixture to go, we are beginning the final stages of clearing everything away in readiness for the next tour, checking over the costumes and instruments for damage and doing a stock-take of the shop items to see what we need to re-order. We still leave time for the occasional 'treat' though - and the most successful to date was undoubtedly our visit to Lord's Cricket Ground - the 'Cathedral of cricket' as our guide reminded us - and somewhere as important to those of us who live in India as Tower Bridge itself! We had a wonderful private tour, accompanied by Brian Thompson, a Member of the MCC, who had set things up for our visit. As well as the ground itself, the Ashes, the Pavilion, changing rooms and that extraordinary egg-shaped Media Centre, we also saw a game of Real Tennis being played. In fact Keith, our guide, told us that it was the first time that he had seen a game stop so that the players could peer through the viewing window and take photographs of the people watching! At the end of our official tour, Brian kindly took us around the Indoor School too, so we had a really marvellous day out, and certainly something to tell the rest of the monks about on our return.