If you look very closely you'll be able to spot the flock of a hundred odd sheep, goats, and yaks. The photo was taken just outside of a little village in the Pin Valley called Mudh. On our way out to the pastures, we watched the billy goats chew their cud in that slow, deliberate, and at times almost menacing way so characteristic of billy goats.
On our way back to our guest house , we came upon a small family sitting by a stream in one of their fields making chai over an open fire. They invited us to sit down which we did, but only after the three customary refusals. The tastiness of the chai and the warm and unobtrusive hospitality of our hosts caused us to forget (almost) the fact that the stream from which the water was being drawn was full of goat shit. We learned that the young woman in the group was a nun who was helping her family with the fields before returning to the nunnery across the gully.
After Juliann had finished her second cup, we paid our respects and departed. A little ways on, we stopped to watch a lone donkey standing absolutely still in the middle of the local cricket field. Then, as if suddenly beseiged by some invisible demon, the donkey erupted into a fearsomely spasmodic braying, braying which seemed at that moment a direct expression of the most heart wrenching and inconsolable despair. I have been moved by the dukkha of donkeys before - especially the mangy, plastic bag eating varieties that I observed on a beach near Santa Marta, Colombia. But there was something different here, something approaching a kind of cosmic lamentation. We could do nothing but watch the convulsing donkey, now galloping furiously towards no visible landmark, disappear into the distance.
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