I guess I should have mowed the lawn and trimmed the one bush directly behind the girl. Personally I never much liked the stripes painted on the support pole for the pool slide, or the swing-set for that matter; but I was over-ruled. Makes for busy photos. But be it so humble (tongue in cheek), there's no place like ...
Applying finishing touches to a painstakingly constructed Kalachakra Mandala sand sculpture at the Samstanling monastery in Ladakh. The sculpture takes weeks to complete and is then ritually destroyed in seconds. It marks the “profound affirmation of the impermanence of all things”, especially the human condition. After discussing their monastic order - the Gelugpa, or ‘Yellow Hat Sect’ - the monks were kind enough to let me get pretty close to their work, as long as I didn’t bump into anything.
A stark Himalayan hillside glistens in the midday sun somewhere on the spectacular National Highway 1A in India’s Ladakh region. Widely praised for its stunning “moonscapes”, Ladakh is one of the world’s highest and driest plateaus with a predominantly Buddhist population. This mountain spot and moment, too, was rather Zen-like for me, a simple koan to the magnificence of monochrome that nature often throws at you. Its austere contrast also perhaps recalls - in inverted fashion - one of the world’
