Tso Pema, Lotus Lake

According to Rewalsar Hospitality, Private Limited website:

Tso Pema, Lotus Lake, viewed from the huge Guru Rimpoche statue above the town

"A place of beauty, a place of pilgrimage
 
Rewalsar has long been a traveller's secret just off  the  beaten track in Himachal Pradesh. Pilgrims come to make prayers, meditate or simply soak up the peaceful atmosphere.
At its heart lies the holy lake that is home to three Hindu Temples, a Sikh Gurudwara and three Buddhist Monasteries. One of the local names for Rewalsar is Trisangam (Three Holy Communities) and as such it serves as a fine example of religious tolerance and harmony that makes India great.

The Tibetan and Himachali Buddhists call Rewalsar Tso Pema (Lotus Lake) in honour of the Indian Yogi Padmasambhava who lived and meditated here. A 12 meter high statue of Padmasambhava has been erected on the hillside above the lake, a sight that dominates the landscape as you enter the town."

Guru Rimpoche, overlooking the town

For Tibetans, Padmasambhava is known as Guru Rimpoche, and is revered as, essentially, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism. The story goes something like this:

This great yogi, who had been meditating by himself for some time in the local caves, up and took the local royal princess, Mandarava, as his consort, and after some more time meditating and practicing together in these caves, the king decided he'd had enough of that sort of thing and arrested the guy, and set about burning him at the stake. Being the great yogi that he was however, the soon to be Guru Rimpoche turned the funeral pyre into a lake (the now famed Rewalsar or Lotus Lake (Tso Pema), of course), and was seen to be coolly and comfortably sitting there in its middle, on.................a lotus, naturally. The king, realizing his foolishness, and "overcome with remorse, and in homage", offered his entire kingdom to Padmasambhava. I assume this included the Royal Princess Mandarava, who some say was the cause of all the rukus in the first place.

Pinku, from Bhattu Village

But be that as it may, Nancy and I hired local taxi man Pinku Kapoor
to drive us from Sherabling up up up farther into the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, about a 3 1/2 or 4 hour ride along the endlessly winding one lane - as usual - road, sometimes paved, sometimes very broken, rocky and rough, past villages, towns, construction, working mules, horses, cows, people walking or carrying loads of branches or brush on their heads or backs, or working on the road itself, big tour buses, large dump trucks, ubiquitous motorcycles and scooters, other cars and taxis with other pilgrim/tourists or local residents, monkeys, dogs, children, holy men....... swerving with high skill and practiced aggressiveness, frequent/regular/somewhat relentless horn honking which is the recommended and encouraged practice on India's "highways" whenever you want to: 1) pass another vehicle or pedestrian or animal, or 2) warn another vehicle or pedestrian or animal that you are there or that you intend to pass and you want them to move over, or 3) are coming up on a blind curve, which most of them are, and you want to warn oncoming vehicles of your presence on this road built for single lane/one way traffic but which in a continuing present tense miracle on the fly serves to accommodate all manner and size of vehicles in two directions.

Believe it or not, there is an intuitive logic to all this that would elude anyone committed to a linear kind of rationality. Perhaps a conservative Asperger's mathematician or scientist, for example, or a rationalist philosopher. It makes no sense in that framework, but..................it is nonetheless mysteriously understood by all, and it works. Welcome to mystic India, where "logic" has an altogether different meaning.

I told Nancy that the way these things work here is analogous to how (free) improvising musicians are able to communicate with and engage with each other in deeply meaningful ways, ways that are often not available to, or understood by highly technical classical musicians, who cannot break out of their formal and studied skill sets to be able to think or play creatively out of the box. That kind of flow, spontaneity and connection is just out of reach for them, as they will, sometimes, readily admit.

And so we three arrived safely and soundly, none too much the worse for the wear, in time for lunch at the Kora Cafe, just near to our Lotus Lake Hotel, which is run by one of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in town, and in which our room offered a great lake view. After lunch and a bit of a rest, Pinku drove us farther up the mountain to find the meditation caves of Padmasambhava and Mandarava (it's not too hard to find these, as the area is now a developed, but still pretty low key pilgrimage/tourist destination), and then on the way back down to stop at the huge statue of Guru Rimpoche which overlooks the lake and the town.

Pilgrims at the caves

Mandarava shrine in smaller cave next to Padmasambhava's cave

Nancy was moved to some strong emotion praying and sitting in front of the cave statue of Guru Rimpoche: sadness, she said it was, for all the suffering of so many people in the world. I felt a deep stillness sitting, praying and meditating in front of the smaller cave statue, in the smaller cave, of Mandarava, just next door (or next cave), so to speak.     
















According to legend, this foot print was left by Padmasambhava in the rock near his cave .

Guru Rimpoche's foot (shoe?) print in rock

Back down to the huge statue for some photos and circumambulations, and to town, and to another rest and parting for the night from Pinku (we gave him money to pay for his room and food, the balance of his fee to be paid upon our next day return to Sherabling), before dinner, again at the Kora Cafe, a walk around town, and, as usual, a pretty early retirement.

"Padmasambhava" in his cave

After a light breakfast at Kora Cafe, we set out to walk around the lake, which Nancy wanted to do, and which I wanted to do also, and specifically to stop in at the Shiva Temple on its shore. One of the sights to see at the lake is the jumble of fish that gather at the shoreline because, of course, they are fed each day by monks or others, and when they are, they create a water churning feeding frenzy just like the ones you might see in the movies. They weren't eating at the moment we saw them, but here some of them are anyway:

 

And here's a bit of the Shiva Temple, in which you see the Shiva Lingam on the floor, and a pot of oil hanging above, which drips drop by drop onto the lingam into eternity, while the temple keeper goes about his morning tidying up of things.

Shiva Lingam inside the temple

And back to Stupa Guest House with a fresh supply of apples and bananas, and some peanuts too, and having lunch with friends, including our boy "Tiger", the ferocious monkey removing, dog fighting Stupa watch dog:

Tiger, at rest