Is it December already? What a different feel this month has in Nepal. The days have lost all meaning—I have to check to see what day it is, and this month slid into the next without my noticing much. It’s a little cold in the mornings and evenings, but the sun shines warmly during the afternoon.

Visited a new monastery, just up the hill from the house. Chatted a little with a foreman. He says the monks are coming from India, and the gompa will be finished in perhaps another year. The structure is complete, but there is still much to be done—all the painting and decorative elements. We climbed up to the top of the building—a wonderful view of Boudha and other surrounding towns.

The ani-haru very much liking the expression “so-so” and for some reason “new moon”—I don’t know how that one came up in conversation.

Some unexpected visitors today—a woman named Jessamine and two others. Jessamine is doing her PhD on Muktinath—an ethnographic study of the Hindus and Buddhists living and working there. I am eager to know more. Apparently, she was in Muktinath just a few days before I arrived, and left because the ani-haru were doing a house-to-house puja and she got the impression they had all gone home for the year. I'm not surprised anymore at things like the ani-haru not even mentioning her beforehand. How different my experience would have been if she’d been there while I was! I would have immediately had someone to speak English with, and to engage with on an intellectual level. And how glad I am that, instead, I went through that incredibly intense and painfully fruitful month of isolation, loneliness, and alienation.