This post contains material from Dr. Pierce’s blog, https://piscience.wordpress.com/, written after his India trip in 2016.

he Sera Jey Monastery where Chris Beck (my teaching partner) and I stayed was about 50 miles west of Mysore in Southern India. The Sera Jey monastery itself is actually one of three monasteries in a concentrated area a short distance from the first camp (I’ll describe this setup in a future post).

This settlement consists of many buildings including a guest house, where we stayed, which had very nice rooms for us.

While I’ve heard that there is a lack of green space in some of the urban areas in India, this was not the case in and around the monastery.  There was a very lush courtyard just outside the monastery hotel and tons of farmland in the immediate area. Google Maps shows that there is a large area of forest beyond the farmland, but I didn’t explore that far (next time!)

The monasteries house thousands of monks and school age boys, and therefore consists of dormitories, temples, teaching areas, shops, etc.

Our main lecture room was almost across the hall from our dorm rooms and the meals were served right above us in an open air part of the hotel.  Amazingly (to me anyway), we had very good internet access except for the three or so hour-long daily electrical blackouts.  By no means did we live the monastic life, but it was nice having accustomed comforts!