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Perched at 4,400 meters above sea level, my second journey into Tibet began at Daocheng Airport—the highest commercial airport on earth. The breathtaking landscape transformed before my eyes as we drove through mountain passes where all four seasons appeared within a single journey, the scenery shifting dramatically with each change in elevation.

My destination was Larongar Buddhist Academy, a hidden spiritual fortress housing an astonishing 30,000 monks. Their homes—fragile wooden shacks clinging to mountainsides—stretched as far as the eye could see, creating a vast patchwork of simple dwellings where dedicated practitioners lived with almost nothing. Inside these tiny shelters, monks slept, meditated, and prepared simple meals with minimal possessions and limited electricity.

The most profound experience came when participating in the ritual of walking 108 circles around a sacred structure—a six-hour journey of spiritual cleansing. As I walked, I witnessed something few outsiders ever see: a family carrying their deceased child, wrapped like a mummy, completing the same circles as final blessings before a sky burial. This ancient practice, where bodies are left for vultures to consume, revealed a cultural approach to death entirely unlike Western traditions, born of both necessity in a frozen landscape and a different spiritual understanding of the body's purpose after death.

What stays with me most isn't the unfamiliar funeral customs or the harsh living conditions, but the remarkable contentment I observed everywhere. The anxiety that defines modern urban existence seemed absent here. People smiled genuinely, crime was nearly nonexistent, and a profound sense of peace pervaded everything. Walking those circles in the thin mountain air, alongside grieving families and devoted monks, I glimpsed a different way of understanding our brief time on earth—one that continues to challenge my perspective years later.

Have you ever wondered how differently cultures approach life's most fundamental experiences? Share your thoughts or questions about this journey into one of Buddhism's most sacred and secluded communities.