Nepal beckoned me with a demand for new editions of Tibetan Frontier Families and Soundings in Tibetan Civilization. In the intervening years, my 2001 book Heir to A Silent Song highlighting the revolutionary Yogmaya, was receiving wide public attention. I revisited the Arun Valley and learned about major political developments in the newly won democratic Republic of Nepal.
Teenage monks and nuns photographed in 1975 at Solu-Khumbu’s Thupten Choeling Monastery were now seniors while elders had passed on. With the loss of the revered abbot, Trulshik Rinpoche in 2011, the community entered a new tenuous phase.