The sun rose sleepily, lighting up the waves of wispy white into a sea of brilliant crimson and gold as a new day dawned. A shy tendril of light came away and tenderly defined the dome like spiral; drenched in warm brows and pale whites, tender crimson and bright oranges. Prayer flags-thin, transparent and drenched too in a similar such color scheme whilst inscribed with scrawls and stylized drawings- fluttered brightly upon their string supports as people gathered to watch the spectacle, circling clockwise in quiet contemplation. Painted eyes gazed calmly back; upon the huddled figures, over the vast expansive view exposed upon the hill, they watched with unending serenity. A majestic homeliness crowned with patterned gold. Monks, with their own wizened bald domes merged with wrinkled laugh lines collected over the years joined the spectacle. Clothed in their distinctive orange sheets, weathered slippers slapping softly against the dirt, they murmured their prayers softly.

Quite a distance away a single wizened old man, browned too by years of basking under the sun’s gentle rays, sat upon a wobbly old stool with a wide toothless grin and his own speckled tatty dome (an umbrella stand which had, certainly, seen better years). Watching with straining eyes the city that surrounded him, not once regaled by the majesty of the sight behind him; what serenity, what peaceful knowledge sat upon those knobby shoulders, I will never know. Yet, behind his stool, perched upon the gate to this wonder stood a sign which seemed to profound root to his knowing glee; painted red letters in the huge print of a foreign scrawl.

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