Why this blog?

In the spring of 2025, in the restaurant of the HPTDC Tourist Inn in Rewalsar (Tsopema) I got landed with a job. This was quite unexpected, but I must say I am both honoured and thrilled to be in this position.

The job?

Leading the group was Ngagpa Karma Lhundup, who had spoken in the past of some interviews that he had facilitated and for which he had interpreted. He has for years provided significant material and other support to these nuns. The interviews were with the nuns who practice in the caves in the hills above Tsopema. In the course of this meal the idea took form that these stories about how the nuns came to be there, the sometimes heroic escape journeys they had made, and the hardships they had undergone, should see the light of day. Prepared and published in some way, perhaps as a book - who knows? And if it ever makes any profit, all of that will go to support those brave nuns and retreatants. (I know, I know - "in our dreams". But hey...)

How could this be done? It would be necessary to find someone with good, educated, native English, tolerably computer-savvy, with experience of writing and editing, and with a good background knowledge of - and sympathy for - Tibetan-style Buddhism. Ooops - as the only native English speaker at the table, all eyes turned to me. And so I came to be trusted with processing these texts.

It took nine months for the material to find its way to me, and for me to discover that the CD labelled as "Photo Library 9/21" was in fact a virgin disc, that some of the interviews have audio recordings, but some of the audio files were either missing or corrupt - a couple were reparable, a few were not. But we DO have transcripts made more or less at the time.

So now, in February 2026, the editing work is starting. It tuns out that the transcripts are, let me say, somewhat rough and ready. There are plenty of ambiguous run-on sentences, places where the speaker is hard to identify, and a LOT of both personal names and place names that have passed through various Tibetan pronunciations (Tibetan dialects are strongly differentiated) and then been written down by someone whose background knowledge was not as rich as it might be. The upshot is that many of them are hard to identify.

If the end product is to be enjoyed by a wide range of readers, however, it is important that as many of these details as possible are identified, that references are clarified, spellings made consistent, and many more little details that need attention if the result is to be pleasant and accessible are seen to. So I have set up this blog as a place, firstly, to explain the above without repeating myself endlessly. That first aim is in service of the second: I hope it will be a place where I can make public some of the puzzles that are emerging from the work and, crucially, where anyone with goodwill and with knowledge can contribute what they know in the comments. I expect to put each problem point into its own post, so that it will be easy to respond.

From time to time I may provide updates and other news to those interested. 

Maaany, maaany thanks to anyone and everyone who can help!

Best wishes to you all,

Alex Wilding