01/03/2026
A choir of chimes rises into the sky.
I lift my head – thousands of small bells trembling along ancient temple roofs.
Time stands still in a place that’s been waiting for centuries. Our children run free in ancient courtyards.
They don’t know they are walking through history.
They laugh.
They chase pigeons across worn bricks.
I often wonder what stays in a child.
Not the itinerary. Not the name of a lodge.
But the sound of wind turning lungtas into prayer.
The way strangers meet them — as blessings.
This is how my children learn the world —
not through instruction, but through immersion.
Here, no one rushes a child.
No one competes with silence.
And in that space, something inside us returns.
Traveling with three children is rarely easy.
But here, it felt held.
Not because it was effortless –
Because it was shared.
Happiness in these mountains does not try to convince.
It lives in how people greet you,
In how gracefully a door opens when you return,
In how a hand reaches out before you ask.
Sometimes it felt as though
the world had stepped aside for us.
So few people. So much space.
Mountains rise - quieting what is restless inside us.
Magnolias blooming like wild flames,
in a season that asks for endurance.
Deep in the valley, the black-necked cranes return — faithful to a place that waits for them.
There is comfort in trusting that life circles in its own rhythm.
Wonder tracing invisible lines with her pen as if writing a story. She doesn’t know she is already inside one.
We climb to Tiger’s Nest. A story I dreamed of writing for the five of us, now unfolding beneath every step.
Mountains are earned.
Our boy sits through hours of winding roads with no complaint. When the world is this vast, boredom has nowhere to land.
Wonder leans her head out of the car window, hair blowing in the wind — not observing, but receiving the world.
Two weeks. Yet it feels like a century.
I don‘t know what they will remember. But I hope this stays with them —
that a life with less can still feel full.
And perhaps what we have in abundance
is happiness.
