ABSTRACT
The story of my passion for thangkas began much earlier, back in spring 1968, after five successful years in California. Once Magdalena and I had decided that we would return to Switzerland for good, we sent our daughters Anna and Katharina back to my mother on a flight from San Francisco accompanied by a close friend of ours. We, however, were going to take a detour via Asia. We spent a little more than a month traveling through the Far East, visiting Japan, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Thailand and India, before arriving in Nepal, where we wanted to see (but not climb!) the giant Himalayan peaks around Mount Everest. But when we landed in Kathmandu, it was raining, the skies were gray, and there was no sign of the mighty mountains we knew were hiding in the clouds. So instead we decided to visit some Tibetan monasteries, one of which was Swayambhunath, where we were lucky enough to witness a wedding ceremony.
