Tibetans are a deeply spiritual people with Buddhism infusing most facets of their organic life. Many nuns have spent their young lives as farm girls, growing barley and wheat, tending yak and sheep, and caring for younger children before choosing a life of celibacy, study, and religious devotion. In their cells, well before dawn, the nuns wake at 4am to begin the day with prayer and meditation. Only a handful of nunneries have been rebuilt after their destruction during the Chinese invasion and years of ‘Cultural Revolution’. Those who have joined nunneries spend time rebuilding and restoring temples and rooms which have been demolished or damaged. This elder nun was photographed during one of the many long sitting meditations she practices daily. In her hand she holds a dorje, an object representing the “thunderbolt of enlightenment.”