Lama Ngodrup, a Tibetan monk and attendant of Khyentse Rinpoche for twenty-five years, gazes out at the Khumbu valley from a rock overlooking Thangboche Monastery, at 13,000 feet, near the Tibetan border in Nepal. Behind him, prayer-flags, hung from a clump of growing bamboo stalks, sway in the wind. Nepal, 1988.