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Dalai Lama begins four-day Orissa visit

By Tibet Sun online | Tibet Sun

The Dalai Lama will inaugurate a new Buddhist monastery at Chandragiri in Orissa, India, on 12 January 2010.Orissa Diary/Ashok Panda/India

Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama arrived in Orissa on Monday for a four-day visit to give religious discourses and inaugurate a newly-constructed Buddhist monastery at the Tibetan settlement in Chandragiri.

Culture and Tourism minister of Orissa state, Debi Prasad Mishra, with mayor of Bhubaneswar Ananta Narayan Jena, MLA Bhagirathi Badajena, and other officers, welcomed the Tibetan leader at the Biju Patnaik airport in Bhubaneswar, according to reports.

After a short stay in the state capital, the Dalai Lama left for Chandragiri by a chartered helicopter. He retired at a monastery in camp four, and later visited the Central School for Tibetans at camp three, where he spoke to the students. The students presented a cultural show to the Tibetan leader, a local told Tibet Sun in a phone interview.

Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile Samdhong Rinpoche is accompanying him.

During his stay in the Tibetan settlement, the Dalai Lama will inaugurate a five-storey monastery named Padma Sambhav Mahavira.

The settlement was started in 1963 with a group of 600 refugee families, who were settled there in five different camps.

On his return journey the Dalai Lama will attend a public meeting on the history of Buddhism organised by the Utkal Cultural University in Bhubaneswar.

He will then head for Vadodara (Baroda) in Gujarat to attend a conference on Buddhism at the Maharaja Sayaji Rao University of Baroda, to be held on 15 January.

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