A small sect of Buddhist nuns from Southeast Asia are scaling the mountains of Nepal by bicycle this week, breaking traditional gender barriers and raising awareness about gender bias and human trafficking in their countries.
The nuns of the Drupka Order of Buddhism are anything but ordinary.
They have changed their countries’ notions of what women look like and are capable of: Over the past 12 years, they’ve shed traditional roles of cooking and cleaning to take leadership positions within Buddhism. They also take Kung Fu classes to fight harassment and violence from a general public uncomfortable with power women, according to Reuters.
This has earned them the moniker of “Kung Fu Nuns.”
Now, the Kung Fu Nuns from India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet are bicycling from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Leh, India, a distance of nearly 2,500 miles, to raise awareness about gender-based violence against girls and women, according to Reuters.
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"When we were doing relief work in Nepal after the earthquakes last year, we heard how girls from poor families were being sold because their parents could not afford to keep them anymore," Jigme Konchok Lhamo, a 22-year-old nun, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"We wanted to do something to change this attitude that girls are less than boys and that it's okay to sell them," she said.
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The nuns are protesting practices such as honor killings in Pakistan, feticide in India, and child marriage in Nepal, as well as an increase in human trafficking that has gotten worse since the Nepal earthquakes in April and May 2015 left more residents poor and homeless. Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing areas for human trafficking, according to the report.
"People think that because we are nuns, we are supposed to stay in the temples and pray all the time. But praying is not enough," said Jigme Konchok Lhamo."His Holiness teaches us that we have go out and act on the words that we pray. After all, actions speak louder than words.”
As they trek through the mountains, the women are also bringing food and medical care to the poor.
Lhamo told Reuters that the bicycle journey would help show the public that "women have power and strength like men.”
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Joining the nuns on their fourth-annual ride is the leader of the order, Gyalwang Drupka, who first decided to promote nuns to leadership positions alongside monks and offered the martial arts classes.
"Traditionally Buddhist nuns are treated very differently from monks. They cook and clean and are not allowed to exercise. But his Holiness thought this was nonsense and decided to buck the trend," Carrie Lee, president of the charity Live to Love International, told Reuters.
The martial arts classes were offered in part to help the nuns protect themselves from harassment from the public and the order of nuns has since grown from 30 members to 500 under Gyalwang Drupka’s leadership, Lee said.