McLeod Ganj

In the morning, Saturday the 3rd, I woke up to find the weather very gloomy and overcast, but seeing the first glimpse of the Himalaya's was still nice. The roads were extremely narrow and the bus climbed up the windy path with deep gorges falling off to the sides. At one stage the road made such a serious curve, there was a sign that said "Dead Slow" and the bus really did take that turn inch by inch. But overall, I did not find it as scary as people made it out to be.
In Dharamsala, we had to change bus for the last 10 km stretch (4km by foot, but the road is longer because of the steep incline). When I got to the bus stand, which is basically the town square and is no bigger than the floorspace of a small restaurant, I started phoning all the hotels mentioned in the lonely planet looking for a room, but as expected everything was full.

Because checkout was only around noon, I started walking through town and the first thing I did was register for the teachings. I am glad I did, because as the day progressed the queue only got longer and longer. When I registered I asked how much it was and the guy said five, so I pulled out Rs 500. No, it was Rs 5. They could make so much more money, but they are a very honest people!!!
The teachings started on Saturday, but the official start was only on Sunday, so I had not really missed anything.
I then found a place for learning Tibetan cooking. On the menu for that evening's course was Momo's. I had never had them but had heard lots about them, so I registered for the course. I also found lots and lots of nice things I could buy... hmmm, pity about that weight limit... I am trying to make plans how I can increase the size of the single luggage item I can carry on with me :-)

After having some breakfast just before noon, I started searching for available rooms and eventually found a room for Rs 600, but I wanted to see other options. I walked to the next town, Bhagsu, 2 km away, and found rooms available there for Rs 400 with TV, but I did not like the place very much, so I went back to McLeod Ganj. By the time I got back that room for Rs 600 was taken. Damn, I could have kicked myself!!! Eventually I got a room at the Hotel Tibet for Rs 810, but it is a deluxe room normally going for Rs 990. They gave me a 20% discount. It had been a long search and I needed a rest and watched some TV.

In the late afternoon, I headed out into the freezing cold. People are walking around with blankets draped around them and warm jackets etc and so far all I have is my windbraker... At least I have a nice room and warm water... the cheaper rooms do not have hot water and I am willing to pay the extra money for that commodity :-).

At 5pm I went to Lhamo's kitchen for the cooking course. We made 3 kinds of tibetan momo's: veg, spinach & cheese and sweet momo's. We used three different designs in the dough to identify which were which, and teaching us how to create these designs took most of the time, but it was good because it was much more hands on training than Tina's courses were.
They were my first taste of momo's and they were devine. I was later to find out that they were much better than the ones one could buy at the street side stalls.
What was also nice was that Lhamo gave us a glimpse into his life... he was born in Tibet and escaped over the Himalaya's when he was 9 or 13 (I forgot). He is now 29 and has not seen his mother since except that he got a note from her last year that she is fine. A cousin of his escaped last year and Lhamo is looking after him now. In India, they cannot get citizenship and they remain refugee's and therefore cannot open their own businesses in India, and because they never get a passport, can not return to Tibet.

Unfortunately the quantity of food that we prepared did not fill my tummy... and later that evening I was overcome with cravings again and I gave into them and I ended up buying 5 different chocolates and ate them while watching TV.

Sunday
The next morning I got up around ten past seven. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining... no more overcast skies!!! It was going to be like this for the rest of my stay and it really warmed up, so I was glad.
I was told to be at the teachings at eight because it is so packed. The teachings are from 9:30 to 11:30 and again from 13:00 to 15:30. I bought some banana's for breakfast on the way down to the Tsuglagkhang complex where the teachings are being held, and I found a transistor radio with earphones and batteries for Rs 170. Could have got it cheaper, but as unprepared as I was, I had to pay the extra Rs 50. On the way in, there are seperate cues for the public, the monks and nuns and foreigners. The foreigner queue was split into male and female because we were all searched very thoroughly. We are not allowed to take in any cell phones or cameras. The guy actually turned on my radio to ensure that it was really a radio. Impressive!!!
I remember that at the railway stations, before getting on the platforms you have to walk through a metal detector (with your bags), but because there are so many people, the guards just let everybody walk through and the metal detector is constantly beeping...

I was lucky I got a very good place in the courtyard, because I only got in around 8:50. At first I was right at the back but right on the walkway where the Dalai Lama walked from his residence to the central chapel where he would sit and teach. The first time I saw him I was struck by how joyous and happy he seemed to be. After he had walked through, the security removed the security tape and some of us could move onto the walkway, which meant I moved right into the centre and sat on the red carpet... Yes, I was also unprepared in that respect because I had no cushion to sit on. The things people are allowed to bring to the teachins are a mug (they serve tea during the teachings), a blanket and cushion, food, hat, umbrella and a radio with earphones. The monks then came in with huge baskets full of rolls and started distributing these and then started walking around serving tea.

The teachings always start and end with Tibetan chants / prayers. Then the Dalai Lama started teaching. He said that even though he had covered the introduction to buddhism the day before, there were many people who had not been there, so he covered it again.
His teachings cover two texts, namely, "A guide to the Boddhisattva way of life" by Shantideva and translated by Steven Bachelor, and "The essence of superfine gold" written by the 3rd Dalai Lama. It is quite complicated material for the uninitiated like myself :-).
He spoke about how important education is and then he went on saying that our minds fool us into thinking that we have an independant existence, and he tried to inspire us to develop the wisdom to understand this incorrect view and that there is no absolute independant existence. We are all connected and there are infinite number of contributing factors to each and every event.

It was also nice that he used personal experiences which were quite humerous while teaching, for example telling us about his travels to the west and an air-hostess swatted a mosquito in front of him as a pure reaction and then felt very guilty and told him that she would never kill another mosquito.

I went to the afternoon teaching session as well and in the evening after having a rest I walked up to Dharamkot, the next village up a very steep incline. I eventually found the Tushita meditation centre where an australian woman who was a buddhist gave a review of the days teachings.

Monday
On Monday my mood was not very good. I suspected it was because I had no plan for the rest of the week and because my body was missing the daily yoga practice. I did not attend the teachings, but did some window shopping. There is so much on offer here in terms of souvenirs: books, shawls made from yak wool, jackets and blankets made from wool, shirts, skirts, traditional jewellery, wall hangings with quotations from the Dalai Lama, music CD's of tibetan chants and DVD's of the Tibetan struggle and other stories or documentaries, embroidered bags that the buddhist monks use, tangka's (see glossary on right), note books made from re-cycled pater and the list carries on.

My cravings continued and today it was baked cake and pastries. There are many places selling sweet tibetan bread, all different kinds of cake and pastries and as I have not even seen any of this in five weeks it was too much to resist. I must have had about five pieces of cake during the day.
I also went in search of a place I could practice my yoga, but the yoga instructors all seem to be out of town during the teachings (I found out where they were later... see next post). I also looked at doing some karma yoga, ie: volunteering, while I was here, but I was told that the computer classes and english conversation classes were not running during the teachings. (There are different types of yoga, jana yoga, karma yoga, hatha yoga, raj yoga etc, which I will explain more in my final post).

I ended up doing half an hour of yoga, to the beginning of the seated poses in my hotel room... (I realised how dirty the floor is :-)) and this helped both my mood and my spine, which felt a lot better after the exercise.
I also came up with a plan for the rest of the week, which is to go to Rishikesh, which calls itself the yoga capital of the world. So now I had done some exercise and I had a plan and I felt a lot better.

As mentioned earlier, we were not allowed to take in any cameras during the teachings, so I waited until after the teachings were finished in the afternoon and then walked in and took a photograph, which is why there is a photograph of the teachings available on my web album.

At five pm I went to the cooking class with Lamo again and we made Mokthup and Tenthuk soup. I was disappointed because I was going to come on Tuesday to make tibetan bread, but Lhamo was not able to do that class.
The soup was good and easy to make. This time Lhamo told us a little more about the culture and customs of the Tibetan people. Usually a family will live together and each has got a duty so sometimes one brother will leave for 3 months to look after the animals in the mountains, but they remain a family unit and when one brother takes a wife, the other brothers usually share that wife. It is uncommon for a brother to then choose another wife for himself as this would mean he would not live together with his brothers... anyway, that is how Lhamo explained it to us.

In the evening I met Ori, an Israeli tourist who told me that he had attended the review of the day's teachings, which were now not held at the Tushita meditation centre anymore, but were being done by the monk who was doing the english translation of the teachings and it was held at the temple itself. So I made sure that I would attend that the next day.

Tuesday
In the morning I attended the teachings again, and in the afternoon I made an excursion to the waterfall in Bhagsu. Afterwards I went to the Himalayan Yoga centre where I had organised the day before that I could practice by myself. It was nice because the view from the window was onto the mountains. But my practice was slow and I took lots of breaks. I do not know if this was because of the altitude (approximately 1800 m above sea level) or because I was practicing alone.

Later I went to the review of the day's teachings, which was interesting.
He spoke about favourable rebirths (precious humban birth) in samsara (the cycle of reincarnation or rebirth) and performing the 10 virtuous actions and abandoning the 10 non-virtuous actions to gain liberation from samsara.
He also discussed that the goal of enlightenment should not be for oneself, but for the benefit of all other sentient beings, and how to cultivate the boddhicitta (the wish to become buddha to benefit all other sentient beings).
He also defined love as being the wish to give happiness to others and compassion as the wish to remove suffering from all other beings.

Afterwards I would have liked to see a tibetan movie, but unfortunately the one cinema (part of a tiny little restaurant) was not showing anything and the other one was showing something I had no interest in.
I ended up eating at the Japanese restaurant Lung Ta, where I met a french canadian yoga teacher and I had an interesting discussion with him.

Wednesday
I woke up early on Wednesday and bought some tibetean bread from the street side vendors. Previous mornings I was not up early enough to see them.
I then went for a walk towards Dal Lake through the forest. I have blisters on my feet from all the walking I have been doing around town, but it is good to get the exercise and this walk was beautiful.

I then had some breakfast and purchased my bus ticket to Rishikesh (Rs 470) for 17:30 from Dharamsala.
Then I got down to some real shopping. I did not worry about the consequences to the weight of my bags and had decided to throw away some of my clothes to make sure I can fit everything. :-) I then went to the hotel to pack and check out.
In the afternoon I walked back towards Dal Lake because the lighting in the morning was not that good and I wanted to take some better photographs.

I then had a quick bite to eat before getting a jeep ride down to Dharamsala. The driver threw my backpack onto the roof as there was no space in the jeep... we were packed in there like sardines. On the way down I was constantly checking if my backpack was not thrown off the roof with inertia as it was not tied down and the driver was screaming through the sharp corners.