October 8 - 11, 2010: Dharamsala

I went out for about a 2 hour walk, leaving about 7:30 on the 8th and walking out of Dalhousie on a road through the pines and rhodendrun, with good views down the steep slopes to the valley of the Ravi.  I walked to the palace of a former maharaja maybe a mile and a half from town.  Entry to it was barred by a gate, but it was a beautiful walk in the early morning cool.  I met a retired man from the Punjab and his wife along the way and they were quite friendly. 

After a late breakfast, Phil and I left on a bus for Dharamsala just before noon.  It traveled on back roads through hilly country, at altitudes of about 2000 to 4000 feet after we descended from Dallhousie at 6500 feet.  It was a scenic journey, but slow going with lots of stops and quite crammed with people toward the end of the trip, with the interior of the bus somewhat reminiscent of the stateroom scene in "Night at the Opera."  If anyone else had wanted to board, I think they would have had to stack them horizontally on the heads of the other passengers.  The road was narrow, but fortunately there were few trucks on this back route.  Indian trucks, by the way, are multi-colored but invariably predominantly orange.  They are relatively small (but big in comparison to other vehicles on the roads) and all have embazoned on the back "Blow Horn" in big letters (to advise vehicles behind them to blow their horns if trying to pass) and below that in smaller letters "Use Dipper at Night" (to ask them to use low beams on their headlights).

We arrived at the road junction of Gaggar near Dharamsala about 5 and had to board another bus there up to Dharamsala, arriving about 5:45.  It began to rain on the way, with thunder and lightning.  Dharamsala is at about 4000 feet, but we were actually bound further up the mountain, to McLeod Ganj (sometimes called Upper Dharamsala), at about 5500 feet.  This is where the Dalai Lama resides, settling here in 1960 after fleeing Tibet following an uprising against the Chinese in 1959.  It is only about 2 1/2 miles up the mountainside, but 6 miles by the route the bus takes.  It began to rain like crazy just as I got out of the bus from Gaggar to board the bus to McLeod Ganj.  We waited on that bus about 45 minutes before it left as the sky grew dark and it rained hard, with more thunder and lightning.  Eventually, it hailed, quite noisily on the bus' roof.  We drove up to McLeod Ganj in the dark, arriving about 7, and found a hotel and had dinner.

It was sunny and clear the next morning and I walked around the small town, though now a much bigger town than I remember from 1979.  I walked out of town to the Church of St. John-in-the-Wilderness, which I remember walking to in 1979 on a quiet dirt road with monkeys in the trees.  The road is now paved, with cars whizzing past, and there were no monkeys.  The colonial church is in a lovely location, surrounded by pines, but it is now tin-roofed, with metal grates and shutters on its entrances, and had a guard dog barking inside.  The Earl of Elgin, a viceroy who died in 1863 at age 52, is buried in the churchyard and there is a big memorial to him.  It states he also served as Governor of Jamaica, Governor General of Canada and Ambassador to China.  There are other graves in the big churchyard.  One couple lost two infant children within three months in the 1860's.

After breakfast, I walked to the Tibetan temple complex at the southern (downhill) side of McLeod Ganj.  (McLeod was a Deputy Governor of the Punjab when the town was founded in the 1850's as a military encampment and hill station.)  It is quite an ugly concrete complex, somewhat reminiscent of a parking structure, and has been built since I was here in 1979.  It is filled with red-robbed monks, many debating in the Tibetan style, with much gesturing and clapping of hands.  They seem to be having a  good time and it is fun to watch.  I visited the two temple halls, with some treasures brought from Tibet.  The Dalai Lama lives in a fairly nondescript three story concrete building across from the temple, with not much security, at least to my observation.  However, I saw his schedule and he is scheduled to be in the U.S. starting October 12 in San Jose, and thereafter Palo Alto, Atlanta and two places in Ohio, so maybe he hasn't been here.  I remember seeing him, or at least his car with him in it, as he went to his residence one late afternoon in 1979.  I did see him last month in Leh, though I have to admit that a good portion of the time I was in his presence I was trying to remember what was the advice Bill Murray gave him in "Caddyshack," earning him the Dalai Lama's blessing.

There are quite a few tourists here, but I think the Indian tourists may outnumber the western ones, as apparently many Indians from Delhi have a holiday while the Commonwealth Games are going on in Delhi.  (They started October 3 and go on for two weeks.  I saw the opening ceremonies on tv and have watched some of the events on tv at night.)  Somewhat surprisingly, most of the western tourists here are of the older, rather than the younger, sort.  There are lots of red-robed Tibetan monks and nuns in town, and other Tibetans, with many women in traditional dress.

The monks ceased their debating just before noon, apparently to go off to lunch.  I had lunch myself in a little cafe just outside the temple and nine of them (four at one table and five at another) were also in there.  It had clouded up about noon and began to rain about 2, so I headed back into the temple complex to escape the rain.  It rained for over an hour an a half, quite hard, with thunder and lighning, and again it hailed.  I saw one marble-size hailstone.  Afterwards, I walked around town, watching all the people and activity, and then walked down 200+ steps to another temple built since I was here in 1979.  (There really wasn't much to see here in 1979 other than the Tibetans themselves.)  It had some interesting butter sculptures and the grounds were full of friendly monks.  They were being fed just as I left to walk up the stairs to town.  All had bowls of rice and beans, though a few of the young ones also had bags of potato chips and I saw one with an orange soda.

It was sunny and clear again the next morning, and about 8:30, after breakfast, I left on a two hour walk, going along the ridge to the little town of Bhagsu and then up the hillside to another small town, Dharmakot, and then back down to McLeod Ganj through the pine trees.  Then I walked down to St John-in-the-Wilderness, arriving just at the end of the 10 a.m. Sunday service.  A young blond guy was playing a guitar and singing a song apparently of his own composition.  He finished and the Indian pastor closed the service.  There were about 35 people in attendance, about 90% westerners.  Afterwards, they served tea and cookies.  The church was fairly bare inside, but had two stained glass windows in the apse and some interesting wall plaques from colonial times.  I kept wondering where the guard dog was. 

After lunch, I went to the museum in the temple complex and it was very good, focusing on the Chinese subjugation of Tibet with photographs, text and film, the latter of the demonstrations in 1987 and 1988.  I spent some more time in the temple.  It rained, but only for maybe an hour, that afternoon.

The next morning (today) I walked down the mountainside (about a 700 foot drop in elevation) on a steep road to the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, a complex of several buildings, including a monastery and a library with an interesting museum.  It was very interesting to read the literature about the Tibetans' democratically elected goverment in exile and the Dalai Lama's statements on China.  A little further downhill is a museum of Tibetan medicine and that was quite interesting.  On display were many natural remedies for ailments and they included not only vegetable but also mineral remedies, including lapis lazuli, copper and even gold.  I remember reading that at one time the excrement of the Dalai Lama was considered an effective medicine, but I did not see that on display.  The sky had clouded up, with some thunder but no rain, and I took a taxi with three others back up the steep road to McLeod Ganj.  It hasn't rained yet and it is still a sunny afternoon here at 4.