Dharamasala

At the end of our stay in Dharamasala, we finally figured out how to access our money! YAY for that!

The drive from Dalhousie to Dharamasala went very well, despite the challenges of mountain driving. Part of this is because we took avormine to prevent motion-sickness, and because a good portion of the drive was in a valley, so our driver speeded along straight-aways more than whirling around hairpin turns. So far, I have felt really, really fortunate with my taxi driver experiences. They really have the power to make their passengers' lives heaven or hell, and ours have been kind, knowledgeable, and safe.

We chose to stay in a government run hotel, The Hotel Bhagsu, which sat in a very nice location in McLeodganj, the seat of the Tibetan government. One thing I am learning about the hotels here is that they have a way of screening their guests. If I try to arrange a stay or reserve rooms beforehand, I have been told that they cannot make reservations before-hand, and that they only have one room available, and only for one day, so when we arrive we can look at the room and see if it will be appropriate. This has happened with every hotel, except for our current residence, Naggar Castle, in Himachal Pradesh. So, we arrive at the hotel, we chat, they get a sense of our plans, who we are, and etc, and then, each time, it turns out that our room is available if we want to stay longer! Nice! Luckily, each time, we passed their 'riff-raff' or 'low-caste' test---I am not sure why they screen ppl like this, but they do, and I haven't asked them why yet, since when I am dealing with them, I still need their 'goodwill.'

Mcleodganj is a hippie-shoppers paradise. Those of you who have seen my crazy silk hat that I bought in the Village in NYC will be pleased to know it has been replaced by another wacky hat that I found here. I bought anklets, shawls, postcards (the first place I have found postcards!!) and a Tibetan painting and a colorful wall-hanging that looks like a tie, which stands for victory. I may bring this uplifting decoration to my v-ball tourneys for that extra edge, haha.

My childhood pal for life, Heather, and another midwestern champ, Cailin, joined Navjot and I, and we had great times laughing it up at meals, and also having great discussions about art, travel, culture,food, beer, bathrooms, etc...those are the travelers' topics in a nutshell. Heather and I also caught up on all kinds of stuff we never get to in USA cause we are always so busy in our own lives....that has been so much fun for me.

Our first morning in Mcleodganj I went for a walk, and I believe this walk took me to the temple that leads to the Dalai Lama...I had planned to actually enter and explore more once I had the rest of the group with me.....but we never got around to it. Another reality of travel. We did visit the Buddhist School of Dialects where the monks sat in pairs--one standing and one on the floor, and debated in Tibetan. Every time the standing monk made a good point, he clapped his hands emphatically. So we watched and heard claps popping all around us. We enjoyed that, and then we wandered to another temple within the complex (I don't have my book...darn) and the big thing we noticed there besides the colorful interior was equal-sized stacks of cookies and crackers around statues of Buddha...the monk said they were offerings. I wish I knew more about the purpose behind that.

The next afternoon we went to another Buddhist Monastery called Dip Tselongking (sp probably wrong). This monastery sat a few hundred feet below the town on a pleasant hillside, so we enjoyed the walk. We walked in on a chanting...ritual or ceremony..I am not sure....the purpose was not described in my guidebook, nor in the brochure about the monastery, nor by any of the monks, but they were a little busy....:) Anyhow, their chants were not monotone, nor were they in harmony. Some spoke the chants in a tenor voice, some baritone, and at least one really low bass, so the overall effect was kind of soothing, even though the composite effect sounded unfamiliar. The monks read the chants in small books laid out in front of them, think small choir music books...and many of the monks also played cymbals, a couple played a gong, and someone was playing perhaps a digeridoo...the gong blocked that instrument from my sight..darn.....but if you have seen the movie Seven Years in Tibet, and you can remember the music Brad Pitt's characters hears when he stumbles into Lhasa, the instrumental accompaniment to these chants sounded just like that. It was quite powerful, and very scripted. After the chanting ceremony...we walked around the temple, inside and out, and took pictures. The monks displayed a row of large butterwax sculptures which depict...guessing here....elements of their mandalas (wheel of spiritual considerations) They destroy the sculptures after a certain amount of time (Tibetan New Year?) because they'd rather not become too attached to their creations.

The following day we visited the Kangra Art Museum in Dharamasala, where we enjoyed the miniature paintings depicting human emotional experiences through the Hindu gods. The Kangra School of Miniature Painting...(guessed the title here) continues today, and we chatted with some of the artists and saw some of their work, and I should have bought that painting of the woman going to see her lover....she was wearing an orange dress, and she was stepping on a snake....showing that the snake did not scare her off from where she wanted to do. Then an author of a book of these paintings showed up, invited us upstairs to see his book, and we had a good discussion about the symbolism of the many heads, arms, and legs given to many of the Hindu gods. Basically, the numerous limbs depict possessing a great amount of power to destroy.

After the art museum we went to the Norbulinka Institute for Tibetan Handicrafts. The school is set in nicely designed stone buildings which are nestled in a Japanese-style garden. The ambiance was very peaceful. We saw artists hammering metals to make sculptures of Buddha, and we saw woodcarving work as well. The main temple looked more Japanese in design than what I have seen of Tibetan architecture. Inside sat an enormous Buddha. Heather mentioned that she saw even larger ones in Japan. I wondered just how gigantic these Buddhas can get.

These descriptions are really not adequate to convey the experience of visiting these places, within all the stuff that happens behind the cultural wall, the stuff that is so different from home: the lack of interest in keeping bathrooms clean, seeing taxi drivers and servants socializing while their customers patron the art institutes, haggling and making friends with the store-owners, and later, after telling them the Rohtang Pass was thwarting our plan to visit Leh, listening to them trying to convince us that Srinigar (in Kashmir) was safe to visit, and that they JUST let a german woman stay in one of their boathouses---yep, these store-owners all just HAPPEN to own a boathouse in Srinigar!! At least three shopkeepers gave us this story! "Wow, what a coincidence....the guy at the other shawl store ALSO has a boathouse!! AND, there is a German girl staying there too!!! I guess Kashmir IS safe!!!" Don't worry, the sarcasm was for my amusement, the only Indian to catch my kind of sarcasm worked at the resturaunt we ate at in Manali....more on Manali and Naggar later....