Visit to Upper Dharamsala

This afternoon and evening a group went to McLeod Ganj, otherwise known as Upper Dharamsala. This town is the home of His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama. It was originally a hill station that the British founded in India that the Indian government gave to the Tibetans upon their exile from Tibet.

It is a hair raising 30 minute cab ride from Sara College. The roads to the town and in town are in some cases no more than 10 feet wide, the terrain is incredibly rugged (remember, this is in the Himalayan Mountains), and the bad condition of the roads makes my home state of Pennsylvania look as smooth as a pool table.

The cab drivers go about 25 miles per hour when they are moving slowly and they continually honk their horns (think the traffic around the Arc de Triomphe), there are packs of roving dogs, not owned by anyone in particular, cows roaming at their leisure and tons of Buddhists, pilgrims, and devotees walking the streets.

I took lots of photos and put them on the link to the right (there are about 36 to see) rather than take up space here in this posting. You will see the politicized environment and the local street scenes. It's amazing that so many people are shoe horned in here along every possible buildable and not buildable surface. I think the only criterion for building some place is that it is solid, not that it is flat.

We had an excellent tour of the path around the Dalai Lama's residence. In Buddhism, favors are gained by circumnambulating (walking around) in a clockwise direction around important places. The path we took was full of stupas and prayer flags found only in Tibetan Buddhism and thought to originate in the Bon religion before Buddhism took root. Our tour guide, Pii, one of the Emory Tibet Science Initiative team, said they are also called wind horses, since they flutter and send prayers out in all directions as they flap. Many Buddhists come to this path daily for their prayers counting the trips around on their rosary beads.

When we were done, we stopped into a cafe for soft drinks and lassies (a fruit drink, not the famous TV star, in case you aren't familiar) and then went to a restaurant where we sat out on the rooftop terrace as the sun was dropping behind the mountains. It was a beautiful night and what an international experience....the roof terrace was filled with young Americans who were playing guitar and a bongo drum doing a pretty good rendition of Bob Marley tunes all while being in India in the seat of the Tibetan world.

Here's one of my favorite photos: a free bird soaring among the prayer flags.