Bringing it back, Dharamsala style

My last few days in India were a bit hectic, partially in that I was moving at a much faster pace (a city every two or three days), partially in that I had company with me most of the time (Grant Williams, whose photography was featured in the Golden Temple entry), and partially in that I already had one foot out of the door. I'll make my way back a bit here; back to when the international situation was somewhat less desperate, and when I visited the cities of Dharamsala and Rishikesh in northern India.

Grant and I departed Amritsar with some regret, both of us having been beguiled by the openness and generosity of the place. We traveled with the Swedish Amanda and an Australian woman named Mel we met at the temple, taking two buses from Amritsar across the northern province of India to Dharamsala and Mcleodganj, the latter being the home of the Dalai Lama. Mcleodganj is where people go when they say they are going to Dharamsala – it is ‘upper Dharamsala,’ about a half hour bus ride from Dharamsala, and houses all of the tourist amenities of casual western pilgrims like ourselves who were interested as much in the spirit of the exiled Tibetan leader as the foothills of the mighty Himalayans.

We arrived in the dark, at around 8 PM, and it was cold. Grant and I both struggled to stay warm for our entire visit – he in particular because of his fancy shoes. It was about 3 or 4 degrees Celsius and wet, sometimes raining in earnest. There were a number of attractive qualities to the place aside from the cold that we discovered the next day – the air was crisp and clean, the people and atmosphere was much more relaxed (though the horns persisted on the windy mountain roads), and the food was a welcome change – they served meat! After almost six weeks of spiced vegetables and highly questionable sanitation, these were welcome changes. The village was also geographically contained, with two main roads leading up the hill, lined on both sides with shops and internet cafes. And there were Buddhist monks in red robes buying vegetables, talking on phones, walking and visiting with friends, being normal people all around.

We realized after finding shops closed that we had stumbled upon the Tibetan new year, which might have explained the civilian appearances of the monks. It also meant that the tranquility of the mountains was undercut by the periodic concussion of massive fire crackers. We spent our days wandering these streets, all three or four 'blocks' worth of them, and one day on a shopping spree of sorts, knowing that the shops would not be open again, that the goods were attractive and would benefit an exiled community, and that I would only have to carry the stuff for a few more days.

The biggest comfort of Dharamsala is the well established tourism trade. Restaurants and cafes feel almost western, and, in my humble opinion, northern Indian food was much more palatable than the Rathsanjani food I enjoyed in the desert. Basically, the northern Indians didn't seem to consider spices to be a substantial calorie component of every dish. Many places had wireless (if they lacked heat), and the streets didn't smell like they were full of Indians using the gutter as toilet (again, possibly related to the heat).

So after enjoying a day of wandering and buying things like a man with a westward mind, I woke early to take in the new year festivities at the Dalai Lama's temple. There was a lot of chanting that sounded like 'oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah' which is as good a mantra as any I've heard, and some entertainment for the monks in a sort of open air temple, the rest of us watching and feeling confused on the outside. Before I share the photos of mountainous Dharamsala and the monastic new year, I want to describe what my friend Avye would call a photo not taken, as I didn't take a photo of it.

Buddhist monks ask for alms as (I think) part of their regular practices. I passed four monks on my walk to the temple. The sun was just up, though the night air was still heavy and cold. They were standing motionless, identical, hoods over their heads, each holding an large bowl out in front of them like an offering. They were SO still, so statuesque that I found myself too intimidated to even venture a photograph, much less get close enough to make a contribution. I'm sure they were the same cheerful, cell phone using monks that were bargaining for vegetables on the street the day before, but standing in the first light, they were untouchable and sublime.

On to the photos! Thanks for reading!

(This final image is of the entertainment - so far as I could tell, the two standing monks were having a sort of argument, stooge style, and would try to one up the other. They seemed to be working from a script, and occasionally got laughs. The monks bending over were serving rice and snacks and tea to the monks sitting down)