David and Edel

We walked in to a travel agent in Dharamsala to ask for transport to Amritsar just as he had finished explaining to a nice Irish lady that there was only a 1% chance that he would be able to find someone to share her 2am Amritsar-taxi with. It seemed like a good match so we joined in to get moving again – it would have been too easy to just spend week after week in Dharamsala as it’s a really nice spot. The 5 hour drive was uneventful, apart from the killing or at least severe maiming of a black stray dog (the driver quickly stopped and rushed out to check…yes, the car was alright!).

Guard at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

Amritsar, or indeed the whole Punjab state, has really just one major tourist attraction; the Golden Temple – the holiest site in the Sikh faith. Sikhism is young as religions go, started by a Guru Nanak about 500 years ago – it’s a bit of a Hinduism-Islam mix that is nice enough to drop the horrible caste system. The temple is open to everyone of all casts and all creeds – they even serve everyone who wants food there for free, some 10,000 portions a day! The majority of Punjab is Sikh, and most men sport a beard+turban combination..some also carry a dagger or large sabre on the side. The golden temple is actually covered with real gold – some 100kg of leaf gold. Inside the temple there is a continuous readings of the sacred Sikh texts along with shabad kirtan music, all of which is also relayed on loud-speakers all over town. We could hear it constantly from our hotel room..and just in case we couldn’t there’s also a live TV channel for backup!

Circling around the temple we made lots of friends, people who wanted to tell us about the Sihk faith and the temple, people who wanted to interview us on how much we knew about the Sihk faith and the temple (perhaps for a school project), and endless amounts of people who wanted to take a photo with us / of us / wanted us to take a photo of them with our camera. We were asked some interesting questions..did we have a love-marriage or an arranged marriage? One person asked if I was Edel’s brother or her boss..? I’m her boss of course! From Amritsar we wanted to continue on to Manali – I wanted to start by train but Edel wanted to take the bus the whole way so we went with the bus..

We stayed just one night in Amritsar – I went back to the temple again at sunrise for some more photos and on the way back I was questioned by the police for taking pictures of a cow on the street!

More photos.

View from Tushita

In McLeod Ganj we signed up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat at Tushita on a hill above town. The accommodation was pretty basic, dorm rooms and bucket showers, but the location stunning; overlooking a mixed forest of conifers and broadleaves on the hill-slope below, with rhododendron just starting to bloom under the trees. The first couple days the forest was covered in mist, later it cleared to show snowcapped mountains in the distance. Some days we could spot silver-coloured langur monkeys or flying squirrels in the treetops, and every day around lunch we could spot hordes of macaques trying to steal our food – they’d get away with at least one or two people’s sandwich or piece of fruit at every meal. The days started at 6am with mixed meditation sessions and Buddhism teachings the full day until about 9pm. Other rules included not killing any animals, including mosquito’s. However, throwing stones after the macaque monkeys so they wouldn’t steal food was Ok! – ..try to imagine ordained nuns in robes hurling rocks after the monkeys! (..will need to imagine as camera had to be handed in to the safe at checkin together with other distractions like mp3 player and non-dharma books.) The silent-rule wasn’t actually fully absolute either as there were discussion groups in the afternoon and questions during class etc. The teachers were good and did their best to fit the teachings to the pretty diverse group of students; some people would be in to every pyramid-energy crystal-healing tantric-kundalini-yoga new-age invention there is, and at the other end of the spectrum they’d have to put up with people like me who think that Richard Dawkins just might be a little too religious. The teachers explained at the beginning they weren’t out to “convert” anyone, that the course was like a smörgåsbord and everyone could just pick the pieces that make sense for them. I found the meditation very interesting anyhow, it’s something I’d never tried before, and quite a lot of the Buddhism teachings do seem to make sense to me without having to resort to faith..I’ll just have to leave the old Hinduism legacies with reincarnation and karma at the side. There must be something to it really – the old Buddhist monks in the pictures hanging on the walls here always feature a beaming smile on their face…they’ve seen their millenia-old culture destroyed bit by bit and still manage to feel compassion for the people causing this? I remember a National Geographic article where a number of Tibetan monks where fitted with electrodes and run through an MRI scanner..think it concluded they were actually the happiest people in the world..

My Guru.

We had one great meditation session with Mark, a friendly vegemite-obsessed Aussie with shaved head who led most of our meditation sessions; the ever-present macaque monkeys were fighting as we were trying to sit quietly and observe our mind..Mark speaking in his serene meditation voice guiding a mental-state check “…maybe you’re feeling tired…”, the monkeys start running and fighting on the roof, “…maybe you’re feeling distracted…”, more and heavier monkeys join in – it sounds like thunder above, “…maybe you’re wondering why they built a meditation hall with a tin roof?…” – everyone laughing loud!

Edel unfortunately got sick within 24 hours of observing silence. Sorry, that didn’t come out right at all! Edel unfortunately got food poisoning on the 2nd day, and missed a lot of the meditation sessions. We would probably have left both of us, but they convinced us to stay on and Edel took a trip down to the doctor together with an Israeli girl who needed some rabies shots after getting bitten by one of the monkeys..

Once the course was finished and Edel felt better we did a couple short walks around Dharamsala before deciding to head off to the city of Amritsar which we had missed on the way up from Delhi.

View from McLeod Ganj (Dharamsala upper town).

Dharamsala, or the upper town McLeod Ganj where we stayed, is a gorgeous little spot. In one direction lies the deep valley below (McLG is at 1750 m altitude) and in the other direction the impossibly high snow-capped mountains above. The town is home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile as well as a large population of Tibetan refugees – it looks and feels incredibly different with prayer wheels, prayer flags and Buddhist stupas everywhere. It is also firmly on the backpacker trail with plenty souvenir stalls and cafe’s serving banana pancakes, and many aging hippies.

The place we stayed in was nice and had a good vegetarian restaurant (most places are all-veg here) – hot water worked in the room as soon as we had figured out to flick the switch outside the door (..though I did manage to have one very refreshing shower before this). There was also a large toad sitting outside our door the whole day which I took to be an auspicious sign!

Second day we went for a walk to find the Dalai Lama’s residence and monastery, however we got a bit lost as the map was not to scale (..and clearly labeled “not to scale”). Ended up on a long path downhill with beautiful views to the mountains and prayer flags in the trees. Eventually we figured out that we had walked right past the palace and completed a “kora” – a circumnavigation path around the temple complex completed by devotees always in the clockwise direction. Everyone we met had been walking the opposite direction to us! I’m somewhat worried now that we might have acquired a negative one on some sort of karma score-card after doing it anti-clockwise. Also, the toad outside our door was gone when we came back!

Monks and prayer wheels in Dharamsala.

In the evening we got a tip from a Buddhist monk in the hostel that the Dalai Lama would be at the monastery the day after to meet with a number of Indian guru’s so we might have a chance to catch a glimpse of him. We got there early which was lucky as we were sent back to the hostel to leave camera and mobile – the security was pretty strict with metal detectors and bag inspection. A crowd of a few hundred, mostly Tibetans, had gathered sitting on the ground and we spotted the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa (a high Tibetan lama for a different Buddhism school) with a number of Indian guru-looking types walking up to the palace. When we came back after lunch some hour later the meeting had just finished and we spotted the Dalai Lama again on the way to a waiting car. We was waving and smiling at everyone and seemed to be in good form.

In the evening we popped by a Tibet museum near the palace. It had lots of photos and information about the devastation following the 1950 invasion, including pictures from many of the monasterys that were completely destroyed during the “cultural revolution”. About 6,000 monasterys were destroyed and 1.2 million people killed in total – many of the people designing the exhibitions had been in “re-education” camps and tortured before fleeing Tibet. The museum also had Tibet stamps, Tibet currency, a Tibet passport and pre-1950 National Geographic articles to refute any claims that Tibet “always was a part of China”.

After spending a few days around McLeod Ganj we signed up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat, though I’ll save that for the next post.

Mikael: "most of the snow has actually melted away already" ...

Before flying out to Delhi I stopped by home in Sweden, and visited my brothers who are studying far up north in Umeå..was thinking that wading around in a meter of snow one degree south of the arctic circle must be a great way to prepare for the Indian sun. The difficulty of getting there seemed a nice way to ease into Indian public transport anyway – had a convenient bus-plane-bus-train-train-bus combination booked all the way from Galway, but it turned into bus-plane-bus-train-train-bus-subway-train-bus and 22 hours in total thanks to the Swedish train service. That’ll teach me for ever complaining about the Irish public transport system!

Here’s a photo of Mikael dishing up a nice picnic by a road-side resting spot in the forest outside Umeå. Mikael makes great potato soup.

On April 1st I met up with Edel again in London to fly out to Delhi to start our trip. I usually sleep the whole way on every flight I take, which is pretty boring for Edel, but managed to stay awake on this. Landed around midnight with 28 degrees in the air. We had a hostel booked for the first couple nights, and an airport pickup booked which the guidebook strongly recommends in order to avoid all the touts and scammers hanging around the airport. Anyhow, the pickup wasn’t there. And not only were they not there, they were also completely uncontactable! ..the latter of course since both of us had forgotten to take down their address and phone number…you can’t think of everything! After wandering around in arrivals a short while, dodging the touts that traced our footsteps, we picked a new hostel in the guide and went to get a ticket for a prepaid taxi which seemed at least a slightly more reliable option. A couple touts are standing around by the queue, the shorter one with stoned-looking eyes takes a quick break from scratching his crotch and waves towards the ticket queue for us to re-inforce his official status. When it’s our turn he moves in next to us about 10 cm from the glass counter..I use the map in the guidebook to point so that he can’t hear where we’re going. The guy behind the counter gives us a ticket and tells us to go to #80 outside for the taxi. The crotch-scratcher indicates he’s our driver – Edel asks the guy behind the counter if this is true and he does a gesture meaning he couldn’t care less, while attempting to short-change me twice the amount I was paying. We go outside into the dark hot smog-filled chaos of people and cars. Most of the cars are using the horn at any one second, and most of the people are trying to get us into different taxi’s…let’s see..number #80. Once I stop being naive enough to think there’s a system we hop into what is hopefully an official taxi. The taxi stops a moment later behind the airport and another random guy jumps in next to the driver – he’s function seems to be casual small-talk “this your first time in Delhi?”. I think Edel was first to notice something wrong, I was generally feeling pretty good at this point – finally away from the airport and we never really had problems with this particular part of our travels (apart from that one time in Iquitos, Peru when we were in a car-chase with an over-eager convicted jungle-tour sales-man). Anyhow, after zig-zagging between the lorries into Delhi the taxi proceeded to drive to three different dead-ends/blocked roads claiming that all the roads leading to the hostel we had picked seemed to be blocked (one of the more common scams is pretending the place your going to is full/burned down/closed for a festival/etc., so they can drive you to somewhere bad they have a special deal with). He points to a statue (permanent and with no special decorations) by the roadside and explains the roads might be closed for festival. “Do you know this god?” ..have to admit i don’t – there’s roughly 20 million of them. After he turns onto a long dimly lit road with no other cars and Edel whispers “David, where the hell are we?” I actually loose my temper with him and demand they turn around and just drop us by any major landmark. This actually seems to have worked (apart from the turn-around bit, seeing how we were on a one-way street..) – two turns later we are somewhere we can actually recognize on the map and then a short while by the hostel. To give them the benefit of the doubt I apologize for bursting out and give them a hefty tip..possibly I needn’t have to though – checking the map in the more relaxed setting of the hotel room later on the one roadname we had managed to spot was some kilometers north-west of our destination while the airport we came from was to the south. The hotel in turn had just one room free, at 60 euro per night which seemed a lot for a YMCA in India – particularly as noon check-out was now less than 10 hours away. A cheaper room did materialize the second we considered checking elsewhere though..

Delhi bus station

We decided to head out from Delhi the next day, so tried to find a bus to Dharamsala. Once we found the correct tourist office (ignoring all the touts on the streets trying to direct us to their “tourist office”) it turned out there were no tourist-bus tickets left for Dharamsala this day. The other option is state-run buses, described in the guide-book as “ramshackle” – we know we’ll be on buses with live chicken and a wheel missing again eventually, had just hoped to save this pleasure a little longer. We made our way to the bus-station and got a ticket for the 12-hour over-night trip. The state-run buses came in two options, “luxury-class bus” and “Volvo”; luxury-class was also sold out. Their volvo-class was actually not too bad though (couldn’t complain about the Swedish stuff could I 🙂 – it had a bit of airco and even a TV, though only the color green worked. I missed out on the green-tinted Bollywoods though as the gentleman in front of me sported a gigantic turban.

We arrived in Dharamsala early next morning – the driver had managed to shave an hour off the trip by aggressively overtaking any better looking buses along the road. It had also, somewhat worryingly, been the same driver the whole way.