Our supposed to be 12-hour jeep journey ended up to be an arduous 15-hour perilous Dakar Rally-styled ride peppered with my praying (and closing my eyes a lot) and invoking any divine presence for a safe arrival. Safety belts search came with a blunt head shake that meant “not available” and I tried all I can to keep myself occupied – reading, sleeping, even almost tempting Fate to bring it all on – much to my dismay, didn’t end anywhere. We made two brief stops in the middle of nowhere, and we had to make a couple of U-turns because bridges leading to Dharamsala, more precisely, McLeod Ganj were swept away by monsoon rain and just bad delays in road repairs.
Our arrival heralded into an inn that was gobsmacked in the middle of the main bazaar road, although at midnight, it was pretty much dead. But being dog-tired, we crashed after a cold rinse sitting on a stool and scooping up mugs of water to wash off the day’s dirt. A hard bed had never felt cushier.
We woke to a day of thick mist blanketing the entire upper Dharamsala valley. And it was awesome. We walked up the bazaar street, dodging hagglers and checking out the monstrous display of the biggest counterfeit trade of turquoise stones and other jewel ornaments, house décor, carpets and momo, the local equivalent of a Chinese dumpling, steaming away into the early afternoon. Our visit to the residence of the Dalai led us to enjoy an afternoon of monks vociferously debating in the tradition of the Tibetan observance, and I must say, it broke my usual assumption of monks recoiling from public observation high up in the mountains. They mixed freely amongst us many café goers, and many local Tibetan residents walked around, rosary in hand, and we drank it the atmosphere of this ancient exotic mix of culture brought onto this part of India sadly by the exile of His Holiness, inter-mixing comfortably with the local Indian background and food. You just had to open up your senses to take it all in, and nothing even remotely close to the cold could dampen our enjoyment. We retired back to our room’s balcony to absorb the evening’s buzz of activities. While some local lads played a game of carom, some saffron robed nuns walked back to their homes and a child played with her toy while some dogs barked into twilight, and we could hear some local Tibetan music blasting from the grounds below, with foreigners and locals practicing some dance moves at the peril of the sound system. That night, we checked out a Japanese vegetarian restaurant that served up really great food, purely an institution that was ran as a non-profit business to aid the Tibetan refugee movement.
The next morning we woke to a great welcome of morning sun. Sitting again at the balcony, we soaked it all in a rare treat, with some hot chocolate. Life couldn’t be simpler and better. Onward we treaded only to be slightly disappointed to learn that a local Tibetan shop had ran out of their breakfast set – consisting of a plate of momo, some watery porridge and pickles – but we were not let down a few doors up at the “Yak Café” and got our tuck-in. Very nice. Did some bargaining with many Kashmiri traders in handloom carpets that were made from pieces of old saree and of course, a high quality thangka purchase. This is one of the little luxuries that hubby and I allowed ourselves – to collect good art pieces and home décor items for our eventual nest in Australia. Nothing thrilled us more than to have reminders of this wonderful journey that had taken us along the path to meet so much diversity and similarities, in many way than one.
Our last night was spent with the local inn owners watching a rerun of Seagal’s “Flight of Fury”. The blokes were so high on weed that they refilled my hot water bottle with ice cold water. No fuss, just asked for a change and they were literally floating like angels with a permanent smile on their face helping you. We suspected that the owner woke this morning to see us off, still partially high as we had to tell him how much the laundry and hot drinks order served up to on the bill!
Thus began another jeep journey downhill that was supposed to be a 6-hour ride to the state of Punjab, the land of five rivers.
