Sorry for not writing sooner. Was busy doing stuff and conserving my energy.
Let’s go back to Wednesday. Alex and I visited McLeodganj. It’s a small village, but as in most places in India, cars are honking and it’s pretty crowded on the road. The biggest differences are the monks you see on the streets. Quite a lot of them actually. Also a lot of Tibetan shops, restaurants, … You could call it Little Tibet.
First we went to LHA in order to see if we could do some volunteer work. Since we were here for a short time, the only thing they had for us was conversation class. Here, students of English come together with English speaking people to practice. This was at 16:00 so we had to wait a bit.
I did mention I did computers, so they had me looking at a laptop as well. Windows 10 but I found out that the disk was starting to become defunct. Nothing could be done except take frequent backups (which they started already) and schedule some time to reinstall on a new disk.
We then strolled through the town. Lots and lots of little shops with colorful clothes, singing bolls, … which was very typical for here.
At noon we went to a Japanese (!) restaurant Lung Ta. Very good food for a reasonable price ! I wasn’t very hungry yet so only had a miso soup and green tea.
There we met Tod, an American who’s studying Buddhist philosophy. He gave us a couple of tips:
- Dal lake is not worth the time, Triund is much better.
- Tushita is a good place in Dharamkot.
- For eating, Trek&Dine in Dharamkot is also very good.
We also talked about Buddhist philosophy of course. He says that anger is a very powerful emotion which is the cause of a lot of suffering in the world. I also asked about fear. That was more difficult but comes from to much attachment.
Next, we visited the Tibetan library. It was quite a walk down from McLeodganj but worth it. Why ? It’s quiet ! No cars allowed on the premises. What a luxury.
By that time, it was almost 4 o’clock so we went back up to McLeodganj for the conversation class. On this track up, I saw my first wild monkeys. It’s just like you see in the movies.
I was buddied with three (male) Tibetans. They were all of middle age and head less than one year of English class to second year.
We started talking about casual things and I noticed that their English was quite good. They are very driven to learn English, one was even taking two classes per day. I also came to understand today that they have a status of refugee in India, so they can’t have jobs, own land, … I guess that’s why they need to learn English in order to have some sort of income (there or abroad).
I also got the know about Tsampa. Especially the nomads in Tibet use it as breakfast. It should be very nourishing ! One guy I talked to used it on his 20 day track from Tibet to McLeodganj. I was hoping to have some today but seemed to have missed the correct stall and got something else instead.
One of the persons in my group wanted to read English literature. He had less than one year of class and already started on 1984, Animal Farm and the likes. Quite ambitious.
I also got to know that Tibet region is actually very big. I thought it was about the size of Nepal but it turns out to be more of the size of Mongolia. Very fertile land as well so no wonder there is a conflict over it.
I won’t go into political details, but I got the impression that life for the refugees is pretty hard. They seem to realize that they will never meet their family anymore. Thankfully, due to internet, they can keep in touch.
After class, we took the road up to Dharamkot. Quite a hike ! From there, we went to Bhagsu. At some field they were preparing to for the new crop. That was an image from the old times: plowing with mules ! Yes, it’s still done today. The fields actually look more like family fields so are quite small for a tractor.
Along the way we passed a biological café (I can actually see it from my balcony). Alex knew that Laetitia was there, somebody he met on his travels through India. She was between jobs and needed time to reorient herself. She was there together with Flo, another French, who also was between jobs. That seems to be quite common here. Also they are traveling on low budget. So where I pay 1400 rupees per night (with breakfast, private bathroom, very clean, free filtered water & tea), they pay about 350 rupees (without breakfast, common bathroom).
I went back right when it became dark to skype with Anne and the kids. That was great fun 🙂
