Dharamsala Diary Day 7

Feeling much brighter today, so I headed up to the cable car station, stopping only briefly at the post office to get stamps. They have started treating me with a kindly manner in there, like I am the village idiot or a deaf elderly relative maybe, much preferred to what I was getting before. The walk to the station is a good one.

I bumped into Jonny Bairstow there which proved to be an auspicious start to the day. At the top I did a little souvenir hunting in the stalls amongst all the monks and tourists and then made my way down to the Dalai Lama Complex.

It’s a modernish building (est. 1959) that houses the DL’s living quarters and various bits of admin buildings as well as the Namgyal Monastery and assorted shrines. I think it’s the first Buddhist temple I’ve visited. It has very good views of the valleys below Mcleod Ganj. It’s an interesting place, but I left feeling a bit nonplussed. It feels like a modern working building, where people go to study and work, but there is the constant spectre of the Chinese occupation of Tibet which pulls the focus from spiritual matters.

I learned of the Tibetan Buddhist practice called Kora, whereby a venerated object / place / person is circumambulated. There’s a Kora road down through the jungle below and around the temple, about half of which is handy for the walk down the hill to the Central Tibetan Authority campus. It’s a fun walk — there’s monks and monkeys galore and lots of colourful prayer flags and shrines and memorials for people who have died fighting for Tibetan independence from China.

Google Maps tried to have me off the side a jungle cliff on a helpful shortcut down to the Tibet Museum. Common sense prevailed for once and I orienteered my way the long way down to the Central Tibetan Authority grounds. There is the parliament in exile, a selection of government ministry buildings, a library, and in keeping with the theme of the day, a boatload of monks. There’s allegedly 200 in residence round Mcleod Ganj, I reckon they must walk round in circles all day because I must have seen a 1000.

The Tibet Museum was eye opening for me. It charts the history and geography of Tibet, with a special focus on the invasion and occupation by China, the religious persecution, ongoing efforts of Tibetans to resist and escape. It was quite pithy and they had a good app.

I continued my walk down the hill back to the apartment. I stopped to arrange a guided taxi tour of the surrounding countryside tomorrow, with a prearranged itinerary courtesy of local the taxi drivers union.

Here are some photos of walking around Dharamsala.