Mcleod Ganj - Home of the Dalai Lama

McLeod Ganj has been our vacating from our vacation. The air up here is clear and cool, and there isn't a lot to do, so we're going to relax and eat good food, with excellent Western choices.

It's clear that this is a tourist town, far more so than any other place we've been, but the touts, aren't nearly as bad. The population is extensively Tibetan, or at least more Asian than Indian in appearance, though there are plenty of Indians also. The ratio of Americans to non-American Westerners is also off. There are a ton of American tourists here, where as we have hardly seen other Americans in the rest of India. Finally, there are women working jobs that involve interacting with tourists, which we mostly haven’t seen elsewhere in India.

Our first day, Mary wasn't feeling so well, and Josh did a little poking around the Tibetan complex by himself. The next day, we went back together and saw the Dalai Lama's home, the Tibet Museum, and the temples. The temples were interesting, though we weren't allowed to take photographs inside. Mostly they looked like Hindu shrines (though of course there were images of Buddha), except there were a whole bunch of modern offerings, like Chips Ahoy, Oreos, etc. There were great stacks of them in their packaging, often under glass as part of the whole display. It was... weird. I guess it just demonstrates that this is truly a living religion. There were prayer mats everywhere in the complex, and the Dalai Lama was in attendance, so there where many maroon-robed monks about. Unfortunately for us, the Dalai Lama's teachings this week were part of a series we would have had to have started years ago to attend, so we didn't actually get to see him. The Tibetans are big on religion, as you can see in the photos below.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From 102_PANA

From 102_PANA

From 102_PANA

On our 3rd day, we took a hike up to Dal Lake, but that's another entry.

On our 4th day, it rained. So we stayed in our hotel room, eating leftover Tibetan bread from a previous day's breakfast along with peanut butter, nutella, and chai from our hotel's restaurant. Most of the day we spent reading, both fiction (Mary: Around the World in 80 Days, Josh: 40 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) and planning for Southeast Asia, including out of our new-to-us copy of Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, which has been recommended to us by other travelers we talked to, but is not available for the Kindle currently. However, there was a copy of it at our hotel left behind by a previous traveler, which our host gave to us. It would have cost more new at the bookstore (amazingly there actually was a bookstore in town that carried it) than our room for 5 nights. In the late afternoon, we ventured out to the supposedly authentic Japanese restaurant, where the menu indicated that they knew how to make safe-to-eat salads. We enjoyed some amazing Miso soup, tempura, salad, and strange fried potato dumpling-like things, but Josh ate way too much. After, the rain stopped and there was an incredible rainbow over the snow-capped peaks. And, of course, this was the one time we'd left both cameras in the hotel room.

For our last full day we went on a long day hike, which will also be another post.