City in the Clouds

Dharamsala, India

I’ve been in Dharamsala three weeks now, but am super behind in blogo-logging. Apologies for my laziness, I’ll try to catch up on my adventures thus far.

After a grueling 14 hour bus ride from Delhi my uncle and I arrived in lower Dharamsala around 6 in the morning. The first sights I noticed were the extremely narrow streets. Traffic laws in India are more like suggestions and navigating the streets is like playing frogger everyday. We hopped in a taxi along the road and headed towards my uncle’s apartment that was deeper in the valley. Along the way my uncle jumped out to grab some groceries for breakfast at a small market. As I waited in the taxi for him, the driver inquired where I was from. After hearing I was from the States, the guy lit up in delight. “Namaste! Welcome to Dharamsala!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands in the traditional greeting. I thanked him and asked him how safe the city of Dharamsala. He suddenly went into deep thought, displaying his toothless grin “Don’t worry, the Taliban won’t find you here!” I laughed at the absurdity of the comment but in that moment it all hit me. Finally, after the long plane rides, bus trips, crazy traffic, and months of planning and preparation I'd finally made it Dharamsala!

I was dead tired when we arrived at my uncle’s apartment but was restless. We were greeted by my uncles landlord’s ferocious Lhasa Aspo and neighbor's grandson, Yonten, who upon seeing me pointed and yelled “inji leso inji leso!(foreigners here! Foreigners here!)” My body was telling me to crash but I wanted to adjust to the time zone as quickly as possible so my uncle and I set off on a hike up to McLeod Ganj, the heart of the Tibetan community in exile. Instead of taking the main road we took the ‘shortcut’ to the town. I definitely wanted my first visit to be memorable which is why I opted for hiking instead of taking a taxi. This was a horrible decision. I had no clue where we were and assumed that Dharamsala was a small town. Nevertheless, we started up the hill through a back-country trail. Halfway up the hill, I asked my uncle how far it was to the top. “Oh, its just 10.” I was super-confused, "Uhh, ten what?" I asked. "10 kilometers to McLeod!" I froze and did the math in my head, it was a 6 mile hike. 3 hours, 4 bottles of water, 2 pit stops in the woods and 1 blister later we made it to McLeod Ganj. It definitely was memorable and the most grueling hike I’ve ever done. I was in decent shape before leaving for India but two weeks of fun in Germany, a dozen time zone changes and a sharp increase in altitude completely drained me of energy. It certainly was memorable though.

The town of McLeod is probably one of the most unique places in the world. People from all over the world come here to see the Dalai Lama and the town has exploded into a metropolis full of tourists, both domestic and international. The majority of residents up in McLeod are Tibetans, both locals and fresh refugees from Tibet. Second, local Indians have tons of shops and businesses, while Indians from all over the country come here to see the temple and hopefully get an audience with the Dalai Lama. The rest of the town is made up of Israelis, Koreans, Russians, Canadians, Americans, Swiss, Brits, Germans, Taiwanese, Australians...and more. People here come for travel, learn about tibetans, learn buddhism or smoke hashish. Walking down the streets of McLeod is just like walking through the streets of any metropolitan city in the world, except for the cows everywhere.

Seeing the Dalai lama's main temple for the first time was amazing, thousands of people visit it a day. It consists of three large Buddhist statues, a large courtyard and area for circulation. The current census on Tibetans is that there are approximately 150,000 Tibetans in exile. That means other than the around 5 million people in tibet, 150,000 are in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Western Europe, Canada and the States. Its an amazingly small number, there are more people living in my hometown of Vancouver, Washington than there are Tibetans worldwide. I think this small number is the reason for the tight communities among Tibetans. Walking around McLeod for the first time elicited a fair share of staring. I obviously stuck out due to my American clothes(t-shirt, shorts) and my 6’2’’ height, but I kept getting double takes since my face looks pretty Tibetan. Anyway, my first day in Dharamsala would be similar to the rest of my time here where people would assume I was a foreigner, but then I’d speak Tibetan and explain to them that I was born in the States. I honestly, go through this process at LEAST 3 times a day and I have to admit its tons of fun every time to see the expressions on people’s faces.

After seeing the temple my uncle took us to a pretty nice restaurant run by the Indian government in the center of town. The highlight of my day was when I went to the bathroom. While using the urinal an Indian guy walked up to the stall next to mine. Glancing over, I saw that he had a sub machine gun hung over his shoulder, he was one of the hotel guards. Its become commonplace now for me to see people walking down the streets with handguns, rifles and machine guns, but those first few instances always put me on edge. At the bank where I exchanged my US dineros was a huge Indian guy holding a double barrel shotgun too. I felt like I was in the wild west or something.

The next day I moved into the U-Pel guest house close to the Tibetan government Office. The place was great except there was no water and I was told to keep my windows closed due to the monkeys breaking in and stealing food, soap and toothpaste. I signed up for basic Tibetan language classes and started them the same day. The teacher for the class is an elderly Tibetan nun named Ani Chorzom. She’s very grumpy, but a great teacher and has been schooling me in Tibetan. Our basic level class consists of a pretty diverse group with people from Taiwan, Australia, Israel, India, France, Canada and the States. Class so far has been a cakewalk since I’ve got a Tibetan background, but its been great to get a strong foundation in the Tibetan language and learn proper speaking grammar.

I also started my internship with the Tibetan Government at the Department of Information and International Relations. The office I’m working at is the US equivalent of the state department with research offices on human rights, the environment and China. The office I’ve been placed in is the Environmental Development Desk. My job is to do policy research on China/Tibet environmental issues and essentially see if they are gaining ground within Tibet. So far, I've been working on lots of translation work, especially with fresh exiles from Tibet. In the office are two staff members: Tenzin Norbu la and Chokyi la along with another intern from Thailand, named Ratawit whom we affectionately call Momo.

July 6th was the Dalai Lama’s birthday and my day started out at 6 Am with a prayer service on the hill around the Dalai Lama’s temple. It was my first religious ceremony in McLeod Ganj, and I was completely surprised by the huge turnout of Tibetans. The prayer ceremony lasted about
two hours and it was a really amazing event.
The only downside was that a few tourists showed up in a taxi. I had a few problems with them from the start: first of all, they took a taxi up to a place that should be walked up to. It was both disrespectful and lazy for people to be praying and then for a taxi to pull right up and start popping out people. Second, they brought cameras galore and video equipment. I could not believe how inconsiderate they were of all the whole tradition, they were going straight up to monks praying and taking pictures in their face while at the same time filming people who were making prayer offerings up at the temple.
Granted, there were foreigners who were extremely respectful and sat, but this small group was really pissing me off. It reminded me of a tourism class I took at UPS where people have no clue about any of the religious traditions in foreign countries but nevertheless show up and snap pictures like crazy with their extravagantly large cameras.

It was pretty embarrassing to watch all of this happen and sadly, all of these people doing
the picture snapping were American! I couldn't believe how bad of an image they were
displaying. At the time, I didn't feel like it was in my place to get up and say something
but in retrospect I should've politely asked them to move or show some respect.

After the prayer ceremony in the morning, there was a cultural show at the dalai lama's temple. The Dalai Lama himself was in Delhi celebrating at an official function by the Indian government while the Kharmapa was in attendance. The temple was PACKED full of people and I barely saw anything over the huge crowds, except for a guy in front of me who embodied the model tourist with his fanny pack of bottled water and T/P. I wasn't really able to see the performance so I ended up exploring the city during the celebrations. At the end of my first week there my uncle and I traveled to the Norbulingka Institute. The Norbulingka was created by the Tibetan Government to serve as a place to preserve Tibetan art such as thangka painting and craftsmanship. The grounds were amazing and I was really amazed at how strong a system of preservation was in place.

Near the Norbulingka is the residency of the the Kharmapa.
By chance, we happened to be there on Saturdays, when the Kharmapa gives brief public audiences for blessing. I'd seen the Kharmapa before in Seattle but didn't want to pass up this chance. After waiting in line with hundreds of people I was able to briefly walk by and receive a blessing from him.
On the way back from the Norbulingka my uncle and I opted for the public bus a.k.a. the rolling death trap. All seats were full when we jumped on yet dozens of people kept piling in on which made me feel more and more like a sardine. There are a ton of motorbikes and scooters as well which fill up the roads. Cars try to pass each other all the time and it seems like everyone is in a hurry on the road. Suprisingly, road rage is pretty low, as I've never seen anyone wave a finger or yell at someone who deliberately cut them off.

My first week in India ended with a cultural performance at the Tibetans Childrens Village(TCV) where I was able to see some authentic Tibetan song and dance. It was great to see the peformance, except for the 5 km walk back in the rain as all the taxis were taken by people who left right before the main act. I've still only scratched the surface of Dharamsala and plan to do a lot more exploring of the city.