HELLO LITTLE TIBET


ABOVE: a buddhist temple in McLeod Ganj
Following my birthday, Michael and I planned a trip out of Delhi. For weeks, I was researching cool places to visit. I wanted a place near the mountains where we could do a short trek, something not too expensive or too far. When it came down to it, I realized that I wouldn't be able to have it all, something had to be compromised. As the debate of where to go continued, we found ourselves with no solution two days before our tentative departure date. The day before we left, we narrowed it down to two places and asked our friends for opinions. We settled on Dharamshala.

We hopped on a 12 hr bus to Dharamshala with no further plans in mind. Talk about unplanned travel! At 6am we landed up in McLeod Ganj, a suburb of Dharamshala. We began to walk down a road with signs to Dharamshala, but quickly turned around hoping to find a closer place to have breakfast. We really had no orientation at this point. Good thing we turned around! Had we followed that road, we would have walked 6km to get to Dharamshala vs our .5km walk to the center of McLeod Ganj. The town was still waking up and the streets were filled with monks. We had arrived in little tibet. This was a place of exile for tibetans refugees and the home base of the Dalai Llama. 

We grabbed breakfast at the first interesting looking café and started to plan our day. To our surprise, we found out that the Dalai Llama was in town and speaking at the monastery! The Dalai Llama visits McLeod Ganj once a month for a few days and dedicates his visit to a group of people, this time to the Taiwanese. We rented a translating radio and listened to him speak for a few hours. The monastery was filled with monks and tourists from all over. 

McLeod Ganj was a nice little hippy mountain town. Filled with cafés and backp, it was a refreshing breakaway from Delhi. The area is pretty touristy and so our brief visit was just the right amount of time to spend there. We ate a good amount of Tibetan food, which I had never tried before. I indulged in the cafés and baked goods :) At every restaurant, we found a mix of tourists and monks, and everyone spoke english. It was fun to walk around and visit street vendors, grab a nice cup of coffee, and look off at the surrounding hills.