Om mani padme hum

After 10 hours bus ride from Delhi to mountains I arrived to McLeod Ganj, tibetan colony of Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. After dusty noisy Delhi it was so wonderful to breath cool fresh mountain air and have more peaceful atmohsphere. In a bus I met two very nice girls, Rita from Belarus and Julia from Austria and I ended  up sharing a room with Julia in a guest house called Kunga, owned by tibetan family. We paid 100 INR each/night (1,60 EUR). I remember our first breakfast in McLeod;it was in a little place called Peace cafe, very early in the morning, sun shining brightly with an amazing view to Himalayas...there's no words to describe it, no pictures to give justice to it. Precious moment.

I made a little trekking to Bhagsu village and to the waterfalls and had a lovely cup of chai in a small funny cafe made by rocks under the waterfall. I was the only customer and had little chat with the owner, he told me that mountains are very clean at that time of the year but during the high season (april-july) it's a whole different story. "Lot's of tourist are coming and they throw plastic bottles and other trash everywhere" he said. "They think that it will all disappear somewhere. People just don't understand." Sad but true.

I had another interesting meeting in our guest house's restaurant; I had been waiting to get into toilet forever when I saw one old tibetan buddhist monk sitting in a table and drinking tea. He had his english grammar books with him, he told me that he wants to learn more english and he asked me things like where are you from, how long have you been here etc. Then he told me you have to knock on the door to get to the toilet which I did but nothing happened still. Then the monk said "Let me" and softly knocked on the toilet door with one finger-and the door opened immediately. I asked from the monk "how did you do that?" but he just smiled and laughed. Magic fingers, magic knock.

Tibetan food....oh my god, so good. Momos, thukpa, tibetan home made bread with jam, cheese cake made by milk of yak...fresh, pure natural tastes and all vegetarian. With couple of euros you can get yourself a nice dinner in one of McLeods tibetan restaurants and they have plenty of them. For activities, besides trekking, McLeod Ganj has also lot to offer;yoga, meditation, tai-chi, courses of tibetan language, music, cooking and traditional handicrafts and buddhist wisdom...you name it, they have it. Also there are plenty of possibilities for volunteering,for example teaching basic english to tibetans, working with orphan children and cleaning the mountains from the trash.

McLeod Ganj is best known as a home of his holiness, 14th Dalai Lama who has been living in exile since 1959. Julia and I decided to visit his home temple; beautiful big temple where you can see everyday routines of tibetan monks. We had been there for about fifteen minutes only when one woman came to us saying: " Do you know that HE is coming soon?" and by that she meant Dalai Lama of course. Now this is quite rare to see Dalai Lama 'cause he's a busy man and travels around the world a lot. Julia and I went outside and there were some people waiting already, standing on a line beside the street that leads to his temple; tibetans, indians, monks and some travelers. We went to stand in the line too and after little waiting he finally came with his security;he was smiling and waving and looking as lovable and kind as in all the pictures I've seen about him. Short moment with so much positive emotions and good energy. Phewww, certainly something that I'm going to remember for the rest of my life.

 One evening we went to this fund raising concert in tibetan school. What a nice and sweet concert it was; performances from Tibet, Korea, all over Europe, US, Russia...it last three hours and the warm and emotional atmosphere got me so emotional that I actually cried during one tibetan song; I looked at the happy smiling faces of audience, people from all over the world spending an evening as a one big family...

 

Daytime at the mountains were quite warm but the nights was getting colder and colder...so it was time to move again. Julia decided to stay in the mountains, I followed the sun to Pushkar, little town in a desert of Rajasthan. Rita from Belarus and couple of guys from Finland I met earlier in McLeod were heading there too. So I got back to Delhi for a day and then to Pushkar...something tells me that this trip to India is gonna be very very good. Something remarkable will happen, something that will affect my life forever. I can feel it.

I left McLeod Ganj with so much happiness and joy in my heart; this is a place

I certainly want to come back again. I'm not gonna get into deeper politics in this blog but from all the stories I've heard, all the people I've met I'm gonna put it into two simple words: Free Tibet!

Ps.This is for my mum so I say it in finnish:Se vuoristoidylli mistä puhuttiin, se on olemassa ja niitä täydellisiä käsinkudottuja raidallisia kaulaliinoja saa parilla eurolla...pakkaa laukut, McLeod Ganj odottaa :)