McLoed Ganj
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2004
1
9
53
Trip End
Aug 15, 2005
Darhamsala,
India
Friday, November 5, 2004
But hey at least there are leaders in the world like the Dalai Lama who can show the world how to have peace and love in your heart and love one another even if your huge neighbour has invaded your county, dumped chemical and nuclear waste on your beautiful land and wiped out lots of sacred, religious and ancient things which are important to you - oh and tortured your people just for being a Buddhist monk or having a picture of the Dalai Lama!
We're in McLeod Ganj which is near Darhamsala and is the place where His Holyness lives, And today we went to a museum and exhibition which tells you about the Tibetan struggle for freedom from the Chinese occupation, hence the rant!
McLeod Ganj has many Tibetan refugees and to get an idea of what the place looks like it is set up high over looking a valley with ice capped mountains behind, plenty of Buddhist monks in maroon clothing, cool looking Israelis, hippy westerners, happy, smiling Tibetans, shops selling gorgeous Tibetan jewelry, arts, and nic nacs, and of course Indians
Baby kids on the way up to the snow line
. Anyway, over to Mr Chadwick for a change while I go for a Tibetan massage! -Before we got to Mcleod Ganj we spent another 2 days strolling around Laxman Jhula, bathing in the Gangees, chatting with Bengali Baba and generally preparing ourselves for the bus journey ahead to Shimla. We left Laxman Juhla to go to Haridwar where we caught our bus for Himachal Pradesh's capital Shimla an old colonial town where the ruling Brits lived in the hot summer months to escape the heat of Delhi. We left Haridwar at 6 in the morning on a rickety old bus with bald tyres on our way to Shimla which is 2300 meters high across many mountain passes. A pretty hairaising journey at times, the roads are made for about 1 and 1/2 cars snaking their way up the mountains and down again to narrow bridges across some spectacular gorges and here we were on a bus with a driver seemingly only interested in seeing how many lorries he could overtake on blind corners with massive drops only inches away, how many pedestrians he could put the fear of god up and how many cyclist he could force of the road. We have been in India enough now to know that their driving is something completely different from what we get at home but this driver we had definitely had some kind of death wish. After 14 pretty horrendous but filled with fantastic scenery hours we arrived at Shimla. We checked into our Hotel and after 5 days in the Holy places of Rishikesh,Laxman Jhula and Haridwar it was great to be in a place where one could booze
Descent from snow line
. I immediately set of for the nearest wine shop and much beer and rum and cokes were enjoyed by me and Liz. Shimla is a just like a little bit of Britain but in the Himalaya's. There or all sorts of English architecture with some Mock Tudor buildings, traditional church with tower and many other buildings looked just like home. The main high street was totally pedestrianised and so quiet compared with many other Indian towns and just looked like a small Cornish Towns main street. We spent 3 days in Shimla taking it pretty easy. We had to buy some warmer clothes as it was really cold there. Our room had no heating also so we took to sleeping fully clothed, and so it proved difficult getting out of bed in the morning hence the taking it easy. The afternoons we spent leisurely cruising (I say cruising but that makes it sound easy, as the streets are all on massive steep hills)round the streets in the afternoons, so we were at least managing to get some exercise burning of the calories we were consuming at his beautiful coffee shop called Barista where they had fantastic chocolate cake and proper coffee to boot!
After our experience on the bus we managed to share a taxi to Mcleod Ganj which is where you find us now. Even in the taxi it was again pretty hair raising at times as the road in places had had a landslip so there was only a third of the road left, however our driver took it pretty steady so there was less heart in mouth situations. One thing against him though was he put us through the mill with his horrendous choice of Indian music for the whole journey - think awful 80's cheese with an Indian flavour.
Anyway we are here and fine and of on a trek to the snowline tomorrow 3300 meters so hopefully some spectacular scenery to look forward to.
then we head back to Delhi next Thursday to see the Taj Mahal in Agra and to catch Diwali on the 12th in Delhi. And then we fly out to Hong Kong on the 13th!!
Tally ho for now!
