Dharma Bums

April 25th 2000 A celebration the Panchen Lama’s birthday. There was a rally near the bus stand with lots of people sitting on the ground and an American folk band called The Dharma Bums singing a song called Rangzen meaning Free Tibet. Many people in the crowd were refugees who had only just arrived. It was very moving.

                                Rangzen 

In 1995, the 14th Dalai Lama recognised a six-year-old boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, as the 11th Panchen Lama.Three days later, the child and his family were taken into custody by the Chinese authorities. He has not been seen publicly since. China then appointed its own Panchen Lama, Gyaincain Norbu, who is recognised by the Chinese government but not by most Tibetans or the Dalai Lama. 

The Panchen Lama traditionally plays a key role in identifying the next Dalai Lama so it is politically and spiritually important. Exiled Tibetans still  mark the Panchen Lama’s birthday with quiet ceremonies, prayers, candles, and messages of remembrance, holding hope for his safety and return. 14th Dalai Lama has suggested he may choose to end the lineage or select his successor during his lifetime, to avoid Chinese interference.

Over our time in Dharamsala we got to know the Dharma Bums better…the lead singer Phil Void was from Woodstock USA. Charlie was asked to film another concert on the Panchen Lama’s birthday and later in the week we were invited to Phil Void’s 50th birthday party which consisted mostly beer, whiskey and momos and we all watched a movie of his audience with the Dalai Lama! 

Void was closely connected to the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala and used his music to support Tibetan cultural and political causes. Later we go down to the museum and three old ladies are sitting in a bench. I ask them if I can take a photograph and offer them a few rupees. They burst out laughing and said ‘We’re not Indian we’re Tibetan’! 

The next day we took a taxi to the Norbulingka Institute, down in a valley of jacaranda trees, lantana and bougainvillea, with wheatfields and peaceful gardens planted with nasturtiums and purple tradescantia. We saw an extraordinary piece of embroidery based on an image of a thousand hands, made using a single silk thread and a horse hair, and taking months of painstaking work. In the workshops we watched some boys working on Thangka paintings, and others who were doing a series of 50 etchings from photos of the Dalai Lama life. We also wandered through the doll museum, with its beautifully dressed figures in traditional Tibetan costumes, each one showing different regions, fabrics and details of everyday and ceremonial life. 

Then we visited the amazing Deden Tsuglagkhang Temple

Dharamsala and McCloud Ganj

We met a girl called Leesa heading to Dharamsala to research Tibetan women. She’d paid 350 rupees for her ticket. At that point it became clear we’d been well and truly ripped off!

Our journey didn’t begin at a bus station but on a pavement, where scruffy-looking travellers sat waiting with their bags. A taxi dropped us there and disappeared. When the bus finally arrived, we lurched through the teeming squalor of Delhi before drifting out towards the city’s edge.

We stopped in Majnu-ka-Tilla, a Tibetan refugee settlement on Delhi’s northern fringe, to pick up more passengers. As the bus filled and the driver topped up the tank, we noticed prayer flags strung across the rooftops of concrete flats and Free Tibet painted on the backs of rickshaws. Here we met Leesa again. Then, slowly, Delhi began to thin and the road north opened up.

It was a fairly horrendous overnight journey. At some times incredibly bumpy, through scary passes…the bus suddenly diverting over a stony riverbed instead of using the bridge…other views down great chasms. Stop first at an amazing westernised  burger place…then in the middle of the night stop in the middle of nowhere…I had to pee in a ditch while a black-and-white TV was blaring in a nearby cafe…I felt totally exposed! As we get nearer Dharamsala the road gets even more frightening, round hairpin bends and from Dharamsala to McCloud Ganj the road was really narrow. But finally amazing views up to snowy mountains. Crash out in Hotel Tibet.

Easter Sunday and we are COOL at last!  A bright and sunny day to start with. We found another room at Hotel Green  and ate there – Charlie had farmers breakfast – potatoes and fried onion topped with melted cheese and fresh apple juice. I had chocolate cake and ginger tea. Wander around and booked our bus ticket back to Delhi.
Later we went for a walk, trying to find TCV, the Tibetan Children’s Villages above McLeod Ganj. TCV offers education and accommodation to nearly 2000 refugee children. Charlie had worked in Leh with a similar refugee school and he wanted to make contact. We climbed into the foothills of the Himalayas, through huge pine trees, with the rhododendrons just finishing, never quite sure we were going the right way. After about two hours we came down scree to the back of the school. A boy guided us through the hostels,  where children of all ages live in the village. 

We meet the director but Charlie’s colleague Liz is away in Delhi. 

Even the taxi back down the ordinary road took us ages to get back to the hotel, then suddenly

thunderstorms and pouring rain! 

Getting back to our room we found a monkey had broken in! We had forgotten to close the windows…and it had stolen all our biscuits and crisps and tried eating soap and tubes of paint! Charlie’s pills were scattered on the floor and it had even eaten into my small sewing kit bag. The guy in reception said didn’t you read the warning about not opening the windows because of the monkeys! 🙈 

Next day we were up early for a walk along the path to the temple: clear light, beautiful scenery, old Tibetan women heading down to pray and turn the prayer wheels. We walked the Kora, the sacred path around the Dalai Lama’s residence, lined with prayer wheels and mani stones carved with the Tibetan mantra Om Mani Padme Hum.

In the afternoon we go up to the waterfall at Bhagsu, past a Hindu temple with a tank full of people swimming and jumping in. 

I laid on the rocks and paddled in the icy Himalayan stream. Charlie sketched while two Tibetan boys watched, then they go skinny-dipping and come out freezing. 

Dinner at the Green again with a power cut, the soup didn’t taste as good and I’m not very hungry due to mountain sickness.

Delhi 2

Up early and took photos along the back roads. Breakfast at Sunset cafe with lots of ginger tea. Give a few familiar beggars some rupees before we left. Then took a taxi to Ajmer to catch the Shabati express to Delhi. Past mountains through flat desert. 

Shared our taxi with a Frenchman who talked rapidly in French about mad Indian drivers and was worried that India had a nuclear bomb. 

We overtook a lorry on a hairpin bend as a bus came towards us up the hill. 

The Shabati express to Delhi was just  food food food…DIY tea and snacks then the waiter whisks away the tray! Then the same again with delicious tomato soup with a cinnamon flavour then a full meal of rice, paneer and dal followed by ice cream…I was so full!  

During the journey I read The Alchemist. 

The train was late into Delhi and we took a taxi  to YMCA. Back in room 364! Very hot!

The next day was Good Friday and also a government holiday so all the travel agents were shut…if fact everything was shut! We end up going to a tourist centre and talk about lots of options to get us up to McCloud Ganj! 

The guy tries to book bus tickets but nothing was available till 25th then suddenly asks his boss to ring and gets us on a bus on the 22nd for 650 rupees…I really wasn’t sure if we’d been ripped off?

Then get an a/c car with a white turbaned Sikh to Humayun's Tomb. I liked it more than the Taj.

Then on to Nizamuddin’s shrine. 

Absolutely amazing…we left our shoes at the entrance and walked through dark, narrow passageways draped with brightly coloured fabrics, the air heavy with the scent of rose petals. 

The passages opened out into a courtyard of cool white marble, the small shrine at its centre, crowded yet strangely calm. Then we walked around to the tank.

    Then on to the  national Museum, with amazing stone carvings,  ancient jewellery from Indus, old textiles and a wonderful gallery of miniatures …monkeys in banana trees. 

    Amazing skies as we drive back to the YMCA. Tandoori chicken and rice. Pack our spare bag full with tablecloths and finish off the evening with beers at Nirulas …just like England! 

 On our last day in Delhi we packed up and caught a riskshaw to the Red Fort It’s a massive open space. 

 The outside walls are more impressive than what’s inside! Very crowded – some bits like the baths are shut off but looked interesting inside with inlaid marble. 

Then another rickshaw  ride through the seething masses up Chandi Chowk…  bikes, rickshaws, people everywhere. Everything is completely rundown. Again just as you imagine but more so! 

 Quite a long way to get up to Khari Baoli spice market which was INCREDIBLE!! Masses of little stalls with spices laid out on trays or small sacks, but at the back huge sacks of spices. 

Go down one dark alleyway when men were continually carrying sacks out on their backs. Difficult to breathe…everyone coughing because of the spice dust in the air! Also soap stalls and pickle stands.  

On the street men sitting around…presumably to carry sacks when needed. A completely chaotic atmosphere. Buy some saffron. The pavements  were completely knackered!

 Get a rickshaw to Jantar Mantar… this ride was probably the most chaotic so far… weaving in and out of the traffic! The air was pretty polluted. Jantar Mantar was very interesting…it looks almost modern but it was TOO HOT …40C at least and we gave up and went  back to the  YMCA to cool off and prepare for our overnight journey to Dharamsala.

 

Pushkar

After a breakfast of fresh fruit, muesli and yoghurt on terrace we set off on the drive to Bagru to visit Dasari Brothers who print for Anoki.

It was much better than other ones we’d already seen. Indigo pits and dyes made with horseshoes in water for a year.

Printing blocks in cardboard boxes. Get some samples and a tablecloth then travel on to Pushkar.

We passed through very flat scrubland. 

All the way  I loved seeing all the brilliantly decorated lorries.

The driver  only nearly hit something once! 

On the road towards Pushkar the landscape started to change past  sand dunes and  villages with straw huts and all the kids walking home from school. 

The Pushkar Palace was fine…the room was small but there was a garden. Garden. 

Wander around in the heat and go for a drink at Venus restaurant…it felt a bit like an Indian Hebden Bridge! 

We sat on the steps and watched the sun set over the lake to the sound of a nearby drum! 

We ate dinner at the Moon Dance Restaurant which seemed to be run almost entirely by kids! All the restaurants in Pushkar are entirely meat and egg free  and there is no alcohol. Charlie ordered a mushroom burger and I had spinach and mushroom enchiladas.

The place was absolutely full of mosquitoes! 🦟

The next day, we got up early-ish and walked around the lake, popping into a couple of temples along the way. Camels were nibbling on leaves. Later, we watched a band go by, with kids riding on camels.

Breakfast was at Sunset Café, with a lovely breeze drifting across the lake. I had a toasted cheese and garlic sandwich, while Charlie went for the “fix breakfast” – fried potatoes, tomatoes, and green pepper. People were heading down to the ghat below. Long turbans were hanging on a tree to dry. I didn’t realize what they were, and then, suddenly a man started wrapping one around his head – finished in a flash! 

We sat in the hotel garden to rethink our plans, borrowing our neighbour’s Rough Guide. Decided to head to Dharamsala instead of Udaipur, hoping to escape the heat. 

I bought some malachite beads. Later, we watched the sunset from the steps outside Sunset Café while getting our hands and feet decorated – then had to sit and wait for it to dry!

Dinner was at Venus: ginger soup, a brilliant veggie sizzler, and an awful veggie Spag Bol. Tidied up our rucksacks and had an early night.

Get up early and head out for a walk via the bus station. Venture into a Shiva temple—downstairs, the air is thick with incense, and a corridor is lined with people praying, ringing bells as they enter. In another temple, I find a statue of an old man wearing glasses. I sit and talk with a holy man who bemoans some of the touristy activities happening on the ghats. At one point, someone is brought in to be dusted with vibhuti. In the dark rooms off the corridor, other holy men go about everyday tasks, washing plates and carrying on quietly.

We climb down to a couple of ghats. At another, we watch a group of men struggling into enormous mauve trousers—later, outside the Sunset Café, we realise they are likely jodhpurs.

We look around a few grotty guest rooms, one with a pleasant courtyard, but in the end settle on Pushkar Inn near the Sunset Café—a large room with a lovely garden. We move our things in and sit, watching the world go by with a large pot of ginger and lemon tea.

Random glimpses of life around us…an old beggar on crutches receiving lemons from a taxi driver, a beautiful woman adorned with jewellery walking past, women in pink and orange washing clothes at the lake, and a few men tying turban cloths back on their heads after washing. The café gives the beggar a coffee.

Later, we see bright orange-clad holy men with patterned turbans. 

I sit reading in the garden all afternoon while Charlie paints. A wedding procession passes by, with women collecting decorated waterpots from a pottery and a band leading the way.

We walk over the bridge at sunset, then go to the Rainbow rooftop restaurant, a forerunner on the Hummus Trail! 

A full moon rises over the lake. 

Dinner was an unforgettable moussaka…a tomato and spinach base, deep-fried aubergine, topped with a potato or chickpea mix, finished with cheese sauce and cheese. One of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten.

I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since.

The next day, Charlie is ill. I get up early and walk around the outskirts of town…lush fields of flowers with brightly coloured, sari-clad women picking flower heads…white daisies, yellow blooms, and fields of pale pink roses…against a backdrop of misty mountains in the distance.

In the garden of Pushkar Inns, small red amaryllis and purple tradescantia line the walls. Banana trees stand at the back, while geese and peacocks strut around. 

Good music playing  all the time!

Later we watch the sunset and then head to Moon Café to see the full moon!

Chilled out most of the time the next day at  Moon Café…breakfast and stayed  till lunch… aubergine and tomato curry. Talk about life and our futures with Della and Pascal. Della says if in doubt chuck it out.

A Nepalese lad recommended the Green Hotel in Dharamsala…

Cool off in our room in the afternoon then try to sort out our train tickets but no luck so go shopping for bangles and trousers and puppets. A boy takes us into his house with a lovely view over the lake to show us all his stock and we buy three.