Walk to Triund

Apologies for the loooong delay between posts, its basically been down to a combination of limited access to broadband, a routine of study with nothing interesting to report on and a few other obstacles. However, I have scrounged around and found a few nice pictures from a recent walk to Triund. Triund is an alpine meadow about 1000m in altitude above McLeod Ganj. The walk takes about 3 hours (or so...our group was a little lesiurely in their approach) to get up to an altitude of around 2900m. Me and another aussie decided that that was too easy, and so dashed up to the "snow line" about another 90 min round trip which gets you up to about 3200m. It was misty, but very nice. Enjoy the pictures by clicking here.

The Dalai Lama's New Year Teachings

There has been a break from school whilst everyone makes the daily pilgrimage crammed onto jeeps up to the Dalai Lama's temple in McLeod Ganj for his annual New Year Teachings.

The daily routine is to catch a jeep up just before 7am and return on the jeep at around 4pm. The actual teachings are from 9:30-11:30 and 1:00-3:30pm, but one has to be there pretty early to reserve a spot and then each day defend it from the marauding hordes of westerners and Tibetans who cram into the Temple square to listen to His Holiness teach. In theory, the westerners are reserved the northern side which is under cover, whilst the Tibetans get the main cobbled square (no cover) and the monks and nuns the terraces around the temple proper. In practice, it gets kind of mixed up - especially on the last few days when the heavens opened up and it belted down for three days running.

For some reason, I was a little ambivalent about attending the teachings, thinking that I should instead stay home and study some more. How glad I am that I came to my senses and went along. Despite a little cold, aches in back and knees, tiredness and a nice little attack of diarrhoea and vomiting on the rest day (ah, the vomiting and general unwellness is a trip down memory lane to my drinking days!) I have been greatly inspired by such a long stretch of time in the presence of such a holy being.

In particular what stays in my mind is the way His Holiness enters and leaves the temple. Led by a small procession of monks and accompanied by a detail of security guards, His Holiness marches down from his bungalow and out the gates, beaming delightedly at everyone as if he has never had so much fun in his life. He constantly disrupts the flow of his escorts by stopping to speak to people or wave - they have quite a job anticipating his next move. There is a lovely sense of discord between the purposeful and serious movement of his procession and His Holiness's spontaneity which beautifully underlines His Holiness's constant emphasis on giving compassion, care and attention to those you encounter.

Equally powerful for me is the way that His Holiness then settles onto his cushion and delivers succinct and clear commentaries on difficult philosophical points, occasionally peppered with the odd anecdote or word of personal advice. On the final days, he adopts yet another role as the leader of rituals that invoke certain emanations of Buddha to confer blessings to the crowds. Serious and focused - he led the rituals punctuated at the appropriate times by claps of thunder, hailstorms and lightning. Coincidence or not, it certainly left one feeling a little bemused about the possibility of there being some connection.

Finally, being crammed into a small space with many people from around the world for 10 days also produced encounters with many delightful people from all walks of life and with all different kinds of motivation and connection to Buddhism. Thanks so much to all I met for the wonderful time shared during the teachings.

Unfortunately, no cameras are allowed in the Temple grounds which means no pictures of this event. So, you'll have to either come to India or go and see His Holiness when he visits near you (for Perth that time is in early June!). Go along if you are able, you won't regret it.

Norbulingka

My little town of Sidhpur is best known for the Norbulingka, the replica of the Dalai Lama's summer palace that has been built here to house, foster and display Tibetan culture and art. The Norbulingka runs courses in Thangka painting (the paintings of Tibetan Buddhist deities and mandala) as well as doing various other crafts. It has a small doll museum showing off Tibetan cultural dress and a very nice shop where you can buy beautiful things, admittedly at rather steep western prices. The Norbulingka is also involved in recycling projects and other social causes. The main reason to come is simply to enjoy the beauty of the buildings, fountains and gardens, away from the dirt and mess of surrounding India. Here are some pics.

Happy Losar

Happy Losar (Tibetan New Year) to everyone! Or...as one poor unfortunate Indian signwriter would have us believe...Happy Loser...

I usually don't pick on Indian signwriters...there are usually far too many opportunities to really make it fun - but given the festive fun spirit of the new year celebrations and the fact that the above banner was displayed proudly accross the busy central square of McLeod Ganj - it was too much too resist.

Losar was celebrated with a dinner at one of my friend's from the course. He and his mother (who is also here) know a few monks quite well and one whom they sponsor is related to our teacher's husband. So our teacher was also there...but we only talked shop for a while. She is the one in the blue coat below.

The Tibetan New Year seems to mainly consist of time spent with family, eating, drinking, lighting fireworks and playing tibetan dice games. More traditionally, it is a time to clean the house and everything else to prepare for the new year - so it is a very busy time in most households. My teacher informed me that one tradition is also to get up very early on the morning of the first day of the year and to go to the nearest well and take the first waters of the year. She said some people even get up at 1am or 2am to be absolutely the first.

I did not see my Tibetan neighbours downstairs nip down to the stream early on Losar morning, but one couldn't miss the dulcet tones of loud Tibetan rock pumping out at 5:45am - courtesy of the speaker they had set up outside! This was apparently for the benefit of us all - and I must admit the novelty of the celebrations starting, rather than finishing, early in the morning put a smile on my face.

In any case, I was due up at 6am anyway to head off to Tushita Meditation Centre in McLeod to meet up with a Perth couple I know who are helping out there. Not to meditate of course - this morning was reserved for hiking....in the SNOW! We set off at around 8:45 (it took me about an hour and a half get there via a couple of buses and a few walky bits) and started through the pine forest on a great old cobblestone road that is so washed out that one is really rock hopping rather than walking.

This first section takes about 30-40min before you reach Shiva "Cafe" and where the trail forks to Triund (an alpine meadow which is about another 800m above) and the "Waterfall" which is at the end of a 45 min walk around the mountain the other way. Today we chose the Waterfall because there was a special lunch at midday and because the weather had a habit of closing in just after that and descending from Triund in the snow/hail/sleet along a rocky/icy path was probably not the go.

This turn off was also the main snow line. The walk to the waterfall traversed around the mountain through low forest with ferns, grasses and trees - including beautiful red blooming rhododendrons. The trail is a rather low one by local standards, but a quick check of the altimeter in my watch disclosed that at times we were just peaking over the height of our great Mt Kosciusko. What a joke that mountain is - well at least compared to these Himalayas - because if felt like we were just strolling along an ordinary bush track - aside from the fact that there was at least a foot of snow for three snow deprived Aussies to delight in. Snow, snow, snow - nice and dry and firm underfoot. White and glowing and fluffy and fun, fun, fun. We had also picked up a canine travel companion a little earlier (this is usual for these walks as these dogs know that there is usually a picnic at the end of it - not to mention the fun of the whole trek) and after toying with names such as Benji and Lassie finally settled on "Foxy". Foxy took great delight in chasing, biting and eating any rolling snow from underfoot (or the odd snow ball which may have been thrown by the aforesaid snowstruck trio). (Note that I have since found out that "Foxy" is in fact the local shop owner's dog and is in fact "Charlie". Apologies to Charlie for the temporary name change).

The waterfall itself is actually a series of cascades. On a summer day one can rock hop up the ravine and see many different cascades, but when we arrived the rocks were covered with a foot of snow and so the rock hopping was a little tricky. Still, we managed to climb a little way up and found a picnic spot on the snow next to the stream. Foxy (aka Charlie) got his payoff (chocolate cake) and we trudged back to Tushita - running the last section when I heard that they were putting on pizza for lunch.

Tushita is a meditation centre established by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche which runs introduction to Buddhism courses and provides space for retreatants - both Tibetan and Western. It sits a 20min walk above McLeod Ganj central square in the pine forest and the original building was a large British bungalow which later became the home of one of the His Holiness the Dalai Lama's main teachers before being acquired by Lama Yeshe. As many holy beings have visited the somewhat dilapidated original building has been retained - but now work is due to commence to demolish and replace the building. Only one room is to be retained - that of Lama Yeshe who passed away in 1983 but whose room is still kept as it was then arranged to this day. Given all this, after lunch I snapped a few pics of the grounds of Tushita and the old building - perhaps I'll be back one day to take the 'after' shots too.

I also borrowed a few pics from my friends who are staying there. Some beautiful scenes around Tushita here and some nice pics of the Tushita monkeys here. The monkeys are cute, but also noisy, greedy and sometimes a little aggressive. In the pics of course they are cute - so maybe best to leave it at that and not go into the rock throwing, air pistol shooting (to scare, not injure) and general cursing that is frequently directed at them.

Click here for pics of walk. tushita and monkeys.

Otherwise the holiday and rest of this week was pretty good. Studied a bit and also got sucked into some Akira Kurosawa samurai movies on DVD that my housemate borrowed from a friend. After we took turns viewing them via headphones on my crappy laptop, we gravitated upstairs to a neighbour's flat and had a couple of movie nights watching them on his flatscreen TV. The neighbour is away, but fortunately left me his key to keep an eye on the place. Mission accomplished - I can report that the DVD player is definitely still working, as is his cable TV - which I noticed had a great selection of FA Cup highlights. Did not try his espresso machine - but it seems to be intact. Ah, the deprivation over here is something else!

Week Two

Still going...a week of fun and frustration...but overall very good. The course is a lot of fun, though by the end of the week I'm a bit tired from all the concentration. Hmmm, maybe it IS better to be back at work. :o)

This week there's been quite a bit more snow up on the Himalayan peaks behind us. The weather was nice and clear early on, but we have had more snow (in the mountains) and rain (down here) later in the week. The mountains seem to radically affect the weather (not surprisingly) with cloud forming mid morning and rising up to cover the mountains. Then, later in the evening the clouds clear to reveal snowfall up above or sometimes also cascade down giving a little rain. You can feel the cold radiate off the peaks when more snow has fallen, and the streamflow increases quite quickly as there is a little more snowmelt. Click here for some pics.

Thosamling itself is at 1200m, Dharamsala probably about 1350m and McLeod Ganj around 1800m. You can see the general layout as viewed from my house, with Thosamling the yellow building on the left in the foreground, the main town of Dharamsala in the centre and His Holiness's residence just to the left of the big radio masts in the centre/rightof the picture. The rest of McLeod Ganj is tucked behind that ridge. Hmmm, viewing the photo on the blog, I can't SEE the (damn) radio masts...... so maybe just look for the first bump to the right of the town and you are in the right vicinity.


The valley itself extending south is itself quite mountainous with many hills and sub-valleys. Mostly the sky in this direction is a litle hazy and so the landscape is a little difficult to make out. Hopefully I'll get around to some of the monasteries that are scattered around this area sometime. Here is a pic of at sunset after the rain has swept past us and down into the valley proper.

Week One

Just completed the first week of the course. We have a very nice Tibetan lady as our teacher and a class of 13 people. The class includes 3 western monks, one western nun and includes students from Finland, USA, Korea, France, Israel, Brazil and Indonesia. We are all together from 9 to 11:30 for a formal class and then break up into pairs and spend 2 hours with a conversation partner. So far, it has mainly been pronunciation and some simple words. Tibetan pronunciation is a bit frustrating. It looks fairly simply at first glance, but they have distinctions between sounds that most of us are pretty much unable to hear. The mp3 recorder I decided to invest in has already come in handy in getting these sounds a little more correct, though there is no substitute for practice, practice and then some more of the same. Encouragingly, most of us notice at least a little improvement in our 'ear' where previously indistinguishable sounds almost magically sound 'different' as time goes on. Long may this continue, but either way, at the moment I am still having a lot of fun.

I have decided to share my 2 room apartment with a Korean American student, who was having trouble finding a suitable room to rent. We'll pool our resources a little both practically and perhaps with Tibetan practice and hopefully we should make some gains. Of course, there is a little less privacy, but I like to practice being adaptable - good for the mind - and I don't think that this will be too much of a challenge. If it is, then he (or me) are out the door!

Walk to Thosamling

My apartment is about an 8 minute walk to Thosamling Institute where the course is being held. Click here for a selection of the nicer parts of that walk (left out the dirt road, dodgy buildings and mangy, yet friendly dogs).

Apparently, the creek crossing will not be possible once the monsoon starts, so the journey will probably take twice as long via a bridge further downstream.

Thosamling is basically set within an area of fields on the edge of Sidhpur, the local village that is home to the Norbulingka, one of the main Tibetan cultural centres in the area. The Norbulingka is modelled on the Dalai Lama's summer palace in Lhasa and has artisans training and working on all types of Tibetan art and craft. Now I've got the photos firing, I'll do a walk through sometime and do a post on the Norbulingka. Its very beautiful.

Fitting the Apartment

So, one day to go before the course and I have found an apartment and fitted it out with the bare necessities. My flat is "brand new" by which one means, it is left pretty much as one would leave a building site with concrete dust everywhere and marks and stains on the concrete floor. No hot water system and no curtains on this ground floor flat. Still, the nun at Thosamling assured me that it was one of the best she had seen, so I went to town - literally - to get everything I needed.

A few days later it was done, curtain rods drilled in place - a frustrating task especially with a blunt drill bit and precious little in the way of drilling skills - a hot water system "installed" ($80 for the system, $5 for the bolts to hold it in place and $5 for the hoses) - just drill the bolts to the wall, chuck it on, screw on the hoses and plug it in. Mmmm hot water - out of a bucket on a cold stained concrete floor - I feel sooo decadent. Speaking of decadence, I have to also confess that in a moment of weakness I lashed out and bought a toaster. Makes the dodgy bread a little tastier though.

Otherwise, I was surprised at how much I had to buy and how empty my apartment feels. OK, so I only have one piece of 'real' furniture - a coffee table - but I feel I have been flat out buying stuff since I moved in. Glad I have the table though - it it weren't for that, the folding mattress I bought as the living room couch and a tin chest for my clothes, I would never have been able to get up high enough to drill in the brackets for the curtains.

Living in full view of others does have its advantages. One of my neighbours is Jangchub, and 8 year old Tibetan boy who poked his face against the window a few times before plucking up the courage to drop in and stand around and watch the crazy Injee (Tibetan name for "English") squat down and scrub his entire concrete floor with a bucket and chux wipe to get the dust off (it worked though). Today, LM and I put Jangchub through his paces as our Tibetan teacher this afternoon as the final drilling was completed. He is a little shy, but soon got the hang of it - although remained rather bemused by our efforts. Unfortunately since the time of writing this draft, Jangchub has done "house changing" and gone up to McLeod Ganj to live at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts ("TIPA"). It was hard to tell whether he was happy or sad about it. I think maybe a little apprehensive, but ok.

Delhi to Dharamsala

Had a great time in Delhi.

The weather was nice and I spent the days there mostly catching up with lots of old friends. One of these was Angu, a Sikkimese girl who is the daughter of one of my close friends in Perth. I had met her previously in Perth when she visited and so it was lovely to see her again. She was fantastic to us and helped us with everything as well as being bright, fun and non-stop energy to boot. She also supplied me with many things that I would need in my flat in Dharamsala (blankets, sheets, mugs, cooker, kettle, etc... etc... !!) The perfect person to distract us from the pollution and hassle that Delhi can offer.

Angu took care of all the bargaining with auto rickshaw drivers and working out how to get to all the places I needed to go. Out of the way places, like a home in West Delhi to deliver a wedding present. The delivery went well and I had a really nice time chatting with their family. Despite my best intentions, the threat of a tummy bug that evening prevented me actually getting to have a look at the wedding, but luckily for LM and I it never got really serious and to my relief I was not struck down with any serious ailment on my first day in Delhi - how embarrasing would THAT have been.

LM and I also caught up with a group from our Buddhist Centre who had just returned from a 3 week pilgrimage. Was great to see them all. Finally, caught up with a friend who is an Australian nun and LM and I caught the bus up with her to Dharamsala.

Arrived in Dharamsala at about 6am. It was dark and pretty cold, but not nearly as bad as I had expected. After promising to try the "luxury" Volvo bus, we ended up deciding we couldn't be bothered to go down to the bus station to catch it so just got the "Potala bus" from Majnukatilla. It worked out fine, though the Potala bus gets pretty cold and is impossible to sleep on. Hmmm, maybe not COMPLETELY fine, though actually after catching an hour's sleep this morning I feel great this evening.

Thosamling nunnery is really nice. More details to follow, but basically the place has been set up by a Dutch nun with help from her friends and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She has done a great job. The place is set in the middle of some fields and the grounds are not yet complete, but the buildings are beautifully done and there is a really nice group of nuns and others there.

Perth to Delhi

Still not quite sure how this page is going to work. Being a little embarrassed about the whole thing, I think at this stage, whilst I'll try to keep it interesting and use it mainly for posting photos - I'll also use it as a place to put down some trip notes for future reference.

First thing, the internet check in thing is pretty cool if you need to meet someone part of the way along the journey. LM, a friend from Perth who is also doing the course was visiting family in Singapore and we wanted to arrange to sit near each other on the Singapore=Delhi leg. So, log into the net, select your seat and email your travel companion to let them know what to choose. Of course, it didn't work out perfectly, but we were a few seats away from each other - so not too bad.

OK, after my previous visit to Changi Airport left me somewhat underwhelmed after all the testimony I have heard about how great it is, I had a better explore this time. Free internet, not bad. But the rest of the 'glamour shopping experience' didn't really grab me. Sat around near the orchid garden and chatted to a great English family of Greek extraction. One of the lads was an Arsenal fan - but otherwise they were great. Also met a nice Indian guy who was studying agribusiness near Brisbane. He'd been working down in Griffith, so had just driven the 1300km to Brisbane, jumped on the midnight horror to Singapore and had a 11 hour stop over at Changi. But he was still smiling.

Another who was smiling after a long journey was a lama from the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism: Lama Tsewang Sedar Rinpoche. He had been to the USA to teach for three months and was returning to Bhutan. Lama Tsewang had been flying San Francisco-Hong Kong-Singapore-Delhi and then had a 15 hour stopover until he was due to fly to Kathmandu. Instead, we arranged for him to come with us to Majnukatila (the Tibetan Settlement in Delhi) and stay over in a guesthouse. Negotiated passport control, after explaining to a few officials that a Bhutanese citizen doesn't need a visa and then went through customs. They didn't even look at our slips but made Lama Tsewang scan his bags and threatened to charge him duty on a pile of things that had been offered by his students for his monastery in Bhutan. Slight discrimination there, although the fact that Lama Tsewang was packing 70kg of check in luggage and 30kg of hand luggage probably didn't help him. :o)

The taxi was quite a sight, as was our mountain of luggage that we dragged into Majnukatila and piled on the street whilst the search for a guesthouse began. LM went looking for some "recommended" places, but it soon became clear that the place was packed and that, at 10pm at night, we were in the "beggars can't be choosers" category. I found a room at Sera Jey Guesthouse whilst minding the bags, but LM came back empty handed. It was either my 'magic touch' or the fact that I was standing about 3 metres from their door! It looked like there were no other rooms available, but a Lama without a room in Majnukatila soon attracted help from two very kind Tibetan girls who scoured around and found another at the Yak Guesthouse. The benefits of being a "Lama" hey? The rooms we got weren't their best, but at 250Rs (a little over $8) per twin room - there are no great regrets.

The Plan

This year is dedicated to the study of Tibetan language at Thosamling nunnery in Sidhpur, a little village just 30 min by taxi down the mountain from Mcleod Ganj (Upper Dharamsala), the home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.


The course begins on 29 January 2007 and runs through to mid December. There are breaks for His Holiness' teachings (in March and later in the year) as well as a break sometime in June or July. All in all, this course runs for 10 months of the year and the general schedule is 4 hours of classes and conversation each Monday to Friday.

Dharamsala is tucked up in the foothills against the Himalayan range and is about a 12 hour bus ride north of New Delhi. Mcleod Ganj was an old British summer hill station and sits on a little 'saddle' or ridge amongst pine tree forests at around 1800m and there lives a large Tibetan community as well as tourists and some locals. Lower Dharamsala is a larger town that is placed closer to the base of northern foothills on the edge of the Kangra Valley which abuts the Himalayas at this point.

Sidhpur is just below Lower Dharamsala and slightly further to the east along the Himalayan range. It is a semi rural string of villages and houses which is home to the Norbulingka, a Tibetan cultural centre which has been built as a replica of the Dalai Lama's summer residence in Lhasa, Tibet.

But more about all this when I actually get there!