Getting off the bus in Dharamshala was all in all disappointing, it looked very different to what we expected. A rather big town, full of people, vehicles and very dirty, not at all the picture we had in our minds of the misty mountains of the Himalayas with only few Tibetan Ashrams surrounded by trees.
Luckily we met some other travellers that advised us to take the first bus up to Mc Leod Ganj, the following village 10 kilometres up the mountain. Among them we met Matt, from the French side of Canada.
This is where most of the Tibetans in exile live these days, since the current Tibetan government resides here as well. There are many Tibetans that had to flee from their territory and have been welcomed to live in India..
One tends to think that Tibet is only a small area of China, but if you check in the map you will be surprised of its original size, maybe one quarter of China today. We met a Mexican girl who’s studying Tibetan culture in this area and she told us that still this days many Tibetans are being persecuted and killed in their land. The lucky ones make it to India, walking across the mountains. A monk once told us that the bad karma for all those years when the Tibetans persecuted the Chinese is playing its role. Anyway, there’s no reason to allow such genocide nowadays.
Mc Leod Ganj was another disappointing surprise so to say, at firs sight it was not as picturesque as we were told it was. Following the advice of Judy we took a taxi up to Bhagsu, the next small village after Mc Leod, to the View Cafe Guesthouse, probably one of the nicest places to stay up here. This family run guesthouse is located inside the mountains with a nice view of the hills around. As Judy described the place, ‘nice rooms, friendly people and good food’, and she couldn’t have been more accurate.
Bhagsu is a tiny village on the mountains mainly made by yoga centres, healthy food restaurants, cafes and guesthouses. Its neighbour village Dharamkot is even more calm and charming since no cars reach up there.
The first days were for exploring the place, trying yoga classes till we found a favourite and enjoying the delicious food and good company, especially in the chill out area of View Cafe.
We had the great opportunity to meet the priest of the local Shiva temple here, since he came most evenings for dinner.
After long days of treks and yoga, we’re chilling in the living of the hostel and a guy sat in front of us with his daughter, he looked amiable.
After a good conversation
- So, what you do here?
- I’m a priest
- Priest, wow, what religion?
- Hindu, but religion doesn’t matter, what matters is the essence of religion. It could be Christian, Buddhist or Muslim, the essence of good spirit is the same… I choose Hindu because I like Shiva. He is not a warrior or a miracle god. He is the example of a simple man, who found his place in the mountains. He got really close to nature and handle to be in harmony with it and every man that visited him.
After more stories about Hindu mythology he kindly invited to visit him in the temple. We came along one afternoon and had the pleasure to meet his family. We got to share some chai along with interesting conversations in his meditation room on side of the temple. He was interrupted a couple of times by phone calls from a new born baby father, to get the horoscope for his baby from the priest’s book, a pretty encrypted one!
It’s remarkable the amount of Israelis that come to Bhagsu and Dharamkot, in every restaurant we were almost the only non-Israelis, and even the locals speak Hebrew, always satisfying the customers’ needs. Many go there just to smoke up, others to experience more the culture.
We met Siv and Hadas, a nice couple from Tel Aviv with good environmental perspectives. A rainy afternoon was good timing for a cooking course, were Siv, Hadas and Martin learned ten northern Indian specialities that were delighted in the evening by many guests of Cafe View. .
The main target in Dharamshala was to find an interesting project in which we could contribute with some volunteer work. So we checked all the NGOs in the area but all we were offered to do was to teach English to Tibetans. This sounded interesting but since many foreigners come all year round to teach English we wanted to find something different. .
Garbage is a massive issue in India, which inspired us some ideas on how to start cleaning up some places.
We checked in the Tibetan Environmental Office and they gave us Jody’s phone number, suggesting us we should get in touch with her for some ‘Waste management’ project.
The day after, we got to her place and a friend of her told us she was ‘cleaning garbage bags in the river’. We had no idea what to expect and suddenly this cute English girl showed up to explain us about her NGO ‘Mountain Cleaners’.
Jody is from England and she came to India first time one year ago. She loved the place and it’s people but couldn’t stand the it’s dirtiness. A bit like us, she tried to find an organisation in which to volunteer but since she found nothing she created her own, way to go! Mountain Cleaners started by cleaning up Triund, a famous trek in the area.
After the success of the activities and some recognition from Indian environmental organisations, MC was called by the government of Chamba district to come and ‘clean’ the place during a massive pilgrim.
This pilgrim takes place during September, more than 500.000 people hike the mountains for three days to a holy lake, to take a holy bath! This freezing lake is 4.500m high… Don’t forget that this is India!
None garbage bin or anything similar was set in the area to receive these people. The pilgrim was going to take place in 15 days.
Even though Jody had been working hard on the preparation of materials and required tools, the project sounded really challenging. MC didn’t count on too many resources, some volunteers, some support from the government (not much really) and Jody's courage and good willingness... We decided to join the adventure, together with Matt, our Canadian friend.
