India (part 2)

Live music at the Green View cafe

After the hike to Triund I ended up hanging out with Julia, Sammy and their friends quite a bit, and had a lot of fun trying out the local restaurants and cafes, including a music night at Green View Café. There was an American woman travelling who was a singer/songwriter so she sang her own amazing songs accompanied by local musicians, who then followed her set with some rock classics. I couldn’t stop laughing at the bizarre situation of listening to a traditional Indian band play Sweet Child of Mine by Guns and Roses in a rooftop café in India while a bunch of random travellers from all over the world sang along. It was a fun night!

I also visite Norbulingka Institute with Noni (who I met on the cooking course). We took two crazy local buses to get there (and back) which felt like a bit of an adventure because I’d been in the same place for weeks and not travelled anywhere. Worryingly (or maybe not given the super winding roads) the bus had God Save Me painted in front of the driver alongside all his religious and lucky charms and talismans. Norbulingka has beautiful gardens and grounds as well as a temple and wokshops where you can see artisans at work. Whilst looking round the top level of the temple we managed to get ourselves locked in when everyone went to lunch! I can think of worse places than a Tibetan Gompa to be locked in but we did have to wait quite a while for someone to find us and get the right keys to let us out! Luckily the walls of the Gompa were beautifully painted with pictures of Buddha and scenes from his life, so there was plenty to look at while we waited to be let out.

Meena feeding a cow at her crystal shop (photo: Julia)

McLeod Ganj / Bhagsu / Dharamkot are a bit like an adult education playground. Whatever type of course you would like to do, you can do it in one of these places, and very cheaply. For a while I’d been feeling like I wanted to do something creative so I did a macramé jewellery making course and a dream catcher making course at Meena’s lovely crystal shop in McLeod Ganj. Meena’s brother and son were the teachers of the courses and each day they welcomed me with a cup of chai from the local chai shop while they chattered away in a mix of Indian/Nepalese/English, which was a delight for my ears!

After staying in McLeod Ganj I moved to a small guest house between Dharamkot and Bhagsu, both of which are small villages full of Israeli travellers. It was a nice change of scenery and I felt like I was in the countryside amongst the hills and trees. I also did 2 x five-day yoga courses at the Himalayan Iyengar Yoga Centre. Without wanting to bore those of you not interested in yoga, I spent the best part of the two weeks learning to stretch my toes and trying to ‘feel’ the skin on the under arch of my foot. It was a great course and a learnt a lot, even if I spent most of the course wrapped up in all my clothes because the weather had turned cold and rainy (very unseasonal for this part of India).

Getting my long life elixir and blessed cake from Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Impromptu teaching from Lama Zopa Rinpoche

After the yoga courses I did an Introduction to Buddhism course at Tushita Meditation Centre. This was a 10-day residential silent retreat that included Buddhist teachings (from an Australian monk) and meditation sessions. The course was fascinating and we were such a mixture of people from all over the world, from different backgrounds and with different interests. Although I hadn’t planned it this way, it was the perfect way to wind down at the end of my trip and have some time for reflection. It also helped that the food was amazingly delicious (I think developed an addiction to the home-made bread and peanut butter). There was also a fantastic library and lots of wild monkeys to keep us entertained. As well as the teaching and meditation sessions, we watched a couple of inspiring and fascinating films about reincarnation (from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective) and an inspirational nun called Tenzin Palmo, who grew up in East London and spent 12 months meditating in a cave in the Himalayas. Unfortunately, I missed Tenzin Palmo’s talk, which took place at Tushita a week or so after I left.

We were lucky enough that Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Spiritual Director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, the organisation that runs Tushita) was staying at Tushita during our course, which meant impromptu teachings, blessings and important visitors passing by. Lama Zopa suffered a stroke about a year ago but is making amazing recovery. He also has the most infectious laugh/giggle (only second to the Dalai Lama’s infectious laugh/giggle) which always sent us all into fits of laughter and smiles whenever we heard him. I’m not sure I can really sum up my experience of the course in words, so you can find out more about the course from another blogger here.

Happy Tushita retreaters!

In hindsight I would have liked a few days after the course finished to chill out and hang out with some of the people I met on the course. Instead, I did some last-minute shopping (but never managed to get my decision-making head on to buy a Tibetan Thangka painting) and headed back to the UK the day after the course finished.

Of course, I’m not one to make things easy for myself so I headed back to the UK for about 24 hours before I hopped on a plane back to Buenos Aires to spend the last two weeks of my travels hanging out with friends and making sure I hadn’t forgotten all of my Spanish!