My 2019 McLeod: what’s good for you?

Have a great day out at Peepal Farm: stray animal
rescue and vegan organic farm

In case you visit magical McLeod Ganj without first attending the planned 60-hour slide night at my place – here are my recommendations and tips for visiting McLeod culled from my time here in 2019.

Some old favourites have retained their rankings this year:

• RK Barbers’ Amid is still the best hair cutter in town in my opinion, with the added value of providing one the best chair massages ever. How did he know I had a sore back and strained lower arms that day?
• Mukti, still an eyebrow artist with his careful re-dying to threading. But he carries a grudge that I get my haircut somewhere else.
• Surinder and the team at Kailwood Guest House dispense the best fruit porridge and support for their guests with taxi bookings, travel advice (thanks for warning me off trying to get to Dalhousie in the snow) and IT repairs. Plus the valley view from the deck is still the best view in town.

Great day out

Visit Peepal Farm on one of their cow cuddling open days, or just drop in to visit this combined animal rescue shelter and organic farm. The owners and volunteers have developed a beautiful spot on used-to-be derelict land where they are nurse and either re-home or adopt dogs, cats and farm animals. Eat vegan snacks and buy some of their great produce. Watch out for posters around town or find them on Facebook. The farm is 13 km from Dharamsala, in Dhanotu Village.

1 wedding, 2 magpies and 3 cups of chai tea = a great day out

Mcleod Ganj suddenly turned on its best sparkling champagne winter on 1 December, the day after I bought a pair of post-mortem rubber gloves for a nun in long-term retreat.  A great time to go for a hike. 

Local Ghadi women in party clothes, Dharamkot

So Julia put aside her studies and translations and I shelve my editing and writing projects and we agreed to meet at the Himalayan Tea House at Dharamkot to walk up to Gallu Falls – likely to be full of water after the torrential rains of the past week.

Long-term blog readers will already know that the HTH serves one of the best aloo paranthas in Himachal Pradesh but I have already started the day with a bowl of Surinder’s banana porridge so I just sip excellent masala chai (#1) while I wait for Julia.

Kareri Lake: Where vultures meditate

Happy hikers but no glacier: R-L Sue, Fiona and I

There’s breakfast making noises around 5 am – always a comfort. But where am I? This isn’t my room in McLeod Ganj. 

That’s because I arrived at the rather splendid Royal Mountain Guest House in the village of Kareri after dark last night with Fiona and Sue; today we are going to hike up and back to fabled glacier-fed Kareri Lake.

We are ready to be up and gone so after eating banana porridge and chai while seated primly on the brocade three-piece suite in my ballroom size room, we do ridiculous stretches in the dawn courtyard then jump into a tiny battered Maruti to bounce up the hill for 15 minutes. Judder past the local school that Fiona and Sue and the Pencil Tree mob support, past a wedding Maruti studded with marigold blossoms and stop at the empty momo carts at the bridge over the rushing mountain river. 

A holiday with His Holiness – part 2

We can't wait to get through the TIPA gate

“My students tell me they aren’t coming to class tomorrow because His Holiness is opening the new TIPA building,” Cathy discloses over mushroom pizza at the Om Hotel café.

It’s a scoop. We can’t miss this. The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) is just up the road from Kailwood Guest House, where Cathy – who is teaching pre-intermediate English to a disparate group of Tibetans, Bhutanese and a Lao monk with an inappropriate nickname – and Leonie and I are staying in McLeod Ganj.

The next morning I race back up the hill from depositing a bag of malas to be blessed at the main temple [see part 1], and Leonie and I step off the bottom of the Kailwood stairs into a swift river of people heading up the road to TIPA.

“Do you think they know too?” jokes Leonie as we are swept up by the well-dressed crowd, striding with purpose up the hill. 

A holiday with His Holiness – part 1

The snow lion flag of Free Tibet and the barred flag for united Tibetan Buddhism hang together, showing how
intertwined are the country, the people and the faith.

Clip-clop, clip-clop.

Behind me on the dawn-quiet street in the middle of McLeod Ganj, two mules, no mule driver, dodge the ever-present shaggy street dogs and trot past intent on their own business.

I am intent on my pre-dawn business too:  if I can get down the steep hill to the reception of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s office near the main temple before seven am, and deposit the small bag of malas (rosaries) and little statues from me and my Buddhist friends, there’s a chance HHDL will bless these items if he has an audience scheduled.

Tibetan grandma, mother and grandson
wear their finest to see the Dalai Lama

And later this morning, eighty-five-year-old HHDL will open the newly renovated hall at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts back up the hill, so if I want to go to that event, and then onto work (two kilometres further down the hill – it’s a mountain town after all), I’m going to have to get a wriggle on.

Medical benefits - the traditional Tibetan way

My beautiful friend in the Men-Tsee-Khang waiting room

“You’ve got sore knees,” says the Tibetan traditional doctor.

“How did you know that?” I ask amazed.

I had literally taken just one confident step into the consulting room – how could he diagnose that I’ve had newly and unusually swollen and sore knees starting 10 days ago, just the week before I left for India?

Mountains! Mountains! (And moochers)

The Mont Blanc Moochers have been excited by the thought of walking in the Mont Blanc (referred to from here as “MB”) region since late last year when we planned it a the top of the Kangaroo Point cliffs, though we are not over-optimistic about the level of fitness of we four mature ladies. Hence the Facebook Messenger group name. 

How many ways do I like the Cinqueterre?

Off to have a swim at Manarola

This 30 km stretch of north-west Italian coast - a world-heritage listed tourist magnet - is notorious for piazzas packed to the gills with global day trippers, overpriced beer and heaving masses of Chinese tourists. But.....

Great days in Grasmere

At Thorney How: ready for those hills

There are so many dreadful ways of spending the May Bank Holiday in this tourist mecca village in the Lake District: trying to get a car park within 4 km of the town; standing in a long long line at the Famous Gingerbread Shop; standing in another line to visit Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage only to find that it is being renovated within an inch of its life in time for the 2020 bicentary and all you can see are container offices, scaffolding and hoardings; being charged $8 for a dreadful English coffee....

Offa-long the Dyke #5: Kington to Knighton

The last day of the hike. I wake up feeling a bit tired (nothing to do with the red wine, of course) and trip down the precipitous stairs to Adam’s excellent breakfast, eaten amid the trays and drawers and crates of coloured threads and yarns and dyes, next to the sewing machine. The electronic spinning wheel is somewhere in the corner.

We walk away from the ODP down into cloudy Kington because the Friday market is on. The market ladies organise to fill our water bottles from the corner bakery where for the first time we meet a lot of other hikers, probably because the sandwiches are home made and the coffee is actually good! 

Offa-long the Dyke #3: Pandy to Hay-on-Wye

Judy Moreland of Ty Clwdd turns out to be a major benfactress of hikers. By the time we leave her comfy B&B, she has organised a local taxi to take our bags to Hay, fed us an enormous breakfast, provided massive cheese and pickle and tuna mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch, and given us advice on a handy short cut to get to the top of Hatterall Ridge.

Offa-long the Dyke #4: Hay-on-Wye to Kington

We almost have to be dragged kicking and screaming back on to the ODP; we love Hay so much we don’t want to leave. From the fresh berries and yogurt at La Fosse, to turmeric-flavoured sheep’s milk ice cream at Shepherds, to trawling the Thursday market for second-hand scarves and fresh welsh cakes - how can we leave this behind?

Eventually, we peel off our reluctance and get back on our path because this sunny day is leading us across green hills and rolling valleys and fields once we have come out on to the open after following the high path above the Wye under the trees.

Offa-long the Dyke #2: Monmouth to Pandy

Up at 6 am and we work round each other well in the tiny twin room at the back of the Mayhill. There’s a lovely view out of the breakfast room window past Lidl and over the bridge into Monmouth’s old grey stones. The view from this table must make it the most popular because the seats are far more worn and saggy than any of the other five tables in the little room where we eat a massive hot breakfast and chat to the breakfast cook.