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?

Library Life

Norbu from the Tibetan translation department stops in front of me, “Rose-La, what is cognitive empathy? It is the final term I need to translate for a psychology book I am working on with Geshe-La.” 

Loving the library life

Up till that moment I was dreaming in the sun trying to warm up after a morning at my editor’s desk in the cold box of my office at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. But I can help Norbu - his team and the English publications team of the LTWA are the reason I am here working even as the temperature plummets.

All other foreign travellers are leaving for Goa, for Karnataka, anywhere warmer than Dharamsala.

But I am here till Christmas because I promised my charming boss, LTWA director Geshe Lhakdor that I would work for him for three months. And because I like my team.

Who’s in the team in this higgledy piggledy labyrinth of Tibetan-style buildings, alleyways and narrow steps?

Colour and shadow in Amritsar: 24 hours in the Sikh capital

Crossing the border from Himachal Pradesh into Punjab, the haze in the

sky increases to become brown-grey smog; shadowy bullock carts loom out of the murk and then fade away as a truck belching diesel takes its place. 

We are travelling to Amritsar on the weekend that smoke from the burning crop stubble in the Punjab has combined with vehicle emissions in Delhi to create an air pollution horror story in global media. Will the murk and gloom affect our view of the Golden Temple, we wonder? 

Five hours after leaving McLeod Ganj - our temporary hill town home where the smoke has obscured our views of the Dhauladar Range for the last two weeks - the Suzuki Swift taxi drops us in a huge multi-storey car park around lunchtime. Driver Anu herds us down to ground level, and points us off into the light traffic with vague instructions about finding our way through Amritsar’s heritage pedestrian precinct.

The colour of the city hits us, bright against the dun pewter sky: deep red sandstone pavers and colonial buildings; brilliant citrus sequinned fabric lengths flow down the front and side displays of shops and onto the women around us; primary coloured turbans bob on the heads of grave bearded gentlemen; polished brass pots on the bikes delivering milk to the dhabas (breakfast and lunch shops). 

The people speak: electioneering in the world’s largest democracy

[NB most of this post is only really relevant to the downtrodden exploited victims of a corrupt political oligarchy, that is, the average Queensland voter.]

I don't know what it says but voters stuck in India's usual
dreadful traffic congestion will have plent of time to read
all the political messaging.

A state election is looming in a largely rural state with a small for size population; the death grip on power has see-sawed between the two main parties for the last few terms; both large parties are despised and possibly corrupt but they are throwing everything into their campaigns; the smaller parties and independents are struggling to match the big money promises. 

Sound familiar?

But it isn't Queensland - it is Himachal Pradesh which is going to the polls on Thursday 9 November. And the state election campaign has taken over the airways, every chai stall, every village, and every roadway. 

La La Ladakh

Author's note: there are no photos loaded to illustrate this post because of Ladakh's woeful lack of internet capacity. See point 3 of this article. Sorry about that.

Simon: What are you going to write about Ladakh?

Me: I just can’t get my head round this place.

The reason I can’t work out my reaction to Ladakh, and its main city Leh, is because of its weird juxtapositions.

Peace and war

Ladakh is where the nuclear-armed forces of India, Pakistan and China stare each other down over a disputed border. The uneasy truce often descends into stone throwing, armed incursions and threats of annihilation.