Advertisement
Published: November 10th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Kangra train station
This wasnt quiet the busy train station we thought it would be! Mcleod Ganj
We left Dehli on the overnight train, an interesting but not half bad experience. After a night of broken sleep we arrive in Pathenkot for a dal breakfast and catch the toy train across the Kangra Valley. The 5 hour train journey was a few hours longer than the bus but it is much safer than the bus and the views are spectacular so we spent the 15 rupees and went for it! 20pence well spent I think. We arrived in Kangra expecting to find a town and bus station, instead we find tiny windy mountain roads and the town miles away up a mountain! How on earth will we make it to Dharamsala? Sheer luck - a bus arrives and we squeeze on, hanging on tightly we ascertain from the conductor that this bus is going to Dharamsala! Result! At the Dharamsala bus station the McLeodGanj bus us waiting for us- perfect. 24 hours of travelling could have been a nightmare but someone must have been smiling down on us as we fell from train to train to bus with perfect connections and it all workin out great. So tired though!
McLeod is an amazing place, home to
the Dalai Lama it is a pilgrimage destination for people from all over the world. We feel like have left India behind and come to a little Tibetan village in the himalayas! Most days we do the 3 k hike up the mountain to our tabla lesson. Taught by a little elderly Indian man in his music school Rich and I have fallen in love with the drums! Shame they are too big to travel with. I can't imagine squeezing onto buses with the two back packs, day bags, and a pair of drums! We'll meet our teacher again in Goa though as he heads south to teach for the winter.
The afternoons have been spent learning Hindi. Namaste, aap kaise hain? We pay about £1.50 each per hour for a private lesson and our teacher Rita is really sweet and very patient with us. We feel like we are at school having two hours of Tabla, one hour of Hindi and over an hour of hiking between our guest house and the two villages where we have our lessons.
You can learn almost anything here. There are meditation retreats which Rich and looked into, intense 10 day
courses are the introduction... No alcohol, no exercise, no talking, no music or any form of communicating for 10 days!!! That was a big fat NO! Rich can't go an hour without talking let alone 10 days. We will be going on a day trek up to the snowline tommorrow with a group of people we have met here. There is a really lively group of backpackers staying in the guesthouses around us. They find a reason to party almost every night, and the owners of the guesthouse above ours love it. They sing and play the bongos for everyone!
The thing that gets me everyday about this place is the scenery. You will be wondering around the little markets, going to lunch or just sitting on the balcony and there are snow topped mountains in the background. They are stunning!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 13; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0236s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb