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Published: April 7th 2014
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Hours rush into days – days merge into a new place or hours on the road in between places.
Today - 12 hours on the road from Shimla to Rishikesh, yesterday Shimla, the day before 12 hours on the road between McLeod Ganj and Shimla – I don’t know the dates.
McLeod Ganj is the physical and spiritual home of the Dalai Lama. He was in residence when we walked around the temple but you would never have known. It was the quietest Buddhist temple complex I have ever been to in my life and I feel it is the most important but unlike when I was in Lhasa or at Labrang with the cymbals crashing, the monks in yellow hats, the air thick with the smoke and smell from incense burning, constant chanting, the great long horns being blown and thousands of people prostrating or circumnavigating temples, lanes and shrines – this temple is empty but for about 5 people. It felt odd. A little like a living museum – I can't say anymore. The town, in contrast is alive . There are 2 main roads which are flanked on either side with stalls and shops
selling all manner of Tibetan and Kashmiri things – Tibetan jewellery, embroidered shawls and pashminas, bowls, Kashmir pape mache boxes, hair pins, silver and stones, internet cafes and restaurants. My day was spent at the temple in the morning and bartering in the afternoon. I've left it too late to write about - it seems so long ago.
Yesterday – In Shimla.
Shimla can be nothing but up and down hundreds of steps everywhere, all day and night. It is built into both sides of the hillside and is the old Hill Station Summer resort of the Brits when they needed to get away from the heat of Delhi in the 1800’s.
We arrived after an 11 hour drive up and down the hillsides from McLeod Ganj to be stopped at the border between Punjab and Himachal Pradesh where a cheery border guard mounted the steps to the truck to ‘check’ inside (it’s called curiosity) and when he came face to face with George who was unfortunately on the front seat – when he asked where we were from, George answered Germany, the Guard responded with one word ‘Hitler’
then laughed and jumped off.
Shimla is huge and sprawling – our 'Hotel White' faces North and Maria's cold in the night so she wore most of her clothes and had the room blanket. The shower is a bucket and jug. I’m used to it after my house in Sheffield - not the bucket but the cold.
We were up at 6am and out by 7am – large groups of boys were already playing cricket in the square outside the church and the packs of dogs that are everywhere were chasing the even larger packs of aggressive monkeys that actually cover every building and flat space. They’re nasty and spit. Dogs barking, monkies screaming fills the square - people run out of the way. I can see why I have not seen one cat in all this journey – it would not survive out here.
Maria and I just wander in the early morning sunshine up and down endless steps and along and around until we are quite lost so retrace our steps to stand 3 levels below the largest YMCA I’ve ever seen in my life. I shout up to
a man watering flowers to ask if it is open because the gate is padlocked. He sends a young boy down to unlock the gate and we climb endless wrought iron steps up to a level below the main building then up more until we are back in sunlight and have a great view of the city hanging into the hillside as far as the eye can see.
We have a breakfast with a view in the old Iron and glass terrace that joins both wings of the building.
When leaving, we chat to the man who opened the gate for us. He is called Anil and arranges tours for Shimla or up high in to Ladakh and Leh for the people staying here. Maria is asking endless questions, I sit surprisingly quietly alongside.
Later, I meet Anil at 12 for tea, he talks of destiny, the beauty of life and the beauty in a certain way of looking, about spontaneity being the spice of life, how wish and feeling are not the same thing and how physical beauty is an illusion.
I'm in a hill station sitting by the
open windows of the YMCA church Christian church service spoken in Hindi. There is a light breeze and it's shady. I could be anywhere but India.
Anil and I spend the afternoon walking to the Monkey Temple. Shimla looks like litter falling down the hillside in the distance below.
this was entirely written in haste.
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