Street Momos

famous street momos and Tibetan vendor

ruined and faded Thanka painting, Kit Kat still life and sheets on the roof.

 Best lunch ever

 Just in case you forget to honk

 The parking lot Mcleodganj, the healthfood mavin and an ancient bronze Buddha















fragment of tree of auspiciousness and old mandala painting in Delhi

Strong female figure and miniature painting jewel

Ghosts

Temple Dogs Library Dogs Soccer Dogs chasing the ball down the hill, School Dogs, following us through schools

 Last tea with Mahi in the Mcleod Bus station, by station I mean big concrete parking lot.







Ghosts...

When we die, it is like leaving India, you liked it here, but  are ready to leave when the time comes,  the chaos, confusion, the color, it is a little too much.  You do not mind.  When we die it just like leaving India.  But to leave India, you must go to Delhi.  So, after you die, you must take a long bus ride. This is expected, the long transition, even so much that  the Egyptian pharaohs were given supplies of food for the long journey.   

There are many kinds of buses for the dead.  There are Volvo air conditioned buses.  There are Deluxe Buses.  There are Tourist Buses.  There are regular buses for everyone else.  After you die, you may travel on a Volvo Air Conditioned bus for a long time.  It is like crossing the River Styx.  There is Charon, who will pull the boat across the river.  He drives the bus.  The road to Mcleodganj, high up in the hills beneath the snowy peaks of the Dharamdular, is long and very winding.  Winding and narrow, with very steep drops. You are in India, so you will drive on the left hand side of the road, the side next to the steep drop off.

After you die, your bus may be a Volvo Air Conditioned bus with questionable suspension.  It may have a ghost for a driver. It may have a ghost for a driver who is in a very great hurry to get to Delhi.  You may want to take an air sickness bag along.  If you are lucky, If you are lucky there will people you know on the bus.If you have lived a virtuous life, full of service, you will get right off the corner and onto the regular bus to Delhi, with the windows rolled down, with all the people you are familiar with inside.  Or you may have to ride in an air conditioned Volvo bus with bad suspension and a very loud horn. You may wonder what movie they will play on the bus, perhaps  the Avengers. 

The driver is in a  great hurry to get to Delhi, he does not seem to care what side of the road he is driving on, he likes to go as fast as possible, then put on the brakes, then swerve around the hairpin curves.  There are many curves going down the mountain and across the hills. You are very glad you have an air sickness bag.  You may doze off, and wake up to find someone is assigned to sit next to you.  The bus driver may be talking to you in a threatening way. But you are dead, and do not feel so much like moving your collections your brought along to another place on the bus, you maybe very tired.  When you die, and you get on the bus, it feels just like a dream.  That is to say, it feels just like real life.  The hairpin curves are frightening.  The angry bus driver, who is a ghost, does not let you have an extra seat.

If you have led a virtuous life, and find yourself on the regular bus, which travels steadily without lurching from side to side, you may find yourself on an airplane to Paris or Germany.  But if you are on the Volvo bus, with a driver who insists on honking the very loud horn as often as possible, you may find yourself rudely thrown off the bus, with your friends, and your bags of suffering and desire, your collections   of bits of pottery, fragments of prayer flags and  old stories, sitting on the side of the road, beneath the freeway at 5:30 in the morning.  This is just the way it is after you die. 

But eventually, someone, a guide shows up, out of the dusty sunrise, wrapped in a golden capes, to shows you to  to another bus.  On the long road, after you die, there are temples, Buddhist temples where you can turn the wheel of dharma. Hindu temples where you can make offerings of rice and oil pastel.  There are desolate landscapes, dusty clouds over the River Styx where young men are bathing and washing their clothes, where other ghosts wander. There are great museums full of ancient Buddhas and  Indian goddesses.  It is very hot on the road after you die.  You may begin to wonder what is in store for you.  

The bus station in Mcleodganj and the official bathroom.

other lonely ghosts

The bus stop in Delhi, at the Tibetan Market, they call it ISPD or some acronym meaning random place under the freeway. 

last days in Mcleodganj

Ancient eroded designs in the Rock Temple and the dark passageway into the temple. This was the day we also visited the Norblingka  Center for Tibetan Art and the quiet Buddhist temple there.

Inside Norblingka, where people were gathered, sitting on the floor, singing.

the afternoon soccer game. Anyone can play, sometimes the dogs play goallie, they are pretty good, sometimes they help chase the ball, which regularly heads off the court down the hill into the stinging nettle. Sometimes the monks play, once two very small French boys played, they were the best on the team.

The scorpion, one of many arachnids found in the rooms.









Edge of the mandala of emptiness in the museum at the Tibet library

Tibetan Medical and Astrological College of his Holiness the Dalai Llama

This is What we Came Here For

Nicks Kunga Lodge and Italian Restaurant, where all the food tastes exactly the same.  Girls from the Totarani School.

The climbing wall at the Mountain Center, where they are perfecting bureaucratic officiousness; one guy gives you the rules, and explains that the rope is ten years old and will probably break, looks up the prices, makes you write a waiver.  Another guy brings the rope. When you are done, a third guy, in  room stacked with papers in books, looks up the prices again and writes the receipt.  We were the only ones there, and I expect were the only ones there the entire week.  The monkeys watched us climb.

  This is what we came here for, to sing primary songs in Llomos croissant bakery, upstairs,  under the lonely landscapes of  Tibet and the faces of people left behind.

 Goodbye Hotel Manu Vinot. It looks rather grand, but we stay there because it is close to Mahi, and we are the only guests ever.

This is what we came here for, to walk all afternoon in the humid heat, past lots of Indian tourists, past Triund, over the hill, and around the mountain and see the moon rise above the place called 'snowline'.

This is what we came here for,  to see the children lined up for lunch at the Totorani School, and teach them songs.  The teachers think we are a fine diversion.