through the monsoon to the Dalai Lama's home

I'm not sure what the definition of monsoon is, but the 6 hours persistent rain we had for our whole bus ride yesterday could probably be classified as such, specially because of the rain pouring into the bus through the untight windows. It's more: as we misteriously got into a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere, we thought a landslide had blocked the road and we would have to spend a couple of days/nights on the bus.... Luckily, it turned out to be just a broken down truck. Our 15 min lunch break- also the middle of nowhere,- was also an adventure: since no one spoke english, we had no alternative but to smile at the cook showing the plate of the guy seating next to us, hoping that it wouldnt be too spicy... but the 1€ lunch was really good. (for some reason when it comes to say the price, they always seem to find someone who can translate...)

We finally made it to Dharamsala. Some may have heard the name already: it's where the Dalai Lama chose his new residence when he fled from Tibet under Chinese invasion.


Dharamsala is more like a miniature version of Kathmandu, except that the ratio boudhist monks to tourist seems to be about 1 to 1. In this village at 1700m, the damp heat and Indian accent from Delhi seems to be another country: here people look more Chinese, and actually speak better english.







We took a visit to the Tibetan complex, where monks were having animated discussions on phylosocical topics (not that we could understand any of it, but it's very famous here, so everybody was explaining what they were doing): they have a very lively and theatrical way of discussing by clapping their hand and slamming their foot on the ground.


The offerings to the divinities can consist of anything you can buy in the next supermarket....

We were quite suprised to see that the monks make plenty use of today's latest technologies and comfort such as sipping a coffee in a coffe lounge while using wifi internet on their Iphone, getting money at the nearest ATM using their debit card or playing cards with their fellow monks.


We spent our second day here pretty much waiting for another episod of monsoon to clear...