58. Timeout

Last night I tried to be disgraceful.  I really did try.......................

A group of us had spent a very pleasant evening in the bar of my hotel, singing with a young guitar-toting Tibetan boy who set out to teach us a tibetan song.  He also sang the Beatles and Bob Dylan, a couple of tibetan songs and also some Hindi songs which prompted all the other men in the bar to join in.

Normally, westerners, Indians and Tibetans here live fiercely separate lives and very few people cross the barrier to really mix on equal terms.   Helped by the songs, our group last night was a pretty good stab at doing just that.  Once my hotel bar made it clear that it was way past time to close (9.30pm) everybody decided to move on to the Xite bar.  Its only round the corner and promises a free beer with your hookah.  Or is it a free hookah with your beer.  We climbed up flight after flight of stairs (big solid concrete stairs all painted black and dark red), the walls getting progressively crumblier and grottier, to emerge on the roof to find the indian waiters enjoying a big fire, a couple of westerners sitting on a swinging chair, hookahs bubbling merrily, a fabulous bird's eye view of McLeod Ganj in the dark and more stairs up, rickety metal this time, to sort of crows nests made of corrugated tin, perched on the roof where we sprawled on cushions on the floor, around a huge low table (the tin roof so low we could hardly sit up).........................we couldn't read the menus as it was so dark, we couldn't hear ourselves think let alone talk as the music was so loud and we were so spread out round the table, we didn't get any heat from the fire as it was too far away (thank goodness).  The others were into serious drinking.   I went home to bed.  Sorry. Oh dear. Perhaps I just need to accept that I'm not really disgraceful at all.



When I have the odd half hour or so to spare, or just feel like a walk, I walk the Kora.

The Kora is a delightful walk right around the main temple, You walk round clockwise, through the trees, with glimpses of the mountains.  There are hundreds of beautifully carved and painted stones ("om mane padme hwm") on your right as you walk, the trees above you are strung with thousands and thousands of prayer flags.  There are hundreds of prayer wheels to turn and beautiful stupas to admire. It is beautiful, colourful - and incredibly peaceful.  You walk among the constant trickle of people who walk the Kora, turning the wheels. The old, the young, monks, nuns, families.  Smart people, trendy people, scruffy people, ordinary people, often with rosaries in hand, reciting om mane padme hwm under their breath,

Walking the Kora I find myself in a peaceful and contented present.  Nothing else matters or intrudes.  And I am left to wonder at these people I am walking with. The people who have made this place - put up the flags, carved the stones, brightened the walls with white paint, and walked, and prayed and made it what it is.  Pretty well everybody has a tale to tell - a tale of horror, torture, of leaving behind family, possessions, farms, a whole lifestyle to walk for weeks in dreadful conditions to arrive here with nothing and to have to start again, with nothing, knowing their skills and status back home count for nothing here, and they can never go back. And on their faces I see peace, and laughter lines and bright, intelligent eyes.  I see sadness of course but never, ever a trace of bitterness.