So This is Dharamsala

1. The Yellow Dirt Road

 

As the car winds over unbelievably sharp S-curve roads (the type of road so unique  that the Italians have created a specific word for them), I'm filled with something between anticipation and motion-sickness. This is it, I'm thinking, Dharamsala, just a few hours over and a few hours up. It's a bit like the feeling that comes when your scratch ticket has thus far has revealed two out of three needed lemons,  when you rein your hope in tightly but some of it still spills out.

My head is filled with the sound of various (embarrassing) hippie and jam band tunes, so I don't notice that there's anything off with the car. The driver pulls to the side, buying a loaf of bread from one of the roadside shacks. As he climbs back in, he takes a small nibble, and leaves the rest on the seat next to him.

Perplexed, I watch as he throws the bread out the window. If it was that bad, why does he seem so satisfied? I wonder. Outside, the dozens of tan macaques on the side of the road (and dozen more of their hidden friends) leap into a frenzy of fangs and fur and flying slices of white bread. What an altruistic action, I think, maybe it's part of his faith.

Or maybe it was an effort to save his backside. A few hundred yards down the road, he stops again and begins changing a flat tire. About three dozen macaques, red-bottomed and curious, encircle our car. The driver laughs nervously when he finally gets back in, then downs a mouthful of something from one of those mysterious pouches with a picture of a scorpion on the side. It's one of the great mysteries of India- what is in those mysterious little packets hanging from every shop? 

Yes, the same kind that tried to bite Virali.

2. McLeod Ganj, am I Glad to Meet Ya.

Mcleodganj, the “Little Tibet” of Dharamsala and the seat of H.H. the Dalai Lama, is situated beautifully into the mountain side at ~2,000 meters altitude. Colorful buildings, homes to Tibetan refugees arriving every day since 1959, are perched on the sloping land like colorful nests in a treetop. Prayer flags flutter in the wind, suspended from trees and buildings all around. The streets are filled with Tibetans and an unbelievable number of foreigners; everywhere I look, blond dreadlocks and hippie skirts are shaking at me. Dilated pupils and smiley "namaste"s. 

We wind through town in a grand tour that only a trip to the outskirts can provide. The driver drops me in Bhagsu village, a hilly 1.5 km along cliff edges and chai stands from Mcleodganj.

The guest house overlooks the valley below, so close to the edge that it resembles a small child leaning over the rail at the zoo: precarious, but somehow completely stable.

“No toilet paper in the toilet. Put it in here,” my host tells me, pointing to a bucket.

Downstairs, past the family (Hindu) shrine complete with flashing colored lights, I sit in the kitchen surrounded by Indian women in Indian garb, warming feet and hands over a fire. Above this are several lidded pots, reminiscent of those cooking vessels archaeologists are so overjoyed upon finding, in which water and various foods are warming. A pampered baby sports a black mark on the median side of his left eyebrow, for “protection,” the mother tells me (after some assistance finding the word) “against... bad people.” The next day, I watch from the same seat on the dusty floor as she rubs ghee (clarified butter) all over the delighted child.

Details of my stay and circumstance must be sparse here, for as many of you know, I have decided to leave the company which I had paid to arrange my program. As I wait for a refund, my next four months in India and my own well-being in the balance, I choose to remain tight-lipped.

3. A Torch and a Trip to the Village

I'm the crazy buffoon who's trying her hardest to find an internet connection on a mountainside. In a final attempt, I give up and decide buy a mobile broadband device. It's around 5pm, dusk, and I ask my host if it's safe to travel into town at this time. “You have a torch?” he asks. I hold out my cellphone. “Okay, no problem,” he approves.

Which side would you walk on?

Somehow, your mind grows used to walking along these mountain roads, with their steep grades, rocky paths, and sudden drops waiting just at the periphery of one's vision. But I'm not yet used to hanging on the edge of oblivion, so after trying to follow my fellow pedestrians along the cliff edge, I give up and take the other side of the road, hugging the dirt of the cliff when two cars try to pass each other.

Success. I've miraculously made it to town, to the travel agency (which, somehow, is also a cell-phone and internet store) and I am once again plugged in to the other side of the world. Darting between shoppers and red-clad monks, of which there are too many to imagine, I stop for a chai at a small stand. I do this more out of habit than thirst or desire, for I've grown used to these double-shots of milky tea from my time in Chandigarh. 

And relax. There's something to the idea of chai breaks rather than cigarette breaks.  

It's one of those moments, those rare moments of peace, in which time stops and you stand in awe of your life. It's as if you're only honestly awake during these brief interludes, and when you reach another one your self sleepily says to you Oh my, what's happened? How have we gotten here?... Oh, I can't believe it, look at where we are... and is stunned into sudden, complete silence. The moment lasts forever but is somehow gone in a flash, and you cannot help but smile to yourself. Is this my life?

After a while, I head back to Bhagsu, my “torch” weakly shining ahead. The sun is long gone and there is no moon to be seen; the road is covered in a heavy darkness the likes of which I do not know if I have ever seen. After spending ten or fifteen minutes edging along the cliff wall (as far from the deep drop as I can be), making myself frazzled and anxious about the dark, I finally look up.

There are no words for the stars over a dark road outside of Mcleodganj. There is no way to express the feeling I experience in that moment. I rise, all of my burdens, known and unknown, helium, lifting me; my self, my life, my thoughts drop away, not falling, not gone, but simply blinked out of existence without a ripple. Forgotten. Nothing but a sky filled with the Most Precious. Nothing exists but the feeling of up and awe.

As if waking from a dream, I exist again with seamless continuity going back into perpetuity.

Welcomed.