Little did I know that part of the heart of Tibet lives in India. Everything here is different. People, architecture, trees, even stray dogs with their bushy winter coats.
Monks in red robes walk the alleyways(often times on their cell phones-an odd paradox.)
Arriving here was rough. I wrote most of the last blog on the 4 hour car ride here so as to avoid looking at the road or the cliffs we were driving past to get here. We arrived and it was both freezing and raining. Snow capped the hill tops in the distance and when the clouds broke you could make out the towering Himalayan mountains behind them. Down 4 flights of stairs in the pouring rain to the hotel where we found our very Indian hotel rooms...and no heat. We literally got into bed drafted a letter to the travel company who helped us find this place asking for a new location and went to bed. The room was like a youth hostel. Classic architectural details have been painted over with technicolor geometric patterns. Apparently one of our 3 rooms smelled, though the head cold I have has left me largely nose blind. But it was the rain and cold that really had us looking into the 4 star resort up the road. Could we live here for 3 nights with no heat and a smell? I’m proud to say we did. We changed rooms. Put boys in smelly room, asked for heaters(glorified hair dryers that we were grateful for), and found one of the 3 water heaters worked. So we managed. The place has a cafe and large game room that makes food all day and being as everything costs basically $1-2 we let the kids order what and when they wanted(in the end they managed in 3 days to spend $60). We played a lot of cards and a lot of Jinga.
The first day was rainy but we managed to find a break in the weather and walked to the Dali Lama Temple. There a large complex surrounds a Tibetan temple. Outside the temple are golden wheels you spin that earn you mantras. We walked around the building taking in the beautiful setting. After we wondered through town. We’d joked we wanted to hike up to the snow, Hannah being particularly game. So we just started waking out of town up the road that seemed to lead most uphill. It meandered past monkeys, cows, and forest. Finally coming to another town. We kept going until we saw signs for a waterfall. That seemed like a good plan so we found the trail and started up. Quickly the scenery looked more like something from the French Alps than anything you’d think of in India and we realized we were not in as great as shape as we thought. We also were at about 8000’ elevation by then so it’s a valid excuse for our lack of breath with us only walking.
Somewhere on the way Austin decided he didn’t want to go any farther. He’s been a trooper as the head cold I have is a full fledged cold requiring DayQuil with him. So I gave him my phone, put in the address of the hotel, and sent him down the hill-it’s a village full of Tibetan monks...I figured he’d be ok.
The rest of us found the waterfall and more people wanting our pictures. We hung out for a while and then headed back to the hotel and the kids resumed their place with cards, jinga, and whatever they felt like ordering.
The next day the sun was out and Todd and I ventured out in search of a place to hang some prayer flags I thought my dad would like. I was shooting for another temple on a map I’d seen but the long road/trail we were on passed a bunch of prayer flags you could not miss. We walked around a corner and found hundreds of prayer flags. We’d somehow in looking for a place to hang prayer flags stumbled upon the “Tibetan Flag Temple”. Here the main teacher of the Dali Lama is buried and their are monks who live there. A guide of sorts saw us and showed us from place to place, telling us one old monk there has lived there almost 30 years, never leaving.
The trees remind me of home in Mt Shasta and the sun was just enough to cut through the cold air. It was a nice place to spend some time. The air suddenly shifted to cold. Like the warm winds from the valley had changed direction and been overtaken by the freezing air of the snow capped Himalayan mountains that we sat on the very edge of. It took only a few moments for us both to realize we’d reached the limits of our personal meditation(we’d make horrible monks.)
We wondered back to town and found the kids. Where else? Playing cards and eating food in the hotels game-room.
For the second time on this trip we were informed our flight was canceled and we’d been rebooked on an earlier flight, so instead of a leisurely ride to the airport at 11:00, we’d now be leaving for airport at 6:00AM. We made it in the dark to the tiny airport, got on our tiny plane, and flew back to Deli leaving behind the clear air of the mountains for the blanket of smoke poor Deli sits in. Our driver who speaks English(a first for us so a perk in a 4 hour car ride) met us and we ventured out for the drive to Agra.
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