McLEOD GANJ

McLeod Ganj is part India, part Tibet, and part international hippy-dom. It’s the home of the Dalai Lama, named after a British soldier and the small Hindu temple at Bhagshu, a kilometre or so from the centre is a sacred site of devotion for Nepalese Ghurkas.

To get to McLeod, you have to climb. We caught a taxi at midnight, which took us rom the state of the Punjab into Utter Himachal, arriving at Dharamsala, McLeod’s base camp, around two in the morning. From Dharamsala onwards the taxi ground through the gears as it struggled round vertical hairpin bends, taking half and hour to travel 10 kms. The three streets of McLeod were all deserted. We had nowhere booked, and didn’t know where to stay. As ever in India, there was a solution to hand, as the taxi driver banged on the door of a cheap hotel, and a kid groggily opened up, offering us a room we were never likely to turn down.

McLeod is the base the Dalai Lama chose as the physical and spiritual home in exile for Tibet. The streets are crammed with monks in their saffron robes. Because of their identikit uniforms, it’s their shoes that stand out, something they seem to take pride in, wearing anything from brogues to Adidas. All of them seem to carry mobiles and wear shiny, chunky watches. Some mingle with the clutches of hippies who’ve taken up residence. It seems clear that for the Tibetans, the greater the international awareness of their plight, the better. The town walls serve as impromptu noticeboards. One poster displayed a quote from Obama expressing his hopes for stronger Chinese-Tibetan relations, with a rebarbative response from the Tibetan council posted below.

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