McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala: portrait of a rainy hillstation

Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Sat at just bellow 2,000 metres in the north-western corner of Himachal Pradesh, India, the former British administrative hillstation of McLeod Ganj – annexed after the Second Anglo-Sikh War and named after a Scottish Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, Sir Donald Friell McLeod – should by rights be a model of sleepy, Anglo-Indian quaintness. Yet, in the course of the last fifty years, it has become an international capital of Tibetan culture and Vajrayana tantric Buddhism – and a Mecca for Free Tibet activists and general do-gooders from across the world.

The home of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile and the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, since he fled Tibet in the wake of a failed uprising in Lhasa, McLeod Ganj continues to house thousands of Tibetan refugees whose numbers swell as fresh arrivals pour over the Himalayan divide, escaping the persecution and dearth of religious freedom that has only worsened since the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. For them it is a place of sanctuary, where their freedom to both worship and protest is for the most part guaranteed and their ancient culture is permitted to flourish – albeit on a life-support machine of Indian governmental assistance and Western aid which cannot be relied upon forever. Their situation remains precarious in McLeod Ganj – and many find themselves returning to Tibet, frustrated by the lack of work and grieved at the estrangement from their families – but for the moment they can enjoy a climate of hope and mutual support, as against the climate of fear and mutual suspicion that persists in Chinese-controlled Tibet.

But with the frost-bitten Tibetan runaways come other visitors: brash nouveaux riche Punjabis flood in on weekends in their honking cars; lank-haired, heavily bangled hippies step wearily from the overnight buses from Delhi or Manali; earnest American high school students with bags of malaria pills arrive for cultural exchange programmes. A cultural and spiritual free-for-all, McLeod Ganj achieves that kind of cosmopolitanism particular to Indian visitor-hubs like Varanasi and Auroville.

Many on carefully worked out backpacking itineraries arrive with the intention of staying just a couple of days. But, jaded after weeks under the rigours of Indian travel and finding themselves suddenly in a cool climate among beautiful hills, with cheap meditation/yoga/language courses and volunteer opportunities all about them, they end up staying for weeks, often months. Many initial travellers end up dedicating their lives to the small town and its Tibetan population, interspersing their time there with stints back home working low-end jobs to feed their McLeod habit. For many it fulfils the tired cliché of finding oneself in India.

McLeod Ganj has been called the NGO capital of India. And, with the trendiness of the Free Tibet cause set alongside the popularity of Buddhism and Tibetan culture in a West grown increasingly neurotic at its perceived spiritual vacuum, it is well supplied with people eager to aid the refugee population in whatever way they can. Teaching English is the most common pursuit, to Tibetan adults as much as to children – a skill that most visitors in at least some measure possess, even if few volunteers are qualified in any formal way. It is made ultra accessible and, with the different NGOs fanned across the small town, the visitor is confronted with a buffet of teaching opportunities they can march into that very day.

The stream of practical support from eager foreigners, which grows almost competitive during the high seasons of early summer (May/June) and autumn (October/November), is reinforced with hefty donations from Free Tibet societies based in wealthy Western nations. The Tibetan Children’s Village, for instance – an ‘educational community’ in McLeod Ganj, providing free education for Tibetan children in exile, with further branches dotted across India from Ladakh in the north to Bylakuppe in the south – is a mammoth operation funded by private donors and international aid organisations. Such handsome assistance has led some to declare exiled Tibetans, a little callously perhaps, as the richest refugees in the world. What Tibetans lack in overt political assistance from national governments, is in some measure made up for by a sustained outpouring of charity from across the globe. But it is the former, and the dearth of it despite odd kind words from individual politicians, that must ultimately sway the balance for Tibet.

Although the Dalai Lama has met privately with all former American presidents in his lifetime, George W. Bush was the first to stage a public meeting with His Holiness, and awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. But, however much China loathes these stunts and is quick to make its displeasure known to the countries that host them, powerful nations such as America have not matched them with any concrete political action. The punishing economic sanctions regularly meted out to Burma and North Korea have not been entertained, let alone applied, to China. This is pure realpolitik; China’s rise in power and economic clout has consigned Western nations to straightjackets – and with China effectively owning America’s vast national debt and funding its oversized military machine, the ‘leader of the free world’ is unable to lead in any meaningful way. In a world that nobody rules, words are light currency.

Even the ‘stances’ taken by Western governments regarding Tibet, with occasional noises made about Human Rights and such, are growing rarer and even now being subverted. The then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, in a written ministerial statement issued on October 29th 2008, renegaded on a 94 year old diplomatic position, with its roots in the British Empire’s interest in Tibet as buffer against Russia and China. This recognised China’s ‘special position’ and ‘suzerainty’ in Tibet, but not Chinese sovereignty, and was entrenched in international law, with the UN Security Council recognising it as distinct from other ‘provinces’ of China. Miliband declared this distinction and the very notion of ‘suzerainty’ to be outdated, going on to say that, ‘Like every other EU member state, and the United States, we regard Tibet as part of the People's Republic of China’.

In October 2009, Barack Obama refused to meet with the Dalai Lama on the latter’s visit to Washington, until he had first met with the Chinese president Hu Jintao in Beijing the next month. Although Obama later met with him in February and expressed his solidarity, it was the first such snub to be given to His Holiness by an American president, and couldn’t help but look like a bad omen. In a weakened, cash-strapped America – and Britain – the well-meaning gestures of the past are simply too expensive.

Much of this stems, no doubt, from the growing hopelessness of the Tibetan cause, and a reluctance to anger a potential ally through gestures towards increasingly fanciful political goals. The Dalai Lama has downgraded his demands to the Middle Way Approach, advocating greater political autonomy and the right to elect a regional government within China, while allowing Beijing to maintain control of defence and diplomacy. Despite odd grumblings about ‘defeatism’ by more radical outfits like the Tibetan Youth Congress, the Middle Way Approach, entailing the renunciation of hopes of true independence, has been accepted by the great majority of Tibetans. But even this moderate approach has failed to garner results. Much-vaunted talks between China and the exile government – held in stages before and after the Olympic Games, and largely as a result of the violent protests proceeding it in March 2008 across Tibet – proved to be a humiliating walk up the garden path, with the Chinese ultimately refusing to budge on anything that smacked of ‘separatism’ from the Motherland, despite the insistence of the Dalai Lama’s envoys that calls for ‘meaningful autonomy’ did not violate China’s constitution.

Many assert that Tibet has now missed any chance it might have had of finding a solution, and its rise in power and influence will make China ever less sensitive to international opinion. Furthermore, the notion of a ‘free’ Tibet within China, with the full trappings of democracy and a system of rights, alongside a mainland China which denies these absolutely, is a fantasy. A free Tibet presupposes a free China. Tibet must pin its hopes on a nationwide democratic revolution within China, whose stirrings may well start a long way from the Tibetan plateau.

Yet the Dalai Lama, even in his old age, remains highly active in drumming up support for the Tibetan cause throughout the world, with a dizzying timetable of lectures and audiences and meetings with high profile individuals (even if many of them are Hollywood celebrity groupies). In this way he continues to foster an atmosphere of hope among Tibetans, illusory or otherwise – which, after even a brief stay in McLeod Ganj, becomes infectious. According to many Tibetan exiles, the foremost reason for their dangerous escape over the Himalayas – beyond even political persecution and the chance of a fully Tibetan education for their children, so they say – is the chance to meet the Dalai Lama, a privilege allotted to every newly escaped exile. A similar impetus is found in the many foreign visitors who make their own rather less perilous journeys to the hillstation. However, much to their chagrin, they are rarely granted an audience. The days when interested travellers could rock up to McLeod Ganj and casually organise a conversation with His Holiness are long past, due to the growing demand of His presence across the globe, the much-increased tourist traffic, and the increasing fragility of his health at the age of 75.

The worldwide popularity of Tenzin Gyatso, with his bestselling books and DVDs and sold-out teaching tours, has almost singlehandedly kept the Free Tibet torch alight within the international conscience, even if this has never been satisfactorily translated into the policy of any government. For Tibetans he has become a living embodiment not only of compassion, but of Tibetan nationhood itself, to any extent never dreamed in pre-invasion Tibet with its diverse centres of both political and spiritual power (the Dalai Lama is head of only one of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the Gelupa, and formerly was not the spiritual leader of all Tibetans). He has brought the Tibetan people, formerly divided by language and geography and religious sects, under one tent. One of the few pleasant upshots of exile governance, Tibetans have, away from home, become one people for the very first time.

But if the charm and influence of His Holiness is the greatest weapon in the Tibetan armoury, it is also Tibet’s chief weakness. The aspirations of Tibetans have become so concentrated in the person of Tenzin Gyatso, his probable death in the next decade or so would leave them bereft. He does enjoy the divine caveat of reincarnation, permitting His work to be continued afresh in the body of a small boy in some corner of Tibet. But the totalitarian nature of Chinese rule complicates this hugely, as China seeks to control, rather absurdly and with zero popular mandate, the spiritual as well as the political sources of power in Tibet. The Dalai Lama’s identification on May 14, 1995, of the six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the reincarnate (11th) Panchen Lama – the second highest spiritual authority in Tibet, who is in turn charged with locating reincarnate Dalai Lamas – resulted in tragedy. The boy from Lhari County was immediately imprisoned by the Chinese. With the dubious distinction of being the youngest political prisoner in the world, his whereabouts remain unknown; many fear him dead. With typical hubris and ignorance of the workings of piety, China then went on to select their own ‘official’ Panchen Lama, Gyancain Norbu, who predictably commands no respect among Tibetans. Something equally farcical but damaging is likely to result with the death of the Dalai Lama, made worse by the absence of even a properly authoritative Panchen Lama to select his reincarnation.

Tenzin Gyatso is fully aware of this perhaps insoluble problem, and the possible collapse of the institution of the Dalai Lama itself. He has tried his utmost to wean Tibetans off their absolute dependence on him, and has made steps to devolve his power onto something approaching a democratic apparatus in the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. There exists now an elected parliament, a Kashag (cabinet) made up of the heads of various ministries, and as of the year 2000 a directly elected Kalon Tripa (Prime Minister). Although His Holiness remains the head of state, there now exists a power structure capable in theory of providing continuity and sustained political will in the event of His death. However, the Tibetan exile community’s lack of enthusiasm for this modern, secular, democratic alternative to traditional feudal power – voter turnout in both priministerial and parliamentary elections, held once every four years, is invariably dismal – hardly inspires confidence. Tibet after the Dalai Lama looks set to be more uncertain and vulnerable than it has ever been.

Now, then, is the time to visit McLeod Ganj, with the Dalai Lama still vigorously alive and the Free Tibet cause still energetic and hopeful. It is a bubble than cannot keep afloat forever, and must some day burst either through a grim acceptance of defeat or, at last, a free Tibet. In the meanwhile we can pray for the latter outcome; the suffering and resilience of the Tibetan people deserve nothing less.

Dispatch One: A Rough Crossing

I shall begin this travel diary with the flight. The flight! Now that was something – enervating, elevating, energising, ergonomic (I don’t actually know what this means); really, you wouldn’t believe.

So I had this flight booked with Virgin Atlantic at 10pm on the 23rd of June. I started packing, as I always do, on the day of departure. As I was tossing boxer shorts and adapter plugs to the far distant corners of my bedroom, I got a text telling me the flight was cancelled, and that I should call the number provided to arrange another. I did so promptly and, after suffering a tinny rendition of a Motown ‘classic’, I was connected (to use the term as loosely as a Catholic schoolboy’s posterior) with a mentally challenged young man called David Harbour – he gave me his name, the mentally challenged fool – who stated categorically that the only possibility for me was to board another Virgin flight in two days time. I made the appropriate noises, flipping between fiery indignation and whimpering helplessness, but Dave was as firm on the matter as he mentally could be. I then chose, wisely, to phone back – and I spoke to another, mentally sound, man who put me on a Jet Airways flight an hour earlier and told me I was entitled to 600 Euros compensation (still hearing back from the Stalinist bureaucrats at Virgin ‘customer relations’ on that one). So, back of the net; Ben Dunant one, Richard Branson nil; next conquest globalisation.

Jet Airways is India’s best airline by a good many airmiles. Decent food, humane service, an extensive and at times eccentric film selection, and best of all the cute yellow waistcoats the air hostesses are forced to wear. So very, very different from Air India, that conspiracy of miserable sadists I had the misfortune of flying to Kathmandu with last summer. If you only take away one lesson from this blog post, take this: if you are a spirited masochist, or a Presbyterian, and consider bodily discomfort to be the highest human good, don’t hesitate to fly with Air India.

I’m sure you’ve found this flight business fascinating, and I know you crave finer detail. But I prefer to tantalize – and so I shall move on to the landing.

So: I took a taxi from the airport to Majnu ka Tilla, a Tibetan colony in north Delhi, from which buses leave nightly for Dharamsala. The minute I stepped out of the terminal I was enveloped in the familiar film of sweat. It was overcast but muggy; Delhi was a moist grey troll, lurching into the distance in a vista of dismal concrete. The taxi cab was the usual rattling, seatbelt-less rust trap, and the driver an extension of it – a stunted, skinny, unshaven man in grimed blue pyjamas, visibly beaten down by the vicissitudes of Delhi underclass life. The airport is in the south; the ride went, with ample traffic standstills, from one end of the city to the other, a ninety-minute tour that took in the avenues of Lutyen’s Delhi, India Gate and the Red Fort of Old Delhi, among other landmarks glimpsed through the smog.

In Majnu ka Tilla I bought a Dharamsala-bound bust ticket for half six that evening and found a cheap guest house to nap in for a few hours. I sweated gently and felt mosquitoes eat me. Afterwards I explored the place a little, wearily. It was the usual mess of concrete and dangling electrical wire that make up Delhi’s residential areas, only this time interspersed with primary-colour Tibetan Buddhist temples radiating prayer flags down into rubbish-packed gutters, and stalls selling prayer wheels, cashmere shawls and miscellaneous Tibetan tourist tack. Free Tibet flags dotted the sides of buildings and monks, old and young, shuffled past thumbing rosary beads – but otherwise these Tibetan exiles appeared resigned to their cramped Delhi life, a world so far from the cool, high-altitude pastures of their former kingdom. While sat in a café eating beef momos – a species of dumpling; the closest Tibetan food comes to delicacy – a young Tibetan boy sauntered in wearing shorts and Nike trainers, and booted up his metal-grey Apple Mac at his table. A regular Delhi boy, like so many of his fellow second-generation exiles.

I turned up on time, but the bus took an hour to fill – and, as is the case with private bus companies across India, it could only conceivably leave when bursting at the seams. I was the only whitie on the bus; the rest were mostly Tibetan. Majnu ka Tilla and Dharamsala are India’s two premier Tibetan settlements, and this bus journey India’s premier Tibetan thoroughfare. A steady traffic of red robes pass either way each night. Very few in the bus seemed phased by the horror that lay ahead. With an ominous stutter the engine came to life.

The most formative night of my life – the night I became a man – was, on reflection, a bus ride in the first few weeks of my virgin trip to India during my gap year: Junagadh to Bhuj in the Kutch region of Gujurat, leaving at 10pm (so much is seared in my memory) and lasting over ten hours. About a couple of hours in my stomach began to turn against me, and without a chest-lurch to warn me it erupted. As fashionable student parlance would put it, I ‘chundered everywah’. Or rather, all over myself. I then made a dexterous clothes-change from my backpack, much to the consternation of the several peasant women looking on. But my stomach would not be quelled and for the remainder of the night I periodically emptied myself out of the nearest window, decorating the glass pane in the process with some fabulously daring modernist pattern-work, reminiscent of either Jackson Pollock or Wassily Kandinsky (depending on the volume, content and trajectory). Eventually the chunder-art ceased and I found sleep just as the sun rose. Peace. I was shaken awake not long after by the bus conductor, who kindly informed me I had missed my stop and that Bhuj lay firmly behind me. It was at that moment – tired, panicked and comprehensively emptied – that I became a man.

There were no fire works on this journey – not one lone, solitary chunder – but it was nonetheless a bitter trial of my human resources. I think I slept for half an hour at some point, before being woken by a service-station stop; its arrival was announced by concentration-tramp floodlights and noxious hindi music streaming from long burnt-out speakers (thankfully I was spared this on the bus itself; now that’s a first).

As the sun rose, all blotchy and orange against the monsoon mist, we left the Punjab for the torturous mountain roads of Himachal Pradesh – which translates quaintly as the ‘snow state’. Then the bus chose to break down, with a few gurgles and minor explosions. ‘Engine finished’ a fellow passenger kindly explained. We got out on the damp roadside – it had been raining heavily – and tried to wave down passing traffic. One bastard bus didn’t even stop for us – though admittedly it was full; but buses in India are never ‘full’. Me and six others eventually managed to pile into a jeep to take us the remaining twenty or so kilometres to Dharamsala.

Opposite me were two Indians. From the mouth of one came ultra-courteous, upper-middle-class Delhi speech; he was a university student heading to McLeod Ganj to ‘study the Tibetan Buddhist culture’. From the mouth of the other came a thick Mancunian accent. ‘I’m on me gap year. Travelling Asia like. Going Leeds university next year.’ To this I was able, vainly, to play the seasoned India-hand, listing off places he should visit and dumps he should miss. ‘Manchester, famous for cotton,’ the Delhi-ite piped in, speaking the fact proudly. A dignified silence followed. Manchester – famous for cotton; there was really nothing more to be said on the matter.

The jeep dropped us off in the crowded bazaar of lower Dharamsala – there was still ten steep kilometres to climb to the hill station of McLeod Ganj at just below two thousand metres (a good five hundred metres higher than Ben Nevis, but still sat at midget-height by himalayan standards; this is only the foothills). The three new companions – the Delhi-ite, the Mancunian and I (a winning title for a buddy comedy movie) – sat by a fork in the road and waited for the bus, which came soon enough and took us upwards with no serious engine complaints.

And so, there I was – after forty eight hours of no sleep, intermittent sweat and non-stop fun, I had reached my destination: McLeod Ganj, former colonial administrative post and the present home of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government in exile and a vast and growing settlement of Tibetan exiles.

The publisher-in-chief of Contact magazine, for whom I would be working for the next two months, had sorted out an apartment for me to rent. Sadly he was unable to tell me the address of said apartment in the many emails we exchanged. And so I arrived clueless. In a spike of initiative I headed to the nearest café with wireless internet – there’s a surprising amount of them here – and called Lobsang Rabsel, for that was his name. He arrived twenty minutes later and after the mandatory small-talk – how was your journey? (crap) how are you feeling? (crap) – he briefed me on the situation with Contact magazine: they once had a staff of five Tibetans, but they had all fled to greener pastures; now it was to be just Lobsang and I. Yes, two people, this writer included, are about to attempt a monthly community magazine. Watch this space for the mad-cap capers that will doubtless ensue.

After I’d finished breakfast he led me up a pot-holed track, Tipa Road, to the place I’d be sleeping in for the next couple of months. A family home, it turned out, lorded over by a stout old Tibetan lady who spoke no English, of which the top four rooms were rented out routinely. My room was much as I expected: ultra-simple, spartan even, with a hard bed, cupboard-like loo-cum-shower, a wooden cabinet sheltering framed photos of the Dalai Lama beside iconographic thangka paintings, and a dusty floor that quickly turned bare feet grey – but it opened onto a shared balcony with a sweeping view of the steep valley, where the odd tall building poked out from clusters of pine trees and a bird of prey soared puppet-like overhead. It was exactly what I wanted, and I couldn’t argue with the price – equivalent to ₤16 a week, which is frankly rather awesome, wouldn’t you agree?

But the lurking menace of the place showed its face quickly – monkeys, the damn monkeys. Large grey types, many of them mothers with small furry children dangling from their bellies. As I took my first piss into the ceramic toilet bowl, staking my claim on this virgin territory, one monkey made a stab at an opportunist theft: reaching stealthily through the monkey-proof window bars, he grabbed my wash bag by its handle and inched it along the windowsill towards him. I only just stopped pissing in time to scare the gangly fucker off. A close shave, and a lesson learnt: never leave stuff on windowsills. I sighed and took comfort from the himalayan view.

Well that’s all I can be arsed with for now. I have written a bloody essay and I thank you kindly for reading this far. This is my sixth day in McLeod Ganj and my days have been busy; I have a bounty of things to tell you about, really I do. I am having a wonderful time and I miss most of you at least some of the time. I look forward to updating you all on my doings and thoughts – at least once a week. My future blog posts will (probably) be briefer, pithier, have less bus and airplane stuff in them, and will contain a lot more swearing, cultural stereotypes and balls-to-the-wall action. Prepare yourselves.