The Tibetan food is mostly vegetarian and my take is that it involves mostly soups, stews, and dumplings. The steamed momos are awesome...especially with some chilly and soy sauce. The thukpa soup is really good too...very wholesome...good for cold weather. Yes, it got pretty chilly at times...had to bring the toque out.
I heard it was cold so I brought some long johns and the toque, but I didn't think that I'd get to use them. The long johns are still sitting at the bottom of my pack, but I've used the toque a few times.
My take on Buddhism was that it was a very practical religion with it's own scriptures and holy books. We saw some very elaborate paintings about Buddhist mythology...tibetan mythology in any case. There's a lot more to the religion than one would think...lots of mythology and symbolism.
It's been a while ago now so the details are a little sketchy, but here's the basic run down:
The hotel we stayed in was just up the hill from Dharamsala in an area called Macleodganj named after a british guy who had some influence in the area...don't know what exactly, I never paid attention to the story and missed the details. The place was nice and the food was really good.
We went to the Buddhist temple up at Macleodganj to check out the monks debating metaphysics and theology. It's a pretty rowdy debate. One monk sits down and poses a question. The other stands and formulates an answer or an argument and then caps the final point by slapping his hands together in front of the seated monk's face. with about 30 or so monks split off in pairs it got pretty loud. I took some neat pictures there. Here's one of the debating:
Here's Rob trying telepathy with his camera:
And one at the temple's prayer wheels:
One morning there, Liz, Linda, and I hiked up to Bhagsu Falls to have a look. The hike itself was nice, but the falls were modest. Maybe a 20 meter drop and a relatively small amount of water. Some indian tourists were dipping in the water...crazy...the water was really cold. Liz and Linda were like superstars walking around, everyone wanted to take their picture with them...especially groups of young guys.
In the afternoon, we went down to Dharamsala to see the Karmapa. I didn't know it at the time, but seeing the Karmapa is pretty close to meeting te Dalai Lama himself. I'd never heard of the guy before or knew much about what we were doing there, but some people had come a long ways just to see him. Some tibetan people were around me and they started to get really excited and started mumbling some chants and sayings when he came out. We went in line and got blessed by the Karmapa and he gave everyone a red string with a knot on it that's supposed to contain a prayer from him. It's a shame really, I wish I knew more about the man and the place before I got there so it would have more significance for me. Nonetheless, I'll remember the experience for a while.
The last day I spent wandering around town...some of us tried to get an tibetan astrology reading...apparently it's a really involved process that you need to know your time of birth. An the person spends a night figuring stuff out and then gets back to you the next day. We didn't have that kind of time so it never happened. I went to the local Tibetan museum to see some of the history. The Chinese have treated Tibetans badly, without a doubt. Somehow though, I didn't have that much empathy for their cause...they've established a home in the area around Dharamsala and the tibetan business and religion are thriving there so I had a hard time viewing them as refugees. Also, from what I saw, they were treated badly, but I think the Palestinians and a lot of people in Africa and South America have it much worse.
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