Photo: Arko Datta/AFP
Spiritual home
Dharamsala, perhaps best known for being home to the Dalai Lama, is an old British hill station founded in the 1880s. It’s really two towns; Lower Dharamsala is primarily Indian, Upper Dharamsala is known as McLeod Ganj and is home to the Tibetan government in exile.
A succession of hairpin bends lull you into expectations of spending the rest of your life on the narrow roads leading up to Dharamsala, overhung with trees and foliage. When it comes, the grey, gothic bulk of St Johns in the Wilderness, the Victorian Anglican church whose graveyard heaves under the weight of Williams, Marys, Simons and Emmas, seems somehow less out of place than the bands of monkeys encountered on the journey to McLeod Ganj. The last and highest hairpin bend opens out onto a scrubby crossroads. Figures loom out of the murk.
Colour is the order of the day in McLeod Ganj, whether it’s the brightly hooped baggy jumpers not seen in the UK since mid-80s Glastonbury, or the bright orange and saffron robes of the monks from the nearby temple, no one wants to blend into the weather.
A succession of hairpin bends lull you into expectations of spending the rest of your life on the narrow roads leading up to Dharamsala, overhung with trees and foliage. When it comes, the grey, gothic bulk of St Johns in the Wilderness, the Victorian Anglican church whose graveyard heaves under the weight of Williams, Marys, Simons and Emmas, seems somehow less out of place than the bands of monkeys encountered on the journey to McLeod Ganj. The last and highest hairpin bend opens out onto a scrubby crossroads. Figures loom out of the murk.
Colour is the order of the day in McLeod Ganj, whether it’s the brightly hooped baggy jumpers not seen in the UK since mid-80s Glastonbury, or the bright orange and saffron robes of the monks from the nearby temple, no one wants to blend into the weather.
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