I spent one week in the city of McLeod Ganj near Dharamsala in the state of Himachal Pradesh.  The primary draw of this place is that it is the home of the Tibetan government in exile and contains the monastery of the Dalai Lama.

In 1950, China invaded Tibet with 30,000 troops, overwhelming its meagre defenses.  Until then, Tibet (like Kashmir) was an independent nation which had maintained its autonomy until this invasion.  After China invaded, Tibet signed the 17 points agreement, basically ceding all of its autonomy to China.  Since then the occupation has produced brutality, which the tibetans estimate has resulted in the deaths of 1.2 million Tibetans and which has definitely caused many Tibetans to make the ridiculously arduous journey into exile in India across the frozen Himalayas.

In 1959, the Dalai Lama himself made this trip.  His escape to India is described in the Tibetan Museum in McLeod Ganj as the Tibetan’s greatest success against Chinese occupation.  Shortly after, during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, most of the temples, monasteries and sacred statues of the Tibetans were destroyed.  To this day, the Tibetans protest their occupation by China, as evidenced by the violent crackdowns of Tibetan protests in 2008, which made waves internationally shortly before the Beijing Olympics and caused some Westerners to boycott the games.

China probably tells a completely different story, but the Tibetan description of Chinese violence and oppression is very compelling.  I hope to visit Tibet myself, now that this is a possibility and see firsthand how it is today.  Certainly the continuing occupation of Tibet is one of the biggest smears on the international reputation of China.  In fact, I probably run a high risk of having my website banned in China due to posting this blog.

In fact, I generally support the post-1979 government of China for its economic liberalization and the good it is managing to do for its people as a whole.  Though I do think the suppressing of culture and oppression of non-Chinese is a real issue which the government needs to rethink.  I think the actions of the Chinese government have to be evaluated as a whole, weighing the good against the bad, taking them in historical context and giving adequate respect to progress.  It’s not a terribly popular view in places I’ve traveled and probably not in the US either, so feel free to argue with me in the comments if you like.  Testing this view is part of why I want to visit China.

Unfortunately, the history of McLeod Ganj is somewhat more interesting than its reality.  Due to the popularity of “Save Tibet” in the West (there’s a Save Tibet license plate in Virginia,) McLeod Ganj is pretty heavily a tourist town.  I visited the Dalai Lama’s monastery, the museum, the library and also walked around the neighborhood of the Tibetan government in exile.

The rest of the town is devoted to yoga, meditation and new age classes for the most part.  Chakras, reiki, spirit healing, psychic cord cutting: there are a lot of things to learn there, but unfortunately I’m not too interested in the most mystical of them.  I wanted to take a buddhist philosophy course that integrated elements of Vipissana, a silent meditation and reflection technique which claims to be the same one used by the Buddha to attain enlightenment. Unfortunately, the class started two days before I arrived and I didn’t want to wait two weeks for the next one.  I’ve studied Buddhism at Stanford and I can take a true Vipissana class in a better place deeper in India, so I should be fine.  I want to do yoga in Rishikesh, at the end of my trip, since that’s supposed to be the best place for it.  So I took a cooking course instead.

The cooking course is from a tiny restaurant called Taste of India.  The chef/instructor is a woman from Mumbai who had been teaching for 18 years.  She moved to the mountains for her children’s health.  It wasn’t a hands on class.  We didn’t cook anything.  She just showed us how to cook all sorts of Indian dishes and gave us the recipes as she cooked.  Imagine an interactive Food Network program where you get to eat the final products.  We learned:

• Aloo Gobhi (Spicy cauliflower and potato)
• Palak Paneer (Spinach and Cheese)
• Chapati (Thin bread)
• Dal Makhani (Creamy fried Lentils)
• Malai Kofta (Potato stuffed with cheese, fried and covered with a creamy sauce)
• Kheer (rice pudding)
• Choley (Chick peas)
• Vegetable Pulao (A spiced rice dish)
• Samosas (It’s a samosa, come on.  If you don’t know, you’ve never eaten Indian food.  Go eat one ASAP)
• Stuffed Parantha (A kind of flat crispy bread stuffed with vegetables.)

The class cost 700 rupees (about 14 USD) and was two 3 hour sessions.  At the end, we ate all the food and to be honest, it was the best Indian food I’ve had so far here.  The food was easily worth the cost of the class and it was quite nice to see the different foods made and understand what went into preparing them.  These are the things I’ll be eating for a year, so it’s great to understand something about how they are made.

Some of the friends I had made in Manali also came through town. The most interesting was Sofia, who I traveled with for about a week.  She was taking a chakra healing course and a meditation and fulfillment workshop.  I went with her to buy crystals and make some jewelry.  She’s also a sophomore at the London School of Economics, majoring in International Relations, so in between testing my auras and chakras for her homework assignment, she’d beat me in arguments about international economics and US foreign policy.  There was also Daniel, the first year Israeli accountant whose parents offered to pay him double the cost of his one month trip to stay home, because they were afraid he would come back wanting to quit.  What’s the end result, Daniel?  There’s a possibility they were right… Part of the fun of travel is the diversity of people I get to meet.  More on that in the Chandigarh entry.

Overall, I enjoyed Manali more than McLeod Ganj, but I did enjoy learning about the Tibetan history and seeing the small elements of Tibetan culture that crept through the tourism.  I hope to see a lot more in Tibet, China willing.