Here's the latest update from Dharamsala, as of Monday evening local time ...

Our final day in Amritsar was pretty non-eventful -- we did a little souvenir shopping, went to a park and talked to some local people (all Sikhs, of course), and then went back to the Golden Temple for a final time.

We were to leave Amritsar by train at 5:55am today, but when we arrived at the train station at 5:00am we discovered that the train was running over 2 hours late. So we decided to take a taxi instead -- it was going to be a 3-hour train and a 3-hour taxi, but instead we had a 5-hour taxi ride. Our driver (Ajit) had his two youngest brothers take us, one to translate and one to drive. They were a pretty good team, although the "translator" didn't seem to know any more English than anybody else we met in Amritsar. The driver was awesome, but we're getting used to the near-misses that characterize driving in India so we didn't gasp quite as much as a couple of weeks ago.

The translator brother told Doug of how he wanted to work in the computer business, and it was his dream to live in Chicago and work in the computer business some day. Mom then pulled out some pictures of her grandkids and changed the subject. We later wondered whether Ajit had planned this, since we had waited half an hour with the two oldest brothers (they couldn't drive us that day, for unspecified reasons), while the two youngest brothers came to drive us to Dharamsala.

The 3 hours across the Punjab was interesting for a while -- the sun rising through the mist, people working the green wheat and rice fields, etc -- but three solid hours of that gets a little old. Then when we got to the river where you cross into Himachal Pradesh things changed pretty fast. You start going uphill, and there are suddenly no Sikhs, and it changes back to what we've been seeing in other parts of India -- the little brick shacks with corrugated metal roofs held down by rocks, monkeys along the road, women working in the fields, guys in turbans standing around garbage fires, and so on.

We had a flat tire, but Ajit's brothers changed it in a matter of minutes, and we arrived in Dharamsala just after 11:00am.

McLeod Ganj, where we're staying, is where all the hotels, restaurants, and tourists are located. It's on a ridge above Dharamsala, at an altitude of around 6500 feet. Very cool and sunny, and our hotel room has a great view back down the valley --we can look down on hawks circling below us, and we can see a little of the street below (but not much, because it's a very steep hill). Looking back the other way (from in front of the hotel), you can see the tops of the snow-covered Himalayas.

We walked around a bit, and after Amritsar this feels very much like a tourist town. Lots of young Western tourists, and Mom pointed out there aren't many people her age here. We checked at the tourism office, and it looks like there won't be any chance to see the Dalai Lama here -- he has no scheduled appearances this week, and they couldn't even confirm whether he's still in town. (Security, you know.)

So we'll take some walks around the area tomorrow and see what we can see. We went to the Buddhist temple down the hill today, and it was interesting but not much different from all the other Buddhist temples we've seen the last few weeks. The Western kids sure are more energetic about their bowing than any of the Asians we've seen at the temples in Nepal and Cambodia, though.

More later - Doug & Mom

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