Diwali Diversions

In the pink

12 November - Happy Diwali  
Sara's complaint is on the mend. At breakfast Hakeem attempts a Gordon Brownish smile and wishes us a Happy Diwali. He holds out a box of sugary confections, of which I choose a bright pink egg hoping the colourant will not make me hyper. Hakeem is not flavour of the moment with Sara since he tried to sell her a little box of saffron (shop price Rs. 250) for a "special price" of Rs. 1000.

Astro Medical Centre

We head for the McLeod Ganj taxi stand and make a futile attempt at bargaining, only to discover that the taxis here have formed a union and all charge the same. They are not to be budged, so we accept the standard (for foreigners) fare and head downhill in a little minibus to the Tibetan Astro-Medical Centre. S is hoping to find relief for her painful knee (and various other components). She registers and is seen within five minutes. NHS take note! After a little prodding and soothing words from Dr Dekyi Tsomo, she emerges from consulting room C2 and collects four little bags of powdery herbal substances called (in Tibetan) somnor, techey, dhashel and basam. 
Let's hope they do the trick.

Sara is ahead of me as we leave the clinic, and is approached by a young man wearing a cheeky grin. 

"You want make lurve?" he asks, or at least that is what S thinks he says. He must be what Indians call an Eve teaser. 

"No," she says, quite firmly. 

"Why not?" he persists. 

"My husband would not like it." 

"Iss very nice," he says. "Your husband he can come too!" 

This is getting more imaginative by the minute. At this point I appear on the scene. 

"You want Make Lurd?", he repeats to me, and the misunderstanding is cleared up, as I recognise the local pronunciation of Mc-Leod (Ganj).

View from the temple roof

 On by another taxi (S tries to get someone to take her on a motorbike, but he declines) to the Norbulinka Institute at Sidpur, a few miles beyond Lower Dharamshala. This organisation is dedicated to preserving traditional Tibetan arts and culture and consists of a complex of stone Tibetan-style buildings clustered round a butterfly-filled Japanese water garden, watched over by a temple. We lunch on pumpkin soup and lassi, then watch the craftsmen at work. 

The best of the woodcarvers chisels with such intricacy and refinement that I think of 18th century sculptors like Grinling Gibbons. Metalworkers check against blueprints, then use anvils and formers to hammer sheets of copper into sectional Buddhas. A room full of girls seated at sewing machines echoes with laughing banter as they stitch long hanging thangkas . It is a happy place.

The temple is rich with colour, and the afternoon sun streams in through the doors and lights up the feet of the great gilded statue of the seated Sakyamuni, the largest of its kind outside Tibet. 

Sacred Scrolls

On the first floor is a reading room adorned with of statues, pictures and glass cabinets with row upon row of manuscript rolls of Buddhist scriptures, some said to be 1000 years old. Printed volumes of scripture in Tibetan and Chinese are also kept here. On this level there is also a computer room, and a modern study library for scholars and visitors, which, I note, includes a copy of the Adrian Mole Diaries amongst its treasures.


Eat in our room tonight. Firecrackers echo all evening across the valley below our balcony. Diwali is in full swing.