Oh Dharamsala...

On my way up to Dharamsala, I was thinking I might have given myself too much time there... 5 days seemed like a long time in my head. What I forgot is that Dharamsala has this way of sucking you in and filling up your time so that you never feel like you've had enough there. It was a crazy 5 days, filled with surprising reunions and good times.

The minute I got into town, I took my stuff to the Om, a family-run guest house where we'd lived as students for 3 months. Hung out with the staff for a bit, got updates on everyone (Deckyi's married and has a baby, Lobsang and Yangzom went back to South India) but they didn't have any rooms, so I left my bag there and set off across town to look for a room.

I got down to Gu Chu Sum, the ex-political prisoners' organization where I lived while I was doing my research both times I'd been in India before. There's an internet cafe and a japanese restaurant operated by GuChuSum, where a lot of my friends there worked. I've literally spent months of my life sitting between the stoop outside the internet cafe and a little shack of a cafe across the street, just hanging out with people, drinking tea, playing guitar, and smoking way too many cigarettes.

As soon as I got there, I saw my friend Tsersang sitting outside the cafe, having an English lesson with an Australian girl and a few others. I sat with them and ended up staying for a couple hours, having tea and getting caught up on the whereabouts of all my old friends.

Tsersang is an ex-political prisoner with a long pony tail and one lazy eye - the result of beatings received in prison. He's always been very sweet, but this time I noticed he seemed a lot more outgoing than before. He told me he'd been working on his dam nyen (Tibetan guitar) and had gotten good, and would now sit outside and sing at the top of his lungs, for which most people in the neighborhood regarded him as crazy. He'd written a song in Tibetan called "There's no True Love in McLeod Ganj" (McLeod Ganj is the name of the Tibetan part of Dharamsala). The words translate to something like:

You can't say there are no beautiful women in Dharamsala,
There are women from all over the world,
White ones, black ones, you can have your pick,
But no one stays in McLeod Ganj.
Last night I dreamed I was sleeping with my love,
But when I woke I found I was only sleeping with my knees.
Maybe you can find love in Ladakh or Shimla [other Tibetan settlements],
But there is no true love in McLeod Ganj.

I learned a bit later from other friends that Tsersang had broken up with his Japanese girlfriend - they'd been together since before the first time I went to India - which prompted both the song and comments from most of his friends that "Tsersang's gone a bit crazy". He was right, though - he's gotten really good at dam nyen. I wish I had brought some recording equipment. I think he was also right about the sentiment. The song was a little strange for me to hear, having been a part of the problem of foreign women who date Tibetans and then leave them after a while. I never think about Tenzin Dawa anymore, but it brought back a lot of memories to be in his world again. I knew he was married to a Spanish woman and living in Barcelona - he'd called me once last summer and told me that. Tsersang told me he'd since gotten divorced, but is still in Barcelona making pizzas for a living.

While sitting outside, someone came up to ask if I could volunteer for an English conversation group (you really can't go anywhere in Dharamsala without being asked to tutor someone in English). I said sure, and the guy said "ok, it meets right now". So still without a place to stay, I went to tutor a woman just arrived from Tibet for a couple hours. The volunteer leader brought me down to a building behind Gu Chu Sum, which happened to be the building where Tenzin Dawa lived - I gasped when I realized we were going in there. Afterwards, I came back to the cafe and met other old friends.

After dark, I finally decided to look for a room in the guest house next to Gu Chu Sum. I went to talk to the owner, who told me "you've been hanging out all day, I had no idea you needed a room!" He's a friend of a lot of my friends and I'd stayed at his place for a few weeks before. When I asked him how much he wanted for a room, he said "how much do you want to pay? be frank." I told him 200 rupees ($5), he said "sure!" and led me to a nice big room with hot water and a private balcony. I love this place.

Across the steps from my room, there's a shack where at all hours of the day, a group of Tibetans is crowded inside playing kiram ball, this game where you flick disks into holes (it's kind of like pool with your fingers). As I was bringing my bag down to my room, one of the guys inside playing yelled "Hello there! Have a good evening!" I turned to see who it was, and I saw it was someone familiar looking (I have to admit that without keeping in touch with a lot of people my memory had gotten a little fuzzy). After a little game of "why do you look familiar?" I realized it was Dawa, who'd completely changed from the last time I saw him.

The last time I came to India, Dawa had just come from Tibet. He was quiet and didn't speak English well. He didn't know many people in town, and Tenzin Dawa had taken him in like a little brother. Dawa was working in the kitchen of a Tibetan restaurant. I'd sometimes help him cook there - which was fun, but I also witnessed some of the most horrific food safety practices imaginable. It was winter then, and the restauarant wasn't making enough money for Dawa to get a salary, so Tenzin Dawa and Migmar (one of my closest friends at Gu Chu Sum) were giving Dawa money out of their very small budgets. They asked me to help him out, since they didn't have much to give, so for about 9 months that year, until I went to Honduras, I would send Dawa some money every month.

Dawa is now incredibly outgoing, his English has gotten really good, and he seems totally in his element. He felt terrible for not recognizing me at first, and made me promise to let him take me out to dinner (for which I felt a little strange, so I treated him to his next couple meals after that). He told me that because of the money I'd sent, he was able to study full-time and that's how his English got so good. He's madly in love with a Korean girl, they're pregnant, and she's moving to Dharmsala next week. They can't get married yet because he doesn't have his papers in order (refugees often don't have the right documents). We hung out a lot for the next few days, and he insisted that we email Tenzin Dawa and tell him I'm in town. We did, and the next day Tenzin Dawa called Dawa's cell phone to talk to me.

It was really strange to talk to Tenzin Dawa afer all this time, but being that I was hanging out with all his friends, it seemed like the right thing to do. Actually, it was a nice reality check that I'd made the right decision by not marrying him. I'd started to feel a little twinge of guilt hearing Tsersang's song, but it's true - there is no true love in mcleod ganj. Too many options there to be happy with one, and everyone there is either a refugee or a traveler.

I spent most of my time in dharamsala hanging out by Gu Chu Sum, just like old times. I felt like I could've stayed for another year easily.

I also managed to meet up with Mara, a friend I've known since we were literally in our cribs together. She's been traveling India with an Israeli friend of hers, and we knew we'd both be in Dharamsala at the same time. Of course when I arrived, the internet had been out in all of Dharamsala for about 5 days, so meeting up was a bit difficult. I spent one morning hiking around the village where she was staying, this little Israeli enclave full of hash and german bakeries, but couldn't find her. We finally managed to meet up when the internet came back and had a great time. I took her to see my philosophy teacher, she hung out with my friends, and we got a good chance to catch up.

Friday night I decided to take 7 of my closest Tibetan friends out for dinner at this "fancy" Korean restaurant behind Gu Chu Sum, to celebrate my last night in town and my birthday the next day. (For some perspective, the total cost of dinner for all 12 of us was under $40). By then Sarah and Adriana had made it to Dharamsala too, so they joined along with Mara and her Israeli friend. Migmar (my first friend from Gu Chu Sum, who'd introduced me to everyone else, including Tenzin Dawa) had come up for the day from the Tibetan arts school where he's now studying to be a traditional Tibetan painter. It was a great time, and afterwards we all went up to the roof of Gu Chu Sum, sat out under the stars with some candles and beer (which one of them had woken up the liquor store owner to buy), playing guitar and singing. They played a lot of Tibetan songs I'd heard before, replacing the words to make them about me - inserting my name in place of Tibetan names, and changing lyrics like "lhasa women are the most beautiful in the world" to "american women are the most beautiful in the world." At midnight they sang me happy birthday and forced some beer on me.

Saturday morning I woke up at 5:30 to go to the temple for the Dalai Lama's teachings. We met our philosophy teacher beforehand (he's also the English translator for the Dalai Lama) to borrow some cushions from him. The teachings were hard to hear, since the English translation by radio has terrible transmission, so I was only picking up every tenth word or so. After a couple hours, I decided to leave and take care of some things in town on my last day. I went to a "review session" later that afternoon that my philosophy teacher was running, so I got the lesson a bit later. But I did get to see the Dalai Lama on my birthday.

When I came back to Gu Chu Sum, I had about an hour before I had to leave to catch my bus - just enough time for one more cup of tea and a couple cigarettes with friends. When I left, Dawa and lobsang walked me to the bus, along with sarah, adriana, adri's boyfriend, and mara. Dawa bought me water and tibetan dumplings on the way, and everyone gave me white scarves (tibetans give them as a sign of respect to mark an occasion) and birthday gifts. It was really sweet.

Once I got on the bus, I found they'd double-booked my seat (in typical India fashion) and they tried to kick me off. I was sharing a sleeper compartment with a nun from Australia and after we both just sat there and refused to move, things settled down eventually and we made it to Delhi after a long night of nauseating driving down mountain roads. I actually threw up out the window - first time I've ever done that in India.

So all in all, it's been a fantastic trip. I was really surprised by how many people I still knew there and how much it still felt like home. Even the new people I met had some context to know who I was (most people are familiar with the Emory program there), we usually had some friends in common, and I still knew enough about Dharamsala to understand who they were. I even got roped into doing a half day of translation work for a Tibetan activist group organizing a protest in Delhi. It was good to know that I could come back to it after so long and still feel really happy there.

So now I'm just waiting out the day in Delhi till my plane leaves at 3 AM tonight... then it's back to NACCHO.