A Walk in the mountains

I woke up to the sound of rain. Not a good day to climb up to the top of Triund, the local mountain, I thought. Later the rain stopped and I set off to Bagsu, a jumble of ugly hotels, building sites and rough, unpaved tracks. I headed out of Bagsu, uphill, into the rhododendron and pine forest, until I came to the Chai shop at the entrance to Tushita meditation centre. There I met an English man, and we continued up the track together, climbing past the village of Dharamcot clinging to the side of the mountain, the houses with their grey slate roofs and hay hanging in the trees. We passed women climbing up the tall rhododendron trees, to cut the leafy branches, which they carry in huge bundles on their backs to feed to their cows. We came to another chai shop, where I bought some biscuits which we sat and munched as we surveyed the misty valley below, pausing before the steepest part of the climb. It started to rain just as we were scrabbling up a steep, gravelly slope and we took refuge in another chai shop at the start of the track leading up to the top of Triund. When the rain stopped we headed downhill in a loop through thick pine forest. It rained several times in the afternoon, ending with a hailstorm, thunder and lightning. But I was back in my room by then.

Mc Cloud was a Scottish army officer, who built himself a house in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh at the end of the nineteenth century, when he retired. A small settlement grew up round him, as other British army families came to live in this cool mountain place, which came to be known as Mc Cloud Ganj. In 1904 there was a terrible earthquake and most of the houses collapsed, killing hundreds of people. They were buried in the British cemetery by the British church below Mc Cloud Ganj and the place was abandoned.

Later, when the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet, Pandit Nheru, the leader of India at the time, offered Mc Cloud Ganj to the Dalai Lama. His Holiness sent a messenger to find out about the place. He came back saying that it had the highest rainfall in India, but it was a nice place. So His Holiness and his retinue went to live there and set up the Tibetan government in exile. Many of the first wave of Tibetan refugees built themselves hotels, which rise up precipitously along the ridge, right along a major fault line. They believe that the presence of the Dalai Lama will prevent an earthquake from happening. Local Indians, Tibetans and Kashmiris live cheek by jowl in Mc Cloud and visitors come from all over the world to see the Dalai Lama. Several monasteries house hundreds of monks, who throng the streets in their red robes. Bands of Rajastani beggar women and children with matted hair and dirty clothes roam the streets, despite frequent notices advising people not to give money to beggars (unless they are the right kind of beggars: lepers or blind people.)