Love, Mountains, and Broken Clubs

general

Week 13

As usual, I was overambitious and underproductive with my lofty goals of continuing to post weekly while I was in India for a month. I’m eating some humble pie right now, but trying to get back to regular programming. Trying, most importantly, to be less critical and less obsessed with perfection. Posting as it comes instead of lingering on it.

I dipped out of here without notice to go on vacation to India for nearly a month, and it’s been anything but relaxing. I think I’m starting to realise how poor I am at taking relaxing vacations. That said, it was for a good cause—I attended two amazing, whirlwind weddings on both sides of the family. As a result, I got to meet a lot of extended family all at once, after a really, really long time. It helped set the tone that one of the weddings was literally in the mountains, where I always feel a sense of calm.

The first wedding was in Dharamsala, an idyllic mountain town nestled in the Dhauladhar range of the Lower Himalayas. Much like Test cricket, Indian weddings go on for days. In between the events of the first wedding, I found a small window of a few days and took the chance to head further up to a small village called Dharamkot. Dharamkot sits in the forested hills above McLeodganj, another town above Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama currently lives in exile. The town is colloquially known as “Little Israel” thanks to its large population of Israeli backpackers. They even have a Chabad house there. I was curious about the place and figured it would be relatively calmer to stay there than in McLeodganj, which I assumed would be packed with tourists.

Dharamkot is mostly just a village with very little proper infrastructure. There are cheap, basic rooms in buildings converted into “hostels” that attract backpackers, stoners, students, and digital nomads alike. There are also numerous yoga studios and creative spaces teaching various arts like jewelry-making, pottery, and more. It’s also home to the famous Tushita Meditation Centre, where people from all over the world attend multi-day Buddhist meditation retreats.

I spent two days in Dharamkot, staying in a barebones hostel that served fairly good, home-style food. My original plan was to do a day trek to Triund on one of the days, but I decided against it due to lack of proper shoes—it had snowed near the summit the day before. Instead, I spent time walking around Dharamkot and McLeodganj, enjoying pahadi chai in the mountains. I also strolled around inside the Tushita campus and felt very much at peace. It was still early in my trip, so I had energy from all the excitement. It felt like a perfect break to be surrounded by the serenity of nature, just listening to birds and the breeze in the trees. For a moment, on a terrace I had randomly wandered onto in one of the buildings at Tushita, I soaked in the sun like a plant while a girl in the background recorded herself doing yoga.

From Tushita, McLeodganj is a pleasant ~30-minute walk through mountain village bylanes. My sole purpose in McLeodganj was to visit Namgyal Monastery, home of the Dalai Lama—another place that exudes a sense of peace. I’d been there before with family when I was much younger. I didn’t get to meet His Holiness this time, but I did confirm that you can email him to request an audience, and you usually get a response within a week. It can take a few tries, but an audience is typically granted as long as he’s not traveling or booked for an event.

With the day winding down in McLeodganj, I spent over an hour at a café, sipping tea and watching the bustle of the market. I tried reading a John Berger book I was carrying but couldn’t really get into it. I’ve been picking up and dropping books quickly lately, trying to just keep reading something. Not sure it’s working, but that didn’t really stop me from buying three more books in India. Nearby, I wandered into some jewellery stores and spoke with one of the owners about the uses of Black Tourmaline. He told me people wear it for its calming effect and to ward off negative forces, both external and internal. Intriguing—especially the internal part. I learned that you should wear the raw form and keep the polished one in your home. The raw stones were fairly cheap, but the pieces didn’t look great, so I passed. He didn’t push the sale either, and we ended on a nice conversation.

I went looking instead for a small Buddhist prayer flag at the numerous roadside vendors in the market—something I’ve wanted for a long time. My family once brought one back from Ladakh, but it was too big to put up anywhere in my home. I finally found the perfect size for the grand sum of Rs. 50 (0.5 euros), paid via direct digital payment to the sweet old lady running the stand. It’s always incredible to see how widespread digital payments are in India, and how they’re not necessarily tied to the need for a formal bank account.

India is always a melting pot of things. Often, it takes me a while after I return to really process and understand the variety of thoughts and experiences. There’s always more to write, but also a lot to think about over the coming weeks: how to live a more purposeful life, a better life. How to be more forgiving, more calm, more supportive of those who support me.

Though this trip was physically tiring, it felt mentally and emotionally rejuvenating. I treated myself by taking my golf clubs along and sneaking in a few rounds with family between the non-stop activity. I even bought myself a nice watch I’d been eyeing for a while. More importantly, I felt a lot of love this time around—and realised how easy it is to deny yourself that pleasure. Not intentionally, of course, but subconsciously. I also reflected on the shape that feeling sometimes takes—like the quiet homesickness I get after returning from somewhere, the kind I acknowledge briefly before quickly moving on. Maybe it’s from moving so much since college, or living in different places and having to leave friends behind and start over again and again. You just get used to it. Maybe it’s just that we live in a world where taking time to acknowledge and feel our emotions feels like adding another task to the to-do list. I’m not sure, but I think it’s worth it—every now and then—to go a little out of the way, to acknowledge the people who look out for you, and to allow the love to flow in.

And, as with all ups, there are also downs. Though the joy of treating myself was well worth it, there was, of course, a bittersweetness lingering just around the corner. Everything went super well until the day of my return, when not only was my original flight cancelled and I got rerouted into a 25-hour journey, but during unpacking I found one of my golf bag stands smashed into two pieces. Life really tests you sometimes.

To be updated later…

🥘 Food
  • Chicken Curry with Rice, a lazy Wednesday night prep
📚 Reading
💿 Listening
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india

travel