Fear and Loathing in Dharmsala

OK, so the past few days have been more of the same dog catching, vaccinating, sterilizing etc. etc.. I got most of the key pictures already and now I’m either getting B-roll images for reference or portraits for newspapers or fund raising. There’s two more events that I need to be at but that’s it. We’re supposed to vaccinate a whole bunch of puppies sometime and we’re going to check out a sick, stray donkey that’s being treated by Arvind and a volunteer vet.

Lately I’ve been taking pictures on my own of general life in Dharmsala. The last time I was here I spent most of my time in Lower Dharmsala which is predominately Indian with a few Tibetans and very few Westerners. I was also constantly looked after with a well stocked kitchen, three meals a day and various support staff to care for my every need. This time I’m basically on my own up in Mcleoud Ganj mixed among Tibetans, Indians and Westerners. My apartment has a kitchen but no refrigerator so I don’t cook. I eat out for every meal. I can’t complain about that though; its actually really cheap to eat out. Breakfast is about $1.50 and a good dinner is about $2.50. Being without the support net does afford me a more real experience here.

It took about eight days to get everything straight in my apartment. Most requests took three days or more to fulfill with inquiries bringing the answer “tomorrow” along with a smile and Indian head weave. My Internet request took ten “tomorrows”. Oh but payment was always expected immediately. “You pay now” was a familiar refrain, including for Internet that kept coming tomorrow.

The internet installation has been the biggest cluster fuck so far. They run cables from an Internet cafe across the way from the apartment. These cables are moved from apartment to apartment as requests come in rather than have a permanent cable leading to each unit. Of course this means that every time the cable is moved it gets kinked a little more and it capability to deliver signal degrades. The first cable was severely damaged with evident kinking all along the hundred plus foot length of the cable. I tried to point this out but was dismissed. I guess I don’t know what I’m talking about. They installed a new cable after Heidi went ballistic because her connection was unstable and called a meeting of the staff, residents and the owner. They brought me in and after the owner knew what I do for a living I became the expert and they sort of listened to me. The next day a kid came out with a box of Cat-5 cable and strung up a new cable. He kinked it, twice and I told him that’s not good for the cable. He assured me that there’s six cables inside so its redundant and will be OK then he threw in the infamous smile and Indian head weave. I started to explain why he was wrong but half way though the first sentence the futility of doing so hit me and I shut up and just walked away. Well I have internet now but its so slow I can’t really use it for anything.

The faces of my readers who are now wondering why they just don’t use WiFi just flashed though my head so for those people I’ll delve a bit deeper into the Indian Internet Cluster Fuck. The apartment building, like most buildings here are made entirely of concrete. Every wall is thick concrete. Wifi does not penetrate concrete. The wifi that does exist here is run by a person sitting in front of the admin interface for the access point manually adding the MAC address of the computer allowing a connection. These are typical home access points meant for two or three connections, not ten or more by the way. Each time a new user wants to connect the AP needs to be reconfigured and reset throwing everyone off the internet for a minute or two. This gets tedious when things are busy. Bandwidth is a joke. One place advertises “Fast Broadband”. I got a good look at the router and looked it up. Its a 128k bps ISDN router.

I thought about automating the Wifi cluster fuck then realized that wouldn’t go over well here. The MAC address guy is employed and that’s a good thing here. Automation is mostly considered bad. What one machine can do is better done by two, three, or ten paid Indians. Everything that can be a manual process is. Moving rocks is done by six people rather than one guy and a wheelbarrow.

So I’m going off course and should pull back. Dharamsala. If you disregard the Dahli Lama and the Tibetan exiles for a moment, this place is just a typical small mountain town. There’s two roads that lead to it and one of them can only loosely be considered a road. Those two roads meet at the bottom of the hill and lead to a minor Indian road that after fifty or so kilometers leads to a kind of major two lane road. There is an airstrip nearby but there aren’t many flights and those flights are all on tiny puddle jumpers. Before the arrival of the Dahli Lama the biggest thing about this place was the bus stop. It was practically abandoned after the departure of the British.

The Indian government gave The Dahli Lama this small town for him to set up his government in exile and host the many Tibetan refugees that followed him here. Slowly a community was built and then the tourists came. First they were Buddhists on pilgrimage. Then came the hikers, travelers, Eastern Europeans looking for a cheap holiday and Israeli soldiers on leave (Dharmsala is one of the few places they are allowed to go).

Following the tourists came the Indians. They set up trinket shops, restaurants and hotels. Indians own mostly everything in McLeod Ganj. Tibetans have no money to start a business. A Tibetan owned business here is rare and most of the Tibetan owned businesses are simple roadside stands. Some Indian owned businesses employ Tibetans and many of them are treated poorly. One day I was at a cafe where the son of the Indian owner sat in a chair near the door talking on his phone while barking orders at the Tibetan staff. This is typical. The Indians and the Tibetans don’t really get along. There’s a state of detente and open hostility is rare but there is definitely hostility. The Indians act as though they “own the place”. Some will tell you that they despise the Tibetans because they are spoiled by foreign sponsorships and donations while Indians suffer.


Many, but not all, of the Indians here are clearly out for money and will quickly take advantage of the next tourist that comes along. Any Western tourist can give you more than one story of an Indian shopkeeper trying to charge two or three times the regular price for water or something. There was one place that had the prices clearly advertised on a sign and as my friend stood under that sign the shopkeeper attempted to charge a premium then could not explain why the sign said what it did then persisted in charging the premium. This kind of thing quickly turns off Western tourists. Savvy tourists here know to avoid Indians when possible and when not possible how to not get ripped off. Anything sold in stores here has a government set price written somewhere on it by the manufacturer. Pointing that out usually avoids haggling with an unscrupulous shop owner. Last year I did have to argue once with a guy who tried to charge me double for a soda. I restrained myself from throwing it at him and just walked out.

There’s also the local Indian tourists that come here from Punjab mostly. Later in the summer, rich tourists form Southern India also come here to escape the heat as well. The Punjabis are just like college students on spring break. They’re loud, obnoxious and sometimes violent. One night recently a group of them came roaring into town at night in a monster SUV driving the wrong way up a one way street looking for some Tibetans to engage in a fight. More recently Heidi and Michael (her cameraman) were followed home by a group of teenagers looking for trouble. The Indians from elsewhere are a little more respectful but they still walk around as though they are royalty. Seeing them in The Temple is disgusting. They’ll walk into the middle of a service taking pictures, talking loudly, letting their children do whatever they want while they look around as though they are in disgust.


A subgroup of the tourists are young Westerners lost and disillusioned looking to find something spiritual here. Its easy to identify these people. When they arrive they’re wide-eyed and all love and smiles. After a few days and interactions with unscrupulous Indians they become jaded. A few more days it hits them, there’s nothing here. At least nothing easy. These pour souls are the most easily identified. The best analogy I could give may only be understood by a few people but its what I have. Picture a rave. [Yeah I know I lost many of you right here] Think about the end of the rave when all the ecstasy has been taken and everyone that was going to pair up has and has long since left. Those that are left have a distinct look. Its a very lonely look exacerbated by the drugs running through their brains impacting them with a deep desire to connect with someone but there is no one. Well the lost souls here have that same exact look. Its sad to see but not uncommon.

These people arrive here and maybe take a class on Buddhism and think they’re Buddhists. They may sit around talking about Buddhism. They may offer to buy a monk dinner. They most definitely go to The Temple spinning the prayer wheels and bowing to every image of Buddha they some across. Some may go on a ten day meditation retreat (or at least talk about it to everyone they know then flake out). One place they are rarely seen is in the parts of the temple where actual Buddhists prostrate themselves in an act that what would make a hundred Hail Mary’s while kneeling seem like child’s play. They also are missing from the circumambulation paths inside and outside the temple where the prayer beads they so proudly wear on their wrists are supposed to be used to count the saying of mantras.

These poor souls are preyed upon by the False Babas, Indians wearing robes and accruements that give them the impression of spirituality. Some of them are just in it for a quick rupee and will tell a tourist that giving them money will be returned to the many-fold later on though Karma. I’ve watched them fleece tourists many times and each time I laugh. I’m not going to warn the tourists. I honestly don’t care when a fool is parted with his money especially one with enough to come here for vacation. The False Babas that become leaches are the evil ones. They’re pretty easy to spot. They look for certain kinds of Westerners then once their prey is sighted they’re relentless. They’re con-men and often they can easily win over their mark into buying them dinner, taking their class (for a price) or even following them around recruiting others to do they same. Some of these followers are middle aged adults who take their entire families on the road to follow the False Baba. When I see that I feel really bad for the kids.

I could go on with tales of False Yogis, New Age Deepak Chopra wannabes and the like but I should post this soon. I’m sure you get the picture.

Anyway, on to the order and chaos thing. There are a lot of tourists who are here just for a good time and aren’t necessarily carrying a spiritual void. Many are Israeli soldiers on leave. There’s also a large number of Eastern Europeans here because it is so cheap. Gap year college students are another group commonly found here. These tourists are here to party plain and simple. Some don’t quite get that this is a Third World country and the fact that this town is a practically isolated mountain town in a Third World country doesn’t quite convey the reality that this is not a resort. One really needs to go with the flow here. Doing so will eventually reveal the order in the chaos and once that is found being here can be a very pleasant experience. The ones that expect things and complain about everything and wonder why things aren’t done here the way they’re done back home are the ones that break and end up going home early and consider this hell on Earth. I ran into a group of them at the airport coming here. I could tell they were about the have the worst time of their lives. I saw them around the first day I was here and they were evidently in shock. I haven’t seen them since. Last year a few of the people I volunteered with were the same way. They all left pissed off and strung out. I just don’t get these people. I really don’t.

Anyway, its late. I need to post this. Tomorrow I’m going to see my kids from last year. I’m excited. The donkey search was canceled due to rain. Its been raining here almost every day. This time its a cold rain and not really that pleasant so walking about in it isn’t as appealing as it was last year later in the summer when it was very hot. I’m going the Delhi next Friday for a day then back to Stockholm for two days then home. I’ll probably blog once or twice in there somewhere...


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