Our next stop after Nepal was Dharamasala, India, where their Holinesses the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa are living in exile. Ed has wanted to visit Dharamasala for about 40 years.
McLeod Ganj with the Himalayas behind
We missed our connection to Dharamasala by 7 hours and the next flight wasn’t til 2 days later, so we snagged a cab into Delhi. By the grace of God, our driver was Jazwant, and he spoke English (sort of). We were too late to book the overnight train (you need at least 4 hours advance and mostly you need at least a few days), so we told Jazwant to take us to the bus terminal. Jazwant said ”Oh, no, no, no, no, please. You cannot go by public bus. Not nice. We must try the train.” So he drove us to the railway station even though we were way past
Truck in Dharamasala
the deadline. I waited in the taxi while Jazwant took Ed in, where they told them that it was impossible to buy seats on the train this late. But Jazwant was The Man. He found us a porter who found us The Fixer – a young man named Rawl who fixed everything. For 7,000 rupees, he secured us 1st class sleeper tickets on the overnight train to Pathankot, which was a mere 4-hour cab ride to Dharamasala. While we were waiting to board the train The Fixer lamented the rampant corruption in India that would cause us to have to pay twice the correct price for our berths. He told me, “Momma, everybody in India is corrupt, including me. It is a national tragedy.”
The Dalai Lama needs no intro, but perhaps you have not heard of the Karmapa. He is the spiritual head of the Tibetan nation, and along with the Dalai Lama, the oldest reincarnation of the Bodhisattva. His mission is not to live in a cave, but to go out in to the world to insure that every living soul can be enlightened and liberated, however many reincarnations that may take. This Karmapa is the 17th Karmapa, and he is a very young, but very wise man. He is the head of the lineage under which Ed studies and practices, and is a most important person in Ed’s world, maybe the very most important. So this journey to Dharamasala is something of a pilgrimage.
Tibetan Shrine
We arrived yesterday, and today we went to attend the Karmapa’s traditional Wednesday afternoon teaching only to discover that the Karmapa is not in Dharamasala, but in Veranasi. I am heartbroken for Ed. Just heartbroken. We tried to find someone who could tell us what the Karmapa’s schedule is, indeed where he is teaching in Veranasi, but no one knows. Everyone attending him, his entire office, has gone with him. One of the monks told us he would be back in about two weeks. So sad. And to top it off, Ed is now suffering terribly from my cold. We visited both the Karmapa’s temple, which was fabulous in the truest sense of the word, as well as the Norbulinka Institute, which is the Dalai Lama’s foundation to keep Tibetan arts and culture alive.
At Norbulingka Institute
They were both very beautiful and spiritual places. But they could not make up for the crushing absence of the Karmapa.
