This small city is where the Dalai Lama resides. The town with both a mixture of traditional and modernized lifestyle, is such a beautiful place to spend time enjoying the nature. During the winter it can get as cold as zero degrees.
The journey we took was pretty rough, we rode a train from the New Delhi station to Himachal Pradesh. It was literally an eight hours of boredom train ride. The train ride was followed by a two-hour bus ride. The landscape of Dharamsala was pure nature. The roadside was filled with tall mountains where snow was and the sides were filled with little huts and fields of plants and vegetables.
We arrived at our destination "McLoud Ganj" at around eight p.m.. The city was already dark. Everyone was already hidden in their homes because of the cold temperature that was round about five degrees. We all came down from the bus shivering, finding sweaters and jackets, wherever they were burried deep in the backpack. All of us went running into the town where our "hotel" was (it was literally a two-floor building with many bedrooms). I wasn't able to sleep that night because the heater was not working properly which made our room freezing, feeling like we were outside.
The next day we went on walking tour in town. It was only 15 minutes when we arrived at the Dalai Lama's temple. Unfortunately the Dalai Lama wasn't there :( so we were lead around the temple by a monk there. The temple was located high in the middle of the town. I was totally amazed by all the Tibetan culture. An object I liked the most was this cylindrical prayer wheel, that was engraved by chants alligned throughout the whole temple. By turning around the wheel, Tibetians believe they are chanting. After going into the temple, we went outside to walk the trail around the temple. The trail is filled with Tibetan flags which symbolizes peace, wisdom, compassion and strength. The Tibetans believe if they attached these flags outside and let the wind blow they will emitt positive powers into the atmosphere making people feel positive. The area has a scenery with beautiful snowy mountains and green growing pine trees and giant rocks. After that we moved to another city to Dharmsala.
Dharmsala also has a Tibetan culture site which is called the "Norbulingka Insititute" where they preserve Tibetan culture. There were many shops filled with handicrafts. That whole day we walked around the city and that night we got ready for the next three full days of hiking.
The next day I was forced to wake up at seven in the morning which made hiking wasn't the ideal thing I wanted to do after lazy and tiring days we spent in the city. Our group started off in at the trail right at the coner of where our hotel was. The first few hours of trekking in the forest was not really tiring, we walked past smaller towns high up in the mountains. I was first in the line until we got to the tea garden ... walking up these stairs builts by rocks, ridiculously tiring. I LITERALLY DIED. After eight full hours of trekking we finally arrived at the campsite located on the hill side, from the top what we saw was the whole city.
The next day we hiked up high into the moutains. This day was more adventerous. We went through stone forests. We also walked past an Indian wedding. It was filled with girls in sari, like colors of the rainbow. The camp we stayed was at a higher mountain where we fortunately found snow. This camp had an amazing view of the Himalayas. The campsite had a big snow pile. We literally took a photoshoot at the campsite. That day was one of the best ones I spent in India.The next day I somehow woke up at five in the morning and luckily saw the very beautiful sunrise.
The last day of the trip we went up to one of the tourist sightseeing and visited "Magic view" (or something else). The scenery was amazing. It was such a nice panorama view of mountains, cities and snow. The journey to the top of the mountain was filled with fun adventures such as jumping over rocks and climbing over hills of snow. After coming down from the top, we went back to the first hotel and drove to the train station and rode a night train back to New Delhi.
My experience was filled with joy of seeing one of the unseen places in India. I'll keep updating my Travel Diary :). Ttyl and see ya in "Travel Diary 2.0".
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