This morning I woke up in pain. My legs, unused these days to doing very much at all, were protesting angrily at all the work they’d had to put up with in one day. Hardly surprising because yesterday, as I carried my 65-litre backpack up the stairs to the Pink Hotel, my legs were literally shaking. Who needs Cher Fitness Videos when there are the foothills of the Himalayas?
My friend Tsewang finds my suffering very amusing; understandable considering he is someone who walked from Tibet to Nepal through the Himalayas, and so it has to be laughable that I can’t manage a few measly hills and steps. But I have my excuses, the main one being that common western disease - the middle age spread. Six years ago in McLeod Ganj, I was half my current size. “It’s not enough exercise,” I said.
“It’s chocolate,” he said. Very perceptive, I thought.
So today, by the time I had dragged myself out of bed and up the Yong Ling steps, the sun was beating down fiercely as it was getting close to lunchtime. Cutting through the nunnery opposite the Chocolate Log cafe, I took the short cut along a ridge covered with water-pipes to get to the Buddhist Dialectic School where Tsewang lives. Depending upon the time of year, the ridge can be in a variety of states. All year round it is an obstacle course as a steady stream of monks, nuns, laypeople and tourists pick their way over the latticework of thin pipes that runs half its length and sometimes spouts precious water when broken. During the monsoon the ridge is half washed away, and when the weather is mild, parts of it will be covered in building materials or it will be dotted with holes as work is carried out. Sometimes, on a day like today, the ridge is hopping with monkeys or alive with white, black-spotted butterflies; but always it commands the most spectacular views of the hills.
Conveniently, I arrived at the school just as another monk was cooking for Tsewang and a group of students. While we waited for lunch (or breakfast for me), Tsewang showed me film footage of his village in Kham, Tibet; a place he left more than two decades ago when he was just a boy of fourteen. Because of the Chinese government’s reaction to the protests in Tibet last year, communication to his area is cut with phone lines and email still disconnected one year on. But word does get out eventually and according to reports, he said, a number of farmers had been recently hurt or killed after carrying out their own protest by refusing to work on the land.
Tomorrow, in pain or not, I need to be up early. The Dalai Lama is holding a conference with scientists on Buddhism and science, and Tsewang has invited me to attend the live screening in the Dialectic school. This means I have to forget being on London time and be there by 9am. In my time that means 4.30am. Eek.
Hopefully my legs will have stopped shaking by then.
My friend Tsewang finds my suffering very amusing; understandable considering he is someone who walked from Tibet to Nepal through the Himalayas, and so it has to be laughable that I can’t manage a few measly hills and steps. But I have my excuses, the main one being that common western disease - the middle age spread. Six years ago in McLeod Ganj, I was half my current size. “It’s not enough exercise,” I said.
“It’s chocolate,” he said. Very perceptive, I thought.
So today, by the time I had dragged myself out of bed and up the Yong Ling steps, the sun was beating down fiercely as it was getting close to lunchtime. Cutting through the nunnery opposite the Chocolate Log cafe, I took the short cut along a ridge covered with water-pipes to get to the Buddhist Dialectic School where Tsewang lives. Depending upon the time of year, the ridge can be in a variety of states. All year round it is an obstacle course as a steady stream of monks, nuns, laypeople and tourists pick their way over the latticework of thin pipes that runs half its length and sometimes spouts precious water when broken. During the monsoon the ridge is half washed away, and when the weather is mild, parts of it will be covered in building materials or it will be dotted with holes as work is carried out. Sometimes, on a day like today, the ridge is hopping with monkeys or alive with white, black-spotted butterflies; but always it commands the most spectacular views of the hills.
Conveniently, I arrived at the school just as another monk was cooking for Tsewang and a group of students. While we waited for lunch (or breakfast for me), Tsewang showed me film footage of his village in Kham, Tibet; a place he left more than two decades ago when he was just a boy of fourteen. Because of the Chinese government’s reaction to the protests in Tibet last year, communication to his area is cut with phone lines and email still disconnected one year on. But word does get out eventually and according to reports, he said, a number of farmers had been recently hurt or killed after carrying out their own protest by refusing to work on the land.
Tomorrow, in pain or not, I need to be up early. The Dalai Lama is holding a conference with scientists on Buddhism and science, and Tsewang has invited me to attend the live screening in the Dialectic school. This means I have to forget being on London time and be there by 9am. In my time that means 4.30am. Eek.
Hopefully my legs will have stopped shaking by then.
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