In Exile
'Travellers' never fail to amuse me. They loaf around in their dreadlocks, tattoos and baggy pants in a desperate effort to be different and just end up blending right into their own little crowd. Nowhere more so than here in India, the hippie capital of the known universe.
But when push comes to shove, say when a bus is a couple of hours late as tend to happen in Asia once in a while, this bunch will kick up a fuss like ther's no tomorrow. "Chill out, man," I feel like saying, "It's all good, don't mean nothin'." There's more of them than me though, so I keep my trap shut in case all that peace and love turns into an angry punch-up.
Anyway, made it in the end. The bus came, the flies went away, and despite more rupturous dissent when a group of Tibetans from a refugee colony outside Delhi boarded and took all the best seats we got here earlyish this morning. I promptly disappeared and found a decent hotel at half-rate, which makes up for having been done over for the price of my bus ticket on Janpath back in ND.
Home of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, McLeod Ganj sits among the hills near Dharamsala at 1,750m above sea-level. Here you'll find a Little-Tibet without-Tibet, somehow more engaging yet altogether false compared to the real thing. I'll stay here a couple of days, though - it'll do me good.
