Butter Tea with Momos and More

This post is about the places we went to on the second part of our north leg journey. During this part of our journey we made a stop at Chandigarh, Dharamsala, and Amritsar. Each portion of the journey was unique and each drive in between each city was frightening. So I will begin telling all of you about Chandigarh.

Chandigarh (I can't think of a witty title for this one): Chandigarh is not your usual Indian city. It is clean and looks very western. We stayed there for one night. Upon our arrival to the hotel we were surprised to be treated with exceptionally nice service. As it turns out, one of the YSS devotees that was expecting us had called the hotel five times to see if we had arrived because we were so late. She is married to the former chief of police for the state of Punjab and let us just say that they respect former chiefs of police.
The next day we went to the Chandigarh YSS center for Sunday service. The service was different than an SRF service, but it was still enjoyable. The devotees were very sweet and I could tell that they loved the Guru a lot. After the service they took us around the temple grounds and showed us their school. It was pretty sweet, I especially liked the playground the children had. Once we had finished our tour of the temple we went to one of the devotee's house for lunch (it was the same women who had checked on us at the hotel). This was my first glimpse of Indian hospitality. It was nothing too bad, we were just served drinks and food. In fact it was rather nice. I was not very talkative, but nonetheless, I tried my best to be a good guest. After an hour or so we left our new found friends (well new found for me at least) and headed off to Dharamsala.


The next part of my post is the part that includes my experience with butter tea and momos. Now, it is not the most memorable part of my time at Dharamsala, far from it, but I thought that it would be a fun title.


Butter Tea and Momos: The road to Dharamsala was eventful. During the trip we ended up on a one lane road that was supporting bidirectional traffic. It was a bit stressful, but we made it through ok. I think I will never worry about Indian driving again after that journey. After our seven hour trip we arrived at our hotel. All of us were tired and ready to go to sleep. It had been a long journey and things hadn't played out exactly as expected during this leg of the journey. Well, as it turns out, the hotel was another one of those things that didn't play out quite as we expected. When we arrived at the hotel we were greeted by a whopping ninety step staircase. Now this did not bother me, but one my traveling companions is a bit older and she does not like climbing stairs. In fact, she is the only reason I know that we climbed 90 steps. Her disdain for them led her to count them. After the steps we were led to our rooms. I didn't think they were too bad, but apparently they were according to my friends. They were actually bad enough for us to consider switching hotels, but we later decided against that. So after this eventful day and night we finally did get to sleep and awoke refreshed for a fun and exciting day in Dharamsala.
We began our tour through Dharamsala with a glimpse of the mountains nearby. On our way to the lookout point we happened upon an accident that had occurred the night before. The accident was in the middle of the road we were traveling on so we had to wait for it to be cleared. I must say that the Indian people have a very interesting way of clearing an accident when it is in a small town. It seems to involve 20-30 men, all of whom were taxi drivers, who were trying to lift the vehicle into the back of a jeep. For the time I was there, it took around 15-20f minutes of discussing and 5 minutes of lifting to get this taxi into the car. I, personally, found it quite entertaining. Once the men had lifted the vehicle into the back of the jeep, which was actually too short to fit the entire vehicls, they went ahead and "secured" it with a couple of pieces of rope. We had to drive behind this poorly secured vehicle in order to get to the look out point. Let me just say that I was relieved to find that it was a short drive. The view that we received at the lookout point was actually a little less than a glimpse because the fog had rolled in just as we got there. We couldn't see the Himalayas, but I was fine by that because I didn't come to Dharamsala to see the Himalayas. I had already seen them at Badrinath. After our short glimpse at the fog shrouded mountains we headed off to McLeodGanj, which is where the Tibetan monks stay in exile. While we were there we saw quite a few monks and nuns walking around the city it was a sight. During out visit to McLeodGanj we saw the Tibetan temple and the Tibetan library. At the temple we say a few monks having the debate. I don't exactly know what that is, but I do know it involves a slapping of the hands together. Then we walked inside the temple and got to see all the statues they had and the tankas for their deities and the different Buddhas. It was interesting, but also some what foreign feeling. I didn't know what to think about the gigantic statues and paintings they had made for their gods. To tell the truth, the Tibetan temple didn't really stike my fancy too much. I felt no connection. Even when I turned the prayer wheels that' were filled with the mantra "Om mani padme hum" I didn't really feel anything. So I left the temple with more of a feeling of wonder before all those gigantic statues. After the temple we went to the library. The library was spectacular. They had all these old writings on tomes, palm leaves, and other documents stored in a room. It was amazing that they collected and kept safe all these writings for so long. For some reason this connected with me and I left the library feeling uplifted. We went to a museum after the library and were able to see smaller figures of all the different Buddhas and other deities. It was rather interesting, however I didn't really know how to process it. Following the library and the museum I was feeling rather joyous and this is when we stopped to get some butter tea and momos. For all of you who don't know what butter tea is let me explain it a bit. Butter tea involves the mixing of boiled water with butter to the point where they are pretty much homogenized. It sounds pretty disgusting, but it also peaked my interest and I decided I needed to try some while I could. So we sat down in a restaurant and ordered to butter tea. It came in a very large mug, the largest I've seen in India, and looked nasty. In fact, it was pretty nasty. It was watery and buttery at the same time. It seemed that a little sugar helped make it taste better, while a little sugar and a little salt helped it taste a lot better. In any case it was an experience. Not as nice as the library, but an experience nonetheless. That pretty much ended my trip at Dharamsala. After the butter tea and momos we headed back to the hotel, had a group meditation, and went to sleep. The next day we had to wake up early and head to Amritsar.

Well it looks like I wrote a lot again. I think I'm going to leave my tales about Amritsar and Agra for another time. Max out.