Traveling to Dharamsala is the culmination of a dream from five years ago. A psychic told me I was meant to travel the world. Just as I was leaving her house she handed me a string of cloth birds and said: “A friend who met the Dalai Lama gave me these birds. Now I am to give them to you for you will meet the Dalai Lama on your travels.” Now I have a chance to see that prophecy come true.
We travel by bus from Amritsar on our way to Dharamsala. After several hours we come to the border of the State of Himachel Pradesh and everything changes drastically. The architecture is much better and there is a lot of new construction going on. The country starts to get a lot hillier and there are many more trees.
I love this country It seems so familiar to me. As if to accentuate my feelings, we pass an estate named ‘Canada Palace’. We travel up winding roads through
reddy brown dirt hills with
cinder block barriers to hold back the soil from falling into our path. We drive slowly around narrow roads
who's banks drop off hundreds of feet to the valley below. Many times we have to stop for another bus to squeeze past us as it heads the other way.
As we come to a clearing between the steep hills, I suddenly catch me first glimpse of the Himalayan Mountains. They are very far away to the North and appear as a misty vision in the distance. They are magnificent to see. They remind me very much of the Rocky Mountains near
Banff Alberta except they are twice as high. Here's a photo I got of them the next day. Do you see them in the distance behind Aw?
How about now? This photo doesn't do them justice
of course.
I am surprised to go through several large towns before we finally arrive in the dark in
Dharamsala. Lonely Planet says we really want to go the extra four kilometers to McLeod Gang.
We find a Polish couple to share a jeep with and the four of us pay the 120 rupees between us, to make the final assent. When we arrive I feel an increasing sense of peace and tranquility. This place really feels like home. We walk a short distance to the ‘OM’ Hotel and get a room for 250 rupees.
Our window looks out to a view of the wooded hillside below and the view makes me feel energized. I love the town for as much as we can see in our quick stroll to find some dinner. We walk across the street to the
MLCD Restaurant, which is touted as the place Pierce Bronson likes to eat.
It has a photo of him with his hand on his heart; sitting at the same table Aw is eating her Thai chicken (not really Thai).
I have a extra strength King Fisher Beer and we are feeling very good. Aw is very cuddly and I can feel that we are both starting to relax after the last two days of hard travel. We come back to our room and both fall immediately into a deep sleep. We wake up refreshed and my heart feels more at peace than it has been in a long time.
My dear friend, Judy, lost her son on June 9th, 2005. Just before he died, my mom noticed a strange thing. A red-winged blackbird kept slamming himself against her kitchen window for a couple of weeks before Chris's death. I wrote about it in the post: Nature Spirits on June 7th. Day after day this bird would pelt himself against that window. 
At first, Mom thought it was some kind of reflection problem that was drawing this bird. She closed the blinds and made sure there were no mirrors or reflecting objects to draw the bird to that window, but nothing worked. This went on every day for two weeks. Then On June 9th, it stopped. The next day, Judy phoned to tell me her son had been found in Stanley Park. This is a photo of Chris and his mom. I flew to Vancouver a couple of weeks later and Judy and I had a Mystic Experience with the animals. Last year at exactly the same time, the bird suddenly appeared again, but this time Mom remarked that he just flew around cheerfully until a day before the anniversary of Chris's death; and then he disappeared again. He's here now; flying around in Mom's yard and feeding at the bird feeder with the other birds. Welcome back. 
It’s a beautiful fresh cool morning in Dharamsala, and I keep remembering that day as we walk down the small Village of McLeod Gang toward the residence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The Polish couple told us that he is away on a speaking tour but I am excited to just be in the place where he lives.
