A Day in the Life

Living in small hamlets outside of McL, are many Indian families. These women were visiting with each other, sitting on rocks close to the road. Renea and I were walking to the booming metropolis of Dharamsala one Saturday when we met them. While their goats and cows grazed along the hillside below, we tried to ask them questions. Although they spoke no English, pictures (having a camera helps one to make friends immediately, as most villagers are not shy about having their pictures taken as long as you show them the results), gestures and smiles helped us to communicate with them.


This young lad was another "local" we met along the way. He insisted on walking with us, directed our picture-taking and was quite assertive for one so young. He carried a small metal pail that had a honey colored liquid in it and several coins that he'd earned from begging in McL earlier that day. A real conniver, he asked Renea for a drink of her water (most Indians and Tibetans drink without letting their lips touch the bottle) and after firmly planting his lips on the bottle and taking a nice, big swig, she told him to keep the rest of it, knowing that he'd probably planned to make the water his anyway!

Road crews are manned (and "womened") by some of the lower castes. This woman, carrying a load of sand in the basket actually had a pretty light load to transport to the workers repairing the road (note the condition of the road beneath her) that day. Many women can be seen balancing stones, bricks and concrete pieces on their heads. They wear a padded cushion beneath the basket to protect their skulls. I've been told that they are paid Rs 10-/ an hour (that's about 20 cents an hour!)


We passed this Hindu shrine along the way to Dharamsala. Ganesh, the god of balance, is on the right. Shrines are often open to anyone who wishes to stop by and pray. Offerings of food, money and flowers are often found at the feet of the statues. This small building sat along one of the steep switchbacks on the road. We climbed a set of steps to reach it and rested in the shade along the way to the "big city." The cow (below) rested with us beneath the beautiful flowering plants outside the shrine.



My dad was a sheet metal worker and would have appreciated the handicraft of this young man. Making aluminum containers, bowls, hinges and other metal objects is apparently a very lucrative business here. In the hill towns, not only do mules carry supplies up the mountains, but people do, too. It's not unusual to see someone walking up the hill with one of the larger trunks strapped to their back. I've seen truckloads of these handmade containers being unloaded in McL at restaurants, shops, etc. They provide good waterproof storage in this very wet area of the world.

Shoe shops are everywhere. Many shops sell new shoes and sneakers (walking on this rough terrain requires new shoes more often than we'd expect). However, shoe repair, a lost art in our neck of the woods, is still very important here as new shoes cost more money than most people can afford. This man tried to sell me another pair of hiking boots (that looked slightly used) and was very eager to have me watch him work.


In McL, Tibetan prayer flags are found everywhere. Prayer flags are screen-printed with passages from scripture, the teachings of Buddha.

This collection of tarps, I believe, is someone's humble home on the roof of the building across from the monastery where I teach. Houses for the poor in India can be made from plastic, corrugated metal, slabs of wood and cardboard. Regardless of the material used to construct one's home, the surrounding plants are usually beautiful and serve to detract from the otherwise unsightly exterior of a family's home.


The mules are carrying concrete rubble that's being removed from a building in town where renovation is being completed (You've seen some of the construction pictures of this building in earlier posts). They scamper down the hillsides on the return trip to eat some well deserved grass once the concrete's been unloaded from the burlap bags on their backs. The herdsman has to yell at the top of his lungs to get them back on the road again. Their bells can be heard jingling past my window on most days. It's a lovely way to wake up!

Water detail is, for some families, a daily chore. This man usually checks the water tanks before loading his bucket for the day. He is standing on the roof of his home which is level with the road where the mules kick by each morning. Note the motorbikes on the roof, too. After bringing the water to his family in their flat below, the family again walks upstairs . Mom and the little boy wait just beyond the brick structure you can see on the lower left for the dad to start up the bike and whisk the family off to school and work. No one wears helmets and kids often sit in front of the driver!

Here are some pictures of my students. The nuns are in the 1:00 p.m. class. The nun on the left is quite shy in class, but as you can see here, is quite a cutie when it comes to taking pictures!

Waiting in the rain for class to begin, we sit outside the monastery that we share space with at Volunteer Tibet. The monastery will not allow us to meet outside the classroom even though there may be over thirty students and two or three teachers in the classroom at one time.

In our 1 p.m. class, there are students from Burma, Vietnam, Tibet, Thailand and France.

These precious monks (four out of the five, anyway) are my students at the Gyuto Monastery on Tipa Road in McLeod Ganj . They are funny, boyish and full of glee, just as you might expect Buddhist monks to be. We laugh steadily as I try to teach them some simple English. I will sorely miss them when I leave in a week's time!

Good night from India!