At Home with the Dalai Lama

Hotel Sahiwa

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Hotel | "A Dharamsala Dive"

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It’s not always possible in India to avoid staying somewhere you suspect is going to be really rather rubbish and you just need to roll with the punches and accept that there's nothing you can do about it. When the company organising our tour sent me their suggested list of hotels, my crap hotel antennae were quickly twitching about the hotel they suggested in Dharamsala. A quick check on a well-known hotel review site showed that only about 20% of reviewers recommended the place. Why didn’t I put up more of a fuss? It was soon apparent that most of the hotels in town were equally rubbish. It was just two nights, how bad could it really be?Our journey to Dharamsala took nearly 9 hou...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on August 31, 2013

Hotel Sahiwa
Buddha Temple Road Mcleodganj, Dharamsala Himachal Pradesh , 176219
Dharamsala $zip
0189 222 0331

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Dalai Lama Temple

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Attraction | "Temples and Tea"

The Martyrs Memorial Photo - Dalai Lama Temple, Dharamsala, India

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After a long drive from Manali to Dharamsala, our driver Mr Singh gave us a late start for our day of sight-seeing. We were due to meet him at the very civilised hour of 10 o’clock in the morning. I was vaguely aware that our first stop was to be the Dalai Lama’s Temple and our first surprise was greeting Mr Singh, him giving us a big smile and a head wobble and pointing just down the road from where we were standing. "That’s it, Sir" he said, "Big Temple. You come back when finished. No hurry, no hurry." We’d arrived late in the afternoon, really not looked around at all and had totally failed to spot that we were right on the doorstep of the temple. We’d even been up to the roof terrace of our hotel...Read More

After a long drive from Manali to Dharamsala, our driver Mr Singh gave us a late start for our day of sight-seeing. We were due to meet him at the very civilised hour of 10 o’clock in the morning. I was vaguely aware that our first stop was to be the Dalai Lama’s Temple and our first surprise was greeting Mr Singh, him giving us a big smile and a head wobble and pointing just down the road from where we were standing. "That’s it, Sir" he said, "Big Temple. You come back when finished. No hurry, no hurry." We’d arrived late in the afternoon, really not looked around at all and had totally failed to spot that we were right on the doorstep of the temple. We’d even been up to the roof terrace of our hotel for a look around and had seen lots of monks in robes walking around the building without realising what it was.

The first thing we saw when entering the temple complex was the Tibetan National Martyrs’ Memorial, a black polished obelisk. It stands in front of a wall with carved or moulded faces and fists emerging from the rock. In Dharamsala, the dead, especially the Tibetan martyrs, are always with you, even if they died many miles away in Tibet. Posters line the streets commemorating those who gave their lives by self-immolation to protest against the Chinese occupation of their country.
Leaving the memorial behind us, we headed upstairs where we found a level crammed with visitors, many of them in Tibetan dress, many others clearly Indian or European tourists like ourselves. There were two main buildings – one filled with worshippers, one with Buddhist monks - and a third filled with lamps. In recent years, Buddhist temples have tended to move their butter oil lamps away from the main temple buildings to avoid the risk of fire and to minimise smoke damage to the paintings and icons

The largest room was an audience hall, filled with people sitting in rows listening to a sermon. Hundreds more people were sitting on the ground, perched on large mats like yoga-mats outside the building. Shoes were heaped up at the entrances to the building and a table held piles of food donated by visitors. In the second large building, young monks in colourful robes were chanting and playing music. At the back of this room, visitors were allowed in to look at the intricate wall paintings.
We walked around the buildings several times, turning the rows of prayer wheels as we went. I like Buddhist prayer wheels but I don’t like crowds and I got a bit flustered by the rush of people pushing me around in their eagerness to turn them all. I stepped out of the crowd and and went back later to continue with the prayer wheels once the rush had finished.

After a few rounds of prayer wheel turning, my husband popped off to look for a toilet and returned saying he’d just experienced the world’s most blissful urinals which apparently offered fabulous mountain views whilst he was doing what he needed to do..

We stood around to watching the events and spotted people going round with giant tea pots and paper cups, handing butter tea to all those present. I don’t like tea much to start with but the addition of rancid butter to the tea puts it off the scale of horrors but I’m too polite to say no when people keep offering. For the first few rounds I got away with smiling and saying ‘no’ but eventually we had to give in and have a go. I loved the sense of community and inclusion and the determination that we should share in the experience but butter tea is absolutely horrible stuff and I struggled to manage more than a few sips. On the scale of human suffering, sipping rancid butter tea isn’t really up there with setting fire to yourself, but it was more than I could manage.
Visiting the temple is a great way to relax and soak up the atmosphere and the holiness of the place. We were made very welcome, didn’t feel like voyeurs and we enjoyed the sounds, smells and sights (if not in my case the tastes) of our visit. We stayed for about 40 minutes because we knew there was more to do but I suspect many people will happily sit for hours just enjoying their surroundings.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on August 31, 2013

Dalai Lama Temple

Dharamsala, india

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Osho Hotel & Restaurant

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Restaurant | "Never judge a book by its cover"

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One of the problems we had on our tour of Himachal Pradesh was communicating with our lovely driver, Mr Singh. As time passed, we developed almost psychic ability to understand each other without the need of boring, conventional stuff like actual words. One area where this did cause us some tension was over meal times when we were on the road. On our first day we misinterpreted what we thought was "Do you want some lunch?" but was probably actually "Did you already have some lunch?" and nearly starved. It was only when we cracked open our emergency crisp supplies that he finally got the message and we had lunch around four in the afternoon.We tended to live with a sense of faith that...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on August 24, 2013

Osho Hotel & Restaurant
Vpo Sungal, National Highway 20
Dharman

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The Man and the Town

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Sacrifice poster Photo - Dharamsala, India

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If you're reading my reviews about Dharamsala and thinking "Why on earth would anyone go there?" then the purpose of this is to explain where the attraction lies. The Indian state of Himachal Pradesh has a lot of cities and many of them get largely ignored by the tourist trade but Dharamsala's a bit special and draws visitors from all around the world. Strictly speaking, it's not really Dharamsala itself which draws the crowds – is a little place just up the hill from the main city. Some refer to it as Upper Dharamsala or by the absurdly multi-racial name of McLeod Ganj which combines aspects of both its British colonial history and its Indian roots. All surprising when the main thing the place is kno...Read More

If you're reading my reviews about Dharamsala and thinking "Why on earth would anyone go there?" then the purpose of this is to explain where the attraction lies. The Indian state of Himachal Pradesh has a lot of cities and many of them get largely ignored by the tourist trade but Dharamsala's a bit special and draws visitors from all around the world. Strictly speaking, it's not really Dharamsala itself which draws the crowds – is a little place just up the hill from the main city. Some refer to it as Upper Dharamsala or by the absurdly multi-racial name of McLeod Ganj which combines aspects of both its British colonial history and its Indian roots. All surprising when the main thing the place is known for is neither British nor Indian. The answer is simple and it's one man and a Tibetan at that - Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso – more commonly known as the Dalai Lama.

When China invaded and occupied Tibet in the early 1950s, there was a viscious crack-down on Buddhism. In 1959 the Tibetans rebelled with the Tibetan Uprising and fearing for his life, the Dalai Lama and some of his followers fled to India. The Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru allowed His Holiness and his followers to set up their ‘Government in Exile’ in Dharamsala. Interestingly, the region of India more commonly referred to as 'Little Tibet' is not the Dharamsala area, that's further north and higher in the Himalaya in Ladakh, but the area is very cut off from the rest of the world and perhaps a touch too close to the borders with Pakistan and China. No sense relocating and then risking getting invaded again.

It’s estimated that another 80,000 of His Holiness's followers also went into exile in order to follow their leader and escape the Chinese oppression. Since setting up in Dharamsala the Dalai Lama has worked tirelessly to promote the rights of his countrymen and women back home in Tibet whilst spreading his Buddhist teachings to people all over the world. I honestly don't know anyone who doesn't think the Dalai Lama one of the world's most widely recognised ‘cool dudes’.

It's not beyond possibility to actually see His Holiness if you plan ahead, apply in advance, can be flexible about your dates and fit around his travel programme but for most of us who roll up without any such preparation, it's unlikely that you'll just get lucky and run into him. That's no reason not to go though – think of the many people who go to Buckingham Palace every year without expecting to see the Queen. Whether His Holiness is there or not, it's still a fabulous place to visit, and offers a unique possibility to observe a community retaining their very specific culture whilst living in exile. Dharamsala isn't so much a place to 'do' as a place to soak up the atmosphere and to just enjoy hanging around in a town full of Tibetans, Buddhists from all over the world, a large number of hippies and a few random tourist like us.

The Dalai Lama's temple is the biggest show in town and the chief attraction for most visitors but there's a lot more to do. The hippy visitors are well served with people happy to realign their chakras, teach them meditation and mindfulness, sell them crafts or teach them yoghurt weaving or whatever's the big new-age trend at the time. It's a very un-Indian place, and it’s well worth a visit for the experience of something very different.

Dharamsala is also historically linked to the Ghurka regiments who have an important Hindu temple in the town, and also retains elements of the city's past as a British colonial outpost. Even if history means nothing to you, it's a lovely cool, high altitude retreat, surrounded by spectacular mountain views. Read Less

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Tibetan Mandala Cafe

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Restaurant | "Cakes and Serenity"

Yum yum yum Photo - Tibetan Mandala Cafe, Dharamsala, India

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Sometimes if you are really lucky, you find a place that seems totally tuned to your wavelength and this is exactly what happened to use when we found the Tibetan Mandala Cafe in McLeod Ganj near Dharamsala. We'd had a very intense day of sightseeing when Mr Singh the driver dropped us off in the town centre whilst he went to get a new tyre to replace the one that had been punctured the day before. When I say 'new' tyre, I of course mean 'new to him' and probably lacking much in the way of tread.Tibetan Mandala Cafe was just a short walk from our hotel and it offered Wi-Fi which was enough to lure us in. Our hotel – the Sahiwa – was not the sort of place to have internet and we'd been off ...Read More

Sometimes if you are really lucky, you find a place that seems totally tuned to your wavelength and this is exactly what happened to use when we found the Tibetan Mandala Cafe in McLeod Ganj near Dharamsala. We'd had a very intense day of sightseeing when Mr Singh the driver dropped us off in the town centre whilst he went to get a new tyre to replace the one that had been punctured the day before. When I say 'new' tyre, I of course mean 'new to him' and probably lacking much in the way of tread.

Tibetan Mandala Cafe was just a short walk from our hotel and it offered Wi-Fi which was enough to lure us in. Our hotel – the Sahiwa – was not the sort of place to have internet and we'd been off line for several days and I was getting withdrawal symptoms. The cafe is on Temple Road, near to the Dalai Lama's temple and it's located in a narrow building with a terrace outside, set up with tables and chairs. We opted to sit inside and found a table near the serving counter. We ordered a honey lemon ginger tea for me and a masala tea for my husband. I tried to get my computer to connect and couldn't get online so one of the staff came and sat with me, messed about and fiddled with the router and got me connected.

Next step was to check out the cakes on offer and to make some hard decisions. We decided to order a slice of lemon curd cake – a sort of lemony cheesecake with a crunchy base. Tony decided to leave me to it and headed off to do some shopping, leaving me with another cup of ginger honey lemon tea, a mix so good that I've been trying to recreate it ever since I got home again. This 'tea' had no tea in it, which is fine with me as a tea-hater, and comprised a mass of freshly sliced ginger, plenty of tasty honey and a good squirt of lemon juice. High altitudes and dry air can give me a holiday sort throat and this was the perfect antidote.

When Tony returned with a bag of assorted tourist 'tat', he set to work on trying some more cake, kicking off with a slice of chocolate cheese cake which was total perfection. Chocolate cheesecake is not an easy thing to get right and can be bit dry but not at Mandala.I don’t know whose mum cooks Mandala’s cakes but she really is nearly as good a baker as my own mum.

I spent a lovely few hours watching life pass by at the Mandala. People came and went, the staff had fun, played jokes on each other and on their regulars and everyone was cheery and bright. It was like finding yourself in a little bubbly of tasty positivity.

I’d been sceptical about the carrot cake in the cake display and I'd said that it looked a bit dry to me and the guy was determined that we should try it and be proven wrong. Well I can't resist a challenge so we added this to our cake testing session. It wasn’t as dry as it looked but it was my least favourite of the three that we tried. Luckily by this stage the chocolate cheese cake was already finished as I’d probably have stayed all night to eat the rest of it.

By this stage we’d been in the Mandala for several hours. We were in no hurry to head back to our hotel and we had no other plans for the rest of the evening. Despite having polished off three big slices of cake between the two of us, we decided to have dinner as well. We had dinner included in our hotel room rate but we didn't want to eat there again. I asked if they had momos, my absolutely favourite Himalayan treat, but they didn’t. Instead they suggested we try the ‘special Gyathuk’ which they claimed was even better than momos. These turned out to be steaming hot bowls of tasty broth heaped with noodles, veg (cauliflower, mushrooms, carrots, tomatoes and green peppers), tofu and strips of omelette on the top.

Whilst we were slurping our way through the noodles, we heard chanting in the street outside. The guy behind the counter jumped up and rushed to the front of the shop to pull down the shutters so that the opening was only two or three feet. Through the gap we glimpsed a procession going down the street. People were carrying candles and holding what I think was a rope or a length of white prayer scarves. The staff explained that this is the local traditional way of mourning each time someone self-immolates in Tibet in protest against the Chinese occupation of their country. They explained that the shops and businesses all pull down the shutters as a mark of respect.

All good things must eventually come to an end and there reached a point when we had eaten everything we could possibly squeeze down our greedy throats. I asked the waiter if he knew what we'd had and he smiled broadly and said he hadn’t a clue and I found that pretty funny. His face was a picture when I handed over my notebook with a full list of what we’d had so that he could add it all up for us. Quite what he'd have done if I hadn't kept a record was a mystery. In total we’d had two honey lemon ginger teas, two masala teas, three pieces of cake and two bowls of noodles and the whole glorious lot came to just 510 rupees – about 6 or 7 pounds. I had expected to pay a lot more and we left a pretty hefty tip to reflect how much we’d enjoyed the place.

I love the Mandala Café and can't recommend it highly enough. The staff are lovely and make everyone feel at home, the food is out of this world and nobody seems to mind how long you stay or how much you spend. Even writing about it takes me back to a memorable Sunday afternoon with these lovely people and their lovely cakes. Read Less

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on August 25, 2013

Tibetan Mandala Cafe
Manin Temple Road, Mcleod Ganj
Dharamsala
097 36 819754

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