Some more about Mac

Well, I'm still here in Macleod Ganj. I've finally managed to project my feeble little mind forward far enough to make plans for my return home, and booked a flight for April 23, so now I'm stuck here until the travel agent gets my ticket for me. And it's not a bad place to be stuck. As I've already told my beloved son, it is the most touristy of all the places I've been so far, so that means that things are a bit more familiar - a coffee house looks (and smells) like a coffee house and not like a cow-shed. Less authentic maybe, but more comfortable, for such western softies as myself.

I've already begun to make all kinds of friends here, as I may have mentioned - the Israeli girl who hooked up with a Kashmiri guy, the Tibetan who wants to practice his English (one of very many), and also, the woman who runs the cooking course I took, together with her whole family (and the boy who lives with them and helps around the house).

All together, it is a weird combination here. Besides the Indians who lived here to begin with, and the hundreds (or thousands) of Tibetans who came here as refugees, there are tens of Kashmiris who are simply looking for livelihood (they leave their families at home in Kashmir and come here to sell things to tourists), and lots of Nepalese (there evidently isn't much livelihood in Nepal either). The guy who runs my hotel, the one who speaks Hebrew, is not Tibetan as I thought, but Nepalese, and so is his friend who enjoys speaking Tibetan to me and watching the confusion on my face. (Then again, I get back at him by speaking Hebrew really fast, so we do get along...)

And then, there are the Israelis... More and more of them coming in each day. Next week is Passover (a really big Jewish holiday, for those of you who don't know - the main feature of which, is a meal big enough to keep you happy for the rest of the month). My Israeli friend tells me that there are Jewish religious organizations that are arranging a Big Ceremony here, and also in Dharamkot - a tiny village farther up the mountain, and evidently in a few more places. So the Israelis are streaming in, and it is getting to the point where you hear as much Hebrew in the streets as English or Tibetan. Not necessarily what I had in mind when I came to India...

Last night I went dancing... There is a Japanese restaurant down the road, and evidently a small Japanese community to go along with it. A Japanese dancer organized a dancing workshop on the roof, and last night we got together at his house to eat, play games and dance. Another weird combination of Tibetans, Indians, Japanese, Israelis, Canadians, Nepalese, British - whatever. Whoever doesn't speak English gets things translated for them, and everybody dances in the same language.

And then, there is my health (Aren't you just dying to hear about that?) Due to a rash that I developed in Rishikesh, I had the opportunity to visit a Tibetan herbal clinic, complete with the old, shuffling Buddhist monk who is the doctor, the attached translator who writes the prescriptions down (in Tibetan, of course), and the little black balls of herbs that you have to chew before you swallow (and believe me, after biting down on one of them, all you want to do is cry, they are so bitter). Just out of friendliness, I dropped in at the Ayurvedic "Nature Cure" clinic too, which belongs to the husband of my cooking-class teacher. He had a look at my rash, and told me that it's caused by a spider that has been eating me. He recommends cold showers. These cold showers keep coming at me from every direction – maybe I don't have what it takes to be Indian after all... In any case, I have a lot of faith in the Ayurvedic system, considering that I had psoriasis when I came here (since at least ten years ago), and I don't have it any more (the Ayurvedic doctor at the ashram in Kerala gave me some horrible, horrible stuff to swallow, and some goo to smear). (Interesting how all these natural cures taste so terrible.)

And through all this - we are in the town that is famous for being the Dalai Lama's home. Between the brick-red robes of all the monks that walk around here, and the chorten (I think that's what it's called - a temple surrounded by a series of engraved cylinders that any devotee can spin as he walks around - always in a clock-wise direction. The cylinders are prayer wheels filled with inscriptions, and spinning them is equivalent to saying all the prayers inside) which is planted smack in the middle of all the tourist shops in the town center - you can't really forget where you are. So the atmosphere here is constantly weird - spiritual, commercial, touristy, western, Indian - everything all together.

Enough for now. Lots of convoluted sentences moving in and out of each other - maybe that says more about the frame of mind I'm in than anything else...