India & Nepal: History & Culture Through Service Learning

Lha, the Tibetan word for “our innate nature of fundamental goodness” serves as the resource center for McLeod Ganj, and the Tibetan community that resides there.  Lha provides daily English classes for the community, and Ian and I were happy to lend a helping hand. 

It seemed the entire city had gathered in this one room to take a language class.  Seated cross-legged in the very crowded room was  an arrary of  monks, fashionable Tibetan youth, and a few foreigners who had been delegated to lead a small group discussion in English, whether they knew it or not.  Ian and I took seats at opposite ends of the room and simply began speaking English to the Tibetans, who very enthusiastially tried to keep up with the conversation.  This was by far the most rewarding experience of the entire trip. 

 But alas, that was days ago.  The evening after our work at Lha we hopped on a tourist bus at 8:30pm, designated to arrive in Manali at 5:00am.  There were numbers on our tickets, but none on the seats.  Ian and I counted the rows and found the seats we had been assigned, but a few foreigners, not seeing any numbers, just took any open seat they could find.  When the driver’s assistant came to collect the tickets, he got  upset that no one was in their assigned seats, and began yelling in Hindi and English at the tourists.   

It started raining as soon as we left and the road began to snake up the large mountains.  There were foot-high concrete squares acting as the road’s shoulder, but nothing more than that protecting the bus from the hundred foot cliffs just feet from the road.  The road was trecherous, the bus staff was mad at everyone, and it was raining incredibly hard.  Nerve racking. 

                         view from the balcony of our $6 hotel room in Manali. 

We arrived in Manali in the early depths of morning, and walked a two kilometers to our hotel, tucked away high in the hills of Old Manali. 

                                                     surrounding buildings of the hotel, Manali.

Our next move is to get down from the mountains and back into Rajasthan and the Indian desert, which looks like will take a few days by bus.  Our next destination is either the Taj Mahal in Agra, or to make a bee-line to travel by land into Nepal.  But who knows, plans can always change in India.  Cheers!

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