This is a day
that I feel I have to write down, for
reasons that words just can’t explain. I’m saying this at the risk of sounding
too romantic, but what’s the harm in falling in love with life, falling in love
with the world, but not falling in love with a guy?
With all my
stubborn determination to travel the world, inspite of my previous mini-travel
experiences, I have finally landed in Dharamsaala as a true traveler, or so I
hope. Walking around the street alone in the beginning felt a little lonely,
but as the sun climbed up the sky, through the clouds drizzling rain on us, the
day just got better and better, and I somehow know that one post on my blog is
just not enough to describe it, you have to live it!
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| The Stupa at the Monastery that I am staying in |
It began with
joining a volunteering organization that helps teach Tibetan refugees foreign
languages. Had a conversation class with a bunch of chatty enthusiastic Tibetan
sweethearts, right after meeting travelers from Israel, Finland, USA, Canada
and Britain who came in to volunteer as well.
Getting lost on
the mountains to find a library certainly helped me lose a few kilos. I did not
find the library, but I did find another organization that I fell in love with
and will be teaching English at. Met a retired teacher from Taiwan who
travelled the world with her seven year old daughter, had probably the world’s
best momo soup and walked back to the monastery that I stay in. (Yes! I am
living in a real monastery that has monks walking around in their red robes)
I could just go
on about this one single day! (and I will). Had weird chocolate donuts in a
wonderful café, reading a book about Buddhism, whose most striking phrase was
“If you still call yourself a Buddhist then you aren’t a true Buddha yet.” and
met my student who I am going to teach French.
Then I ended up
in a café called “Hope Café” where I watched a documentary about the atrocities
committed against Tibetans in China, with a bunch of amazing travelers. A
British traveler who spent a few days in a jail in Iran, an Irish woman
teaching English in Thailand, an Australian who really was touched by the
Tibetan issue and so many others made my day even more eventful as we enjoyed
chocolate momos.
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| A Valley In Dharamsaala. |
I can really go
on about how amazing my day was, or how amazing Dharamsaala is or even how
amazing chocolate momos are, but that would just be a little teenage girl
writing in her personal diary. Whereas I have had an epiphany today, that
didn't come as a surprise to me. The experiences that I have had, the memories
that I have made and certainly the friends that I have earned, in just the past
24 hours travelling in a exotic unknown destination, have given me so much more
than the past twenty years of my ‘settled’ life at ‘home’!
Just one day,
and I am all revved up to experience the world. Why not? It is our only home
after all, with just so much to offer to us isn't it? A little pause to big
travels dreams, as I have to receive my mom’s phone call from ‘home’, as she
calls me all worried about me being alone and not being in the comforts of her
cooking.
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