MY "MESSAGE FROM MCLEOD GANJ" SENT OUT FROM DHARAMSALA
Sep. 30, 2001
Hello, from the seat of His Hliness, the 14th Dali Lama whose prayers and chants I have just left at the Kublatan Monastery where I had walked the walk around the sacred hill to the sound of the gongs, chants and drums, celebrating dawn with blaring horns.
As you know, if the message I tried to send from Lady Willingdon Hospital in Manali reached you, I am trying to get out of the subcontinent to return home around the 1st of October, leaving, possibly, at 2:00 AM from Delhi if I can get there by means of a 4:00 AM start by Jeep (actually, Mahindra) to Chandrigarh to catch the train to Delhi to rearrange my ticket. It is currently booked for the 7th of October, assuming that I am in Nepal, but that trek has been postponed to May of 2002, adding yet another Asian trip to my next year's schedule. This might mean that I will be back for a few days before I leave on Sunday Oct. 7 to go to the ACS in New Orleans, and on from there to Colorado.
For now, I have completed the medical mission and am packed up for what was to have been a further month of traveling through four more venues, one of which has been deleted due to activities of the nearby Taliban, and their comrades in arms. I hope to be home by mid-week if all goes according to the multiply disrupted plan's revison.
For one item, the hosts at Simla are keen on my hanging out there a few days--a sydrome I usually do not particpate in as do other aimless Indian subcontinent devotees. To help secure this hospitality on which they insisted, my carryon bag with the items such as passport, tickets, visa, cash and other essentials were put in the jeep that went on to Simla, and now will have to be couriered to Chandrigarh over the mountain roads, intercepting my boarding the train tomorrow if I am to continue on through Delhi to FRA and on to IAD.
But, you can read a few episodes of the adventure--by title in the outline Sep-C-1, or in a couple of chapters, such as Sep-C-5 or 10--attached.
Cheers from "Little Tibet in Exile" at Dharamasala, near the Dali Lama's Norbulingka Institute--where I was in April of this year and will be again in April of Next Year!
Cheers!
GWG