Our Passage to India

The flight to London was long but quite comfortable in a 747-400. I had a window seat where I could capture some shots for my aerial photography hobby. Amy, a young woman from New Zealand sat in the aisle seat. The flight was not very full, and the seat between us was empty. Amy had that characteristic unpretentious friendliness of the Kiwis, with a disarming personality. This was her first major international trip. She was landing in London to meet a friend and possibly get a job and spend a few months there. I told her a little about the pilgrimage and Buddhism and my own experiences in England and she shared some things about her life. Whenever I meet someone young who is that bright, I can’t help but think that here is someone who has the ability and time to really learn Dharma in this lifetime. The Dzogchen Lineage needs a lot more people like that to develop a fascination with learning and teaching Dharma.

At Heathrow, I was able to pay to get briefly online using a paid service. Also at Heathrow, behind the scenes apparently British Airways was having a melt down of their baggage system and our bags didn’t make it into the cargo hold of our jet. Once at Delhi, we spent hours trying to sort it out and report the missing bags as did about 100 other passengers on our flight that also had their bags left in England. We finally were able to exit through customs and Kunchok Lama was patiently waiting for us there. He had arranged a large taxi van to give us a ride to the hotel, located in the thriving Tibetan settlement area of the city. This van ride was for many of us our first introduction to the amazing and unique sights, smells and sounds of India.

In Delhi we all met in Khenpo’s room and began to plan out the trip, starting with resolving some of the financial issues. We added up the donations for the offering fund and greatly rejoiced in just how much was raised! After our morning meetings, we ate a quick breakfast at the hotel. Then we took a foot tour of the Tibetan settlement, visiting shops and temples. We ended up in a Tibetan restaurant where we had a meal that consisted of sweet Tibetan tea, momos, sausages and Tibetan Thukpa noodle soup. Later we met our bus drivers and their mid-sized bus, and they drove us to the Capitol where we took a long walk and plopped down in the shade on a nice lawn to have tea and snacks. We also played games with some of the pre-teen boys who attached themselves to us. One was a whirling dart that you shoot up with a rubber band stick, and it slowly spins to earth where you try catch it, and the other was a kind of improvised volleyball with a light ball. The toys, tea and snacks were purchased from a few of the many street vendors who work that tourist area.

We are currently not certain we’ll be able to get our bags from British Airways, but we are hopeful and praying for a good result. Some of us already started to buy replacements for clothing and toiletries that are in those bags, just so that we could get cleaned up for our trip to Dharamsala. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is teaching there tomorrow, so we are hoping to attend part of those teachings.

I've been taking a lot of photos, and I aspire to edit in a few of the great shots I've gotten into these blogs once I can get more time on my computer.