The wheel is made of a hollow metal cylinder. This cylinder is filled with a roll of prayer paper. By spinning the wheels around clockwise, the prayers on the paper are sent out into the world.

The wheels come in varying sizes. The hand held variety (featured in the large picture above) can travel and we often saw Tibetan people walking the streets, spinning their wheels (hm, a more gentle, Tibetan version of that phrase). The medium size wheels in the picture of Martin’s back were found at the temple in McLeod Ganj. Both towns had a few large wheels, which are surprisingly heavy. A few minutes of walking around these big ones = prayers, check and workout for the day, check!

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We came across this carpet today and fell in love. It’s probably the most impractical carpet you could buy – really, who buys a beautiful, mostly white carpet when they plan on getting pets and having kids when they return home? But when you fall in love, you fall in love.

That’s not to say we won’t also buy the winner of your votes (at the time of this post) – Option 1. We’ll certainly let you know if we do!

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These, my friends, are some of the only options for pants around here.

Help!

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500 Grams Dried Chickpeas

4 Medium Onions, Finely chopped

1 ½ Tsp Ginger and Garlic Paste (2 cloves garlic and same amount of ginger, crushed together)

4 Medium Tomatoes, boiled for 2 minutes, peeled and ground in the blender to make a puree

4 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

¼ Tsp Turmeric powder

¼ Tsp Red chili powder

1 Tsp Coriander Powder

1 Tsp salt

2 Tsp Chana Masala (Indian spice packet found in your local grocery store, maybe?)

½ Tsp Garam Masala (same description as above)

2 Tsp Fenugreek Leaves

Fresh Coriander, chopped

1. Wash and soak dried chickpeas for 7-8 hours.

2. Boil chickpeas in 2 liters of fresh water with ½ tsp of salt for 1 hour

3. Drain the boiled chickpeas into a bowl, keeping the chickpea water in a separate bowl (it will be used later)

4. Heat the oil in a saucepan

5. Add chopped onions, cook for 8-10 minutes while stirring

6. Add ½ cup of the chickpea water

7. Add ginger-garlic paste, cook for 2 minutes while stirring

8. Add turmeric powder, red chili powder, salt, coriander powder, chana masala, gara masala and fenugreek leaves.

9. Add ½ cup chickpea water and cook for 2 minutes while stirring

10. Add tomato and cook for 2-3 minutes while stirring

11. Add boiled chickpeas, cook for 2 minutes while stirring

12. Mash the chickpeas a bit then add 1 ½ cup water and mix

13. Bring to a boil and cover.

14. Reduce heat and cook for 10 minutes

15. Serve with fresh coriander sprinkled on top.

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1 Head Cauliflower

4 Medium Potatoes

4 Tbsp Vegetable oil

½ Tsp Cumin seeds

2 Tsp Fresh Ginger, chopped

2 Tsp Garlic, chopped

¼ Tsp Turmeric powder

¼ Tsp Red Chili powder

1 Tsp Coriander Powder

1 Tsp Salt

½ Tsp Garam Masala (a spice packet you should be able to find in your grocery store)

¼ Glass Plain Water

Chili (optional)

1. Chop veggies into bite-size pieces

2. Heat oil in a wok

3. Add cumin seeds. The seeds will crack open if the oil is hot enough

4. Add garlic and ginger when the cumin seeds have turned brown

5. Optional: add chopped chili if you want it spicy (but the chili powder already makes it plenty spicy, so be cautious with this one

6. Cook for one minute while stirring ingredients together

7. Add turmeric powder and red chili powder

8. Add coriander powder and salt

9. Add garam masala

10. Mix and cook for 1 minute

11. Add water, turn the heat down and cover

12. Cook on low for 20 minutes, or until the veggies are cooked (the potato should slice through easily)

13. That’s it – easy and delicious!

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Aside from being an Arts Institution, it is also a wonderfully beautiful place. We like it so much that we are going to stay in its guest house for a couple of nights before we forge ahead to Amritsar. It looks like a good place to reload, and to review the status of our writing projects.

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We sat down on a nearby park bench, and he wrote down some stuff on a note while making pained, grunting noises. He knuckled the paper into a small ball which he then gave to me for safekeeping. Then he asked me a few questions. He wanted to know my favorite color, a number and some other information. He then wrote it down on a paper, and asked me to open the knuckled paper I had in my hand.

It turned out that he already knew all the answers to what he had asked me, including some pretty personal information (the name of an ex-girlfriend from 10 years ago, not exactly readily available information), since he had already written them down on the knuckled paper.

As for the fortune telling, well, the future is looking all right. For you parents out there, Mr Singh assures us that there will be great-grandchildren in the future. Other things are about to fall in place too, and a long life awaits.

I don’t know how he did what he did, but it sure was impressive. Impressive enough that I lushed out another six dollars for some prayers, talismans and sacrifices (soap, perfume, biscuits and candles!). Can’t hurt, can it? And even if it was a hoax, it was an inexpensive, inexplicable feel-good one.

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 We need your help! The two options are pictured below. Let us know what you think in the side bar poll.

 We’ll let you know which rug was the big weener after we buy it.

Option 1

Option 2

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The Chinese will never let go of Tibet. They can’t. They don’t want to. First of all, whoever owns the Tibetan plateau has all the military advantages of the area. In strategical terms, if you own Tibet you can’t lose China. The Chinese know this. The Indians and the Russians certainly know this. The Chinese have invested billinos and billions of dollars into infrastructure in Tibet, and they feel that they have done a lot to pull the area out of the dark ages.

On the other hand, their human rights record in the area is appalling. The Dalai Lama recently referred to the Chinese conquest as an ‘ethnic genocide’. They keep policement in the monasteries to make sure that no meaningful activities ever take place there. They keep untold numbers of political prisoners, and they have a long-term plan to outnumber the Tibetans with Han Chinese immigrants (who gets all kinds of monetary incentives to move to the plateau). This is just what’s happening now – I won’t go into what happened during the Cultural Revolution, because it is too depressing for this forum.

As China now emerges as a superpower, thinking people areound the world are trying to broker a solution. The best deal, they say, is if China accepts the Dalai Lama in the same role as the Pope had during much of Europe’s history. He would reign supreme in all matters of religion, and would defer to Beijing in other matters. It is a solution that has worked before, as this was the way things worked between China and Tibet for many centuries before the upheavals of the 20th century.

While we talk about this, matters in Tibet continute to be dismal. The Olympics, and now the Communist Party’s 60th jubilee, has led the Chinese to clamp down on things even more severely than before. It is harder than ever to travel independently in Tibet. The Dalai Lama is backed into a corner here in Dharamsala, surrounded by refugees, backpackers and aid workers.

It’s all a pity, because things could really be so much better for everyone involved.

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If you would like to remain a happy post reader, then it’s best you skip this one. Otherwise, listen in on what the travelers in Dharamsal have made me think all day:

Dear India Traveler,

Imagine a baby, still in diapers, playing at the beach. Water has saturated the child’s diaper, making it four times its normal size.

Yeah. That’s what you look like.

The MC Hammer pants / sodden diaper look isn’t a good one. Your inseam should never equal the length of your legs. Ever.

Love,

Jaime

Diaper pants

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