Mindful Trek in the Himalayan Foothills

View during trek just outside of Dharamsala, India

At nine in the morning, many of members of our sangha met up with Jagdish after breakfast, in front of the guesthouse, in order to go on a Himalayan trek in the Rhododendron Forest. We took cabs down to the main square of Dharamsala, where Mc’llo’s is located, among other things. Jagdish stopped at the bakery that’s attached to that famous restaurant. He bought himself a chocolate birthday cake with chocolate icing and put it in his backpack…or somebody’s backpack. Kathy, Mimi, at least one of the two Garys, Lynn and David, David the writer, Ingrid, Paula, Stacy, and Manny were all in the group of trekkers; I may be missing someone.

We began the amazing trek when Jagdish was done with his purchases and we were all ready to start walking. We went up a road that was among the several roads connecting at the lively square, and from there we walked up a path at an incline. It was flanked on both sides by tall and very green trees, and Jagdish indicated a tall tree with large red flowers growing on it and said, “Those are rhododendrons.” Wow! When I pictured a rhododendron forest, I had imagined a forest full of bright flowers in numerous colors, but mostly we saw green. However, I love hiking and the scenery was quite beautiful.

We continued climbing the slowly winding path through the woods. Eventually, we saw lumps at the side of the road…and the lumps became monkeys, some of which were babies and others were quite large. They were all pink-bottomed brown monkeys, and they simply sat at the side of the road and at most looked at us, but in some cases they didn’t even acknowledge our presence. We kept walking, walking, past the monkeys and past many trees.

Sometimes through openings in the trees, we could see in the distance shiny silver-looking stones that make mountainsides glisten. Later, after we had climbed very high, we looked down at the ground and saw these shiny stones up close, and they indeed have a metallic silvery sheen. But long before we came that close to the silvery stones, we were still down in the woods and the trail became rockier and rockier. Soon the path consisted primarily of very large stones that we had to climb up and down. I’m tempted to call it limestone; all the stones were that light grey. I was constantly looking down at the unbelievably rocky path and watching my every step. This was not the first time that I practiced mindful walking as a survival skill in India.

On the rocks, the group spread pretty far apart. Paula and Stacy were up ahead of me, and I passed them because Paula wasn’t so sure-footed and was experiencing back pain. I was behind most of the group by the time I came to a grassy and rocky mountainside that I had to climb up despite its steepness. I could see several people on a path up above, but unfortunately I hadn’t seen where exactly they had climbed up this slope that did not appear to have an obvious path. I picked the most obvious route I could, and even that was very steep and involved crawling on my hands and knees at times. But eventually I caught up with the group on a path that ran perpendicular to the slope I had just climbed.

Eventually we came to a café where we could see snow-capped mountains in the distance. Much closer up, we saw a couple of charming stacks of rocks, Tibetan-style offerings that reminded me of beehive-shaped monk’s cells in Ireland. Some of the trekkers stopped in front of the café to look at tables full of merchandise, where a few men stood behind the tables hoping to sell some of the merchandise, which consisted mostly of small statues and malas of various different colors; it was much like merchandise that we could buy down below on the streets of Dharamsala. I personally wasn’t interested in shopping but stopped to look at the merchandise anyway, while I waited for the group to all catch up and get organized.

Jagdish led some of us (including me) further up on the path, and it was trickier. We were so high up that we passed yak turds and shortly after that some snow, not more than a few inches deep. Jagdish started a snowball fight, but I’ve never liked snowball fights or any kind of fight, for that matter, so I just dodged the ball he threw at me. Oh, coming to think of it, I scooped one up and threw it at him, but it was the wrong kind of snow and it turned into a snow shower instead of remaining a ball. I then turned and kept walking.

Someone pointed out footprints, and I said, “It’s yeti footprints!” and let out a cackle. Actually, it looked rather like elk or deer footprints; it was certainly something with hooves, and yetis are monkeys. I believe in yetis, but I think they’re simply a type of timid monkey rather than a supernatural being.

A couple times we walked on a ledge scarcely more than a foot wide. When I first came to this, seeing such a narrow path in the snow, I took a deep breath but moved on; I had no intention of turning back and wimping out. Walking along the ledge, sinking my feet into footsteps in the snow, I felt frightened and shaky at first but didn’t hesitate to keep going. No balking, I just did it mindfully, cautiously, and pretty calmly. Below me, the slope plunged sharply down and was covered with brown little bushes and many trees.

We went back to the café, where less daring (or less suicidal) members of the sangha hung out, sitting on stone or concrete ledges in front of the café. We all had Jagdish’s luscious chocolate birthday cake and a lunch of very spicy Tibetan chili ramen with rather Western crackers that tasted similar to Ritz. I ate quite a few crackers, because the chili peppers were burning my lips. We also drank delicious chai.

After that, we headed back down the way we came. We approached a little chai shop that sold Cadbury cookies and odds and ends. It wasn’t a stand made of sticks but rather a full-size shop in a real building with a garage door up, giving it an open front like so many Indian stores. Like the café up above, it was not surrounded by other businesses; however, a pretty white stupa stood on a slightly higher precipice nearby. We had stopped at the little shop on the way up and had drunk chai. This time around, we met up with some other members of the sangha, including Enid, and we hung out for a little while. A couple of donkeys came along and amused us as they stood in front of the little chai shop.