Majnu Ka Tilla

Majnu Ka Tilla
Tibetan Refugee Colony

Delhi, India

I arrived at my guest house at 4:00 AM after more than a day and a half of travel:

Wongdhen House
H. No. 15-A, New Tibetan Colony
Majnu Ka Tilla, Delhi-110-054
PH. 23815961
wongdhenhouse@hotmail.com

I highly recommend the rooms and their fabulous restaurant. They were also very helpful in obtaining tickets for the overnight bus to McLeod Ganj, Upper Dharamsala. It was clean, safe, hot running water, and about $10.00 per night. I met a wonderful mother/daughter team Carey & Meg and an Irish Tibetan Monk, Lobsang. I have been able to hook up with them since and have enjoyed their company immensely. I only had a short amount of time to explore the area and I had no desire to leave the Tibetan Colony so I stayed close and rested a lot.
The fruits and vegetables are fresher, more beautiful, sweet, and juicy than their counter-parts at Shaws market. I imagine I will be very spoiled when I return home to limp produce.

On the subject of food I couldn’t be more pleased. Several Tibetan dishes that I already love are steamed vegetable momo, a stuffed dumpling, and t’ukpa a noodle soup with vegetables. Also wonderful is vegetable chow mein, vegetable fried rice, curd and hot lemon ginger tea. I don’t think I will venture into the meats as you can see from the cartoon below it doesn’t seem quite the thing to do.
They put out mats and food for the dogs and cats, who all seem to hang around with each other, but they are very mangy looking. No spaying here – puppies all over.

Some of the animals I've seen, however, might be better as food than the life they have on the streets. I watched a non-Tibetan man kicking a dog again and again as it crouched and screamed. Cows fair much better and are free to wander wherever they please. I assume they know whi they belong to - they are truely free-range cows. There are donkeys as well who just wander - they also carry incredible loads straight down hill

This is my main man – hung out with him for awhile on a bench and he asked me to take a picture of him. He wanted to clean my ears – that’s his job in the community – but I assured him that mine had just been cleaned. You can see the home made Q-tips and cotton behind his ear and under his hat. He and his friend were standing around twirling cotton onto the sticks - I don’t trust that they were very sanitary