McLeod Ganj Stories: What is it about McLeod Ganj?

If there was nothing special about McLeod Ganj or say Dharmashala, the place would not have featured in the writings of so many writers. It would have not featured in the to-do list of numerous travelers. It would have not been a destination for so many bloggers including your very own URBScribbles of course. 

Be it John Avedon’s magnum opus In Exile from the Land of Snows, Isabel Hilton’s In Search of the Panchen Lama, Thomas Merton’s Asian Journey, Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath her Feet, Pankaj Mishra’s The Romantics, or Rohinton Mistry’s Running Water and A Fine Balance, Dharamshala finds mention in a way or other. 

URBScribbles too has been traveling to the place for years now to decipher the unexplainable pull that the place has on him. By November 2018, URBScribbles has made some six visits to upper Dharamshala i.e., McLeod Ganj, still ignorant about the condiments of its enigmatic flavour and still unaware to the fullest of its enthralling past and mesmerising present.

Beginning with this story, and continuing throughout some more to come, URBScribbles shall make a feeble attempt to engage with the place or more to say the idea called McLeod Ganj. After six visits and with the seventh, eighth, and ninth already in the pipeline, URBScribbles still finds himself in poverty of words to describe the charm of the lovely place. Each subsequent story shall take up various aspects of the place - its dimly lit to high decibel cafes, the fluttering prayer flags to saffron-clad monks, military cantonment to remains of colonial past. 

Being the first of the series, the story that follows presents an overview of McLeodganj.

Today McLeod Ganj is a popular as well as a populous tourist destination, mostly catering to the fancies of the neighboring state Punjab and Union Territory Chandigarh. Given the convenience of arriving at the place, tourists and solitude-lovers from Delhi too reach in huge numbers around the year. Situated at a distance of some 90 km from the nearest railhead Pathankot or Pathankot Cantt. (Chakki Bank), McLeod Ganj is well connected by a ceaseless network of buses operated by the Himachal Road Transport Corporation and other private operators.  

Known by many as upper Dharamshala, McLeod Ganj is a suburb in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh. Named after Donald Friell McLeod, a Lieutenant Governor of British Punjab, the area came under the occupation of the English East India Company in the 1840s-50s decisively after the Second Anglo-Sikh War. At an elevation of some 6,800 feet, it is situated on the Dhauladhar Range of the Himalayas which bestows it with breathtaking views across the valley. 

The place is a delicate tapestry of a colonial past, a homeland in exile, and a rapidly reengineered post-colonial urbanization. It presents itself as a hybrid social space featuring the colonial hangover through its remaining old establishments that could survive the devastating earthquake of 1905; the saffron-clad bunches of Tibetan monks in exile with flying mani flags and prayer stones; and the rapidly coming up hotels, restaurants, cafes, and bars. Surviving in the interstices of each other, each one contributes to the assorted flavor of McLedoganj.

Coming up next is a story of the place’s colonial past and its struggle to hold on to the fading remains of a time so magnificent and serene that the then Viceroy of British India, Lord Elgin almost made up his mind to make the place the summer capital of the most shining pearl on the British Crown.