NO WAY BACK FROM HERE

“Lately, I've been Livin' in my head

The rest of me is dead…
Pleased to meet you take my hand,

There is no way back from here.”

Nothing better than those lyrics by Foo Fighters can describe Mcleodganj to me right now. I long to go back…because there really is no way back from there.

Never have I appreciated people-watching more than in this Tibetan refuge of India. But in turning this old British town into a refuge for themselves away from their homeland, the Tibetans have also made it one for every traveler. There are so many different faces here speaking different languages but wearing same expressions. The world is once microcosm here.

I wish I had clicked so many more photographs and so many portraits. If only every Tibetan from babies to the youngsters and the old, every Kashmiri pedlar, every hippie, every rich old foreign couple, every lonely traveler, every Indian honeymooned couple, every Buddhist monk, every himachali woman woodcutter, every mountain guide, every mountaineer, every trekker, every Tibetan rights activist, every wandering musician, every sadhu and conman were captured on film.

No, I still wouldn’t be satisfied. I’d go back again for more.

[Photo Credit: Harmanpreet Kaur]

IN TRANSIT

Random thoughts on the New Year 2008 – I’ve survived another 12 months… and enjoyed it, cried through some of it, and more or less have vagabonded and grown. Here’s to another one filled with wishes, experiences and flights of thought.

But this year worldwide will be one of change. And so it will be I hope in my life. A year of letting loose, learning and having fun!

A year of transit…a rite of passage…to a better present and future.