Dharamshala–McLeod Ganj

McLeod Ganj is a British hill station that ended up as the address of a government in exile. After the Dalai Lama crossed into India in 1959, Nehru offered him this half-abandoned ridge above Dharamshala, and Tibetans rebuilt a capital on it — monastery, library, parliament, printing press.

The result is strange and quietly moving: the Kangra valley spread out below, the grey wall of the Dhauladhar directly above, and in between a town where the signs are in three scripts and half the conversations concern a country nobody under sixty has seen.

The day starts with the kora, the walking circuit around the Tsuglagkhang complex — elderly Tibetans with prayer wheels, a few visitors trying to keep pace and remembering to go clockwise. Namgyal Monastery holds public teachings several times a year, and the dates are published months ahead.

The food follows the migration: thukpa, tingmo, laphing and butter tea, with Kangri Himachali cooking down in Dharamshala itself. At the Norbulingka Institute, thangka painters and metalworkers train for years in crafts that came close to disappearing.

Walk the kora clockwise and keep the prayer wheels on your right. Triund is a four-hour climb rather than a stroll, and the top is cold whatever the valley felt like at noon. For quiet, Dharamkot and Bhagsu are twenty minutes uphill from the crowds. And the volunteer conversation classes with monks are easy to join — most travellers say it was their best afternoon here.

Much of this town is a refugee community, not a backdrop. Ask before photographing monks or ceremonies, and buy from Tibetan-run co-operatives so the money stays inside it. Litter travels downhill fast here — carry yours out, especially on the Triund trail.

If the Buddhist Himalaya is what pulled at you, Spiti is the step up — higher, drier, harder to reach, with a thousand-year-old monastery at Tabo waiting at the end of the road.