Sunny Himachal Travels

Destinations

McLeod Ganj and Dharamkot

The seat of the Tibetan government in exile, and the village twenty minutes above it that fills up every spring with people doing ten-day silent courses. Two very different places sharing one hillside.

Suits — long stays, Tibetan Buddhism, cafés, meditation courses

Houses packed onto a steep forested hillside with mist coming down over the ridge above them.
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The two places are ten minutes apart and are not interchangeable, which is worth sorting out before you book somewhere.

McLeod Ganj is a town. It has the Dalai Lama’s residence and temple, the Tibetan institutions, a bus stand, a square with traffic in it, and the shops and restaurants that go with forty years of visitors. It is busy, it is loud in the season, and it is where everything of substance is.

Dharamkot is a village up the hill and is mostly guesthouses, cafés and people on long stays. Vehicles get partway and no further, so the last stretch is on foot with your bag. Two meditation centres above it shape the calendar: when a course turns out, the cafés fill.

The thing most visitors underestimate is the Tibet Museum. It is twenty minutes of reading and photographs on the temple complex, it is free, and it explains why this hillside is what it is far better than anything else here.

A practical warning about the monsoon. Dharamshala is among the wettest inhabited places in India, and July and August are not a light shower — they are days of rain, cloud down to the roofs, and landslips on the Naddi road. The Dhauladhar you came for will not be visible.

Altitude
2,082m at McLeod Ganj, about 2,100m at Dharamkot
From Gaggal airport
22km, about an hour
From Dharamshala town
9km, 25 minutes, and 500m of climb
Parking
Very limited in McLeod. Dharamkot is walk-in for the last stretch
Give it
Three days. Or, as many people find, three months
Best months
March to June and September to November. July and August are monsoon and this is one of the wettest places in India.

Worth your time

What to actually go and see

The Tsuglagkhang complex

The Dalai Lama's temple, the Namgyal monastery and the Tibet Museum on one site. Public teachings happen several times a year and are free, but need registration in advance with a passport. Photography is restricted inside.

The Tibet Museum

A small, serious museum on the same complex documenting the occupation and the exile. It is not a comfortable hour and it is the single most worthwhile thing to do here.

Bhagsunag and the falls

An old Shiva temple with a spring-fed tank, and a waterfall about a kilometre further up a paved path. Full in the monsoon and thin by May. Busy at both.

Dharamkot and the courses

Tushita and the Vipassana centre both sit above the village, and their intakes set the rhythm of the place. Courses fill months ahead. The village itself is cafés, guesthouses and a lot of people on long stays.

St John in the Wilderness

A neo-Gothic church of 1852 in deodar forest between Forsyth Ganj and McLeod, with Belgian stained glass and Lord Elgin's grave in the churchyard. It survived the 1905 earthquake that flattened most of the district.

Naddi and the Dhauladhar

A viewpoint a few kilometres past McLeod facing straight at the range. Best in the hour after sunrise, before the haze comes up off the Kangra plain.

McLeod Ganj and Dharamkot, photographed

53 photographs.

  • A café front in Dharamkot painted with a large mural, potted plants along the step
  • A seated Buddha painted across a café wall, tables set out on the terrace below
  • A narrow Dharamkot lane, café signs and plant pots down one side
  • A street stall hung with bags, beads and trinkets
  • A paved path through trees with café tables to one side and a dog lying across it
  • A two-storey café hung with lights and signboards, seen from the lane
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  • The lights of the town below after dark, shopfronts still open
  • Terraced green ground with scattered trees and a small building, under an open sky
  • The inside of a glass-walled café, wooden counter and cushioned benches
  • A café terrace crowded with potted plants and a bench, a hand-lettered sign on the wall
  • Dusk over the valley from a café terrace, the heads of other guests in silhouette
  • A dog asleep on the floor of a café between wooden tables
  • A wooden café sign nailed up beside a path through the trees
  • A small shopfront glimpsed through branches, customers at the counter
  • A garden path lined with blue hydrangeas, someone walking up between the pines
  • A hand-painted sign hanging in a garden above the valley
  • A slice of cake on a plate at a café table, a painted wall behind it
  • An old wooden shopfront with goods hung across the opening
  • A steel footbridge crossing a wooded slope
  • A café counter at night, bottles and menus lit from above
  • The Dhauladhar under snow above the town, houses stacked down the wooded slope with prayer flags strung across the foreground
  • Cloud sitting in the folds of the ridge below Dharamkot
  • A McLeod Ganj street under an orange sky, lit shopfronts down both sides and one person walking away
  • Wooded slopes fading out into haze over the Kangra plain, the far hills barely showing
  • Buildings stacked up the hillside above the road, forest behind them
  • A monastery roof with gilt finials against a clouded sky
  • The town packed onto its spur, seen across the valley
  • A cricket ground of flat green grass with the mountains standing over it
  • Deodars in silhouette against a red evening sky
  • Monks walking a McLeod Ganj street past a temple gate
  • Prayer flags knotted round a tree trunk in deodar forest
  • A boulder-strewn stream running down through a wooded gorge
  • A town on the hillside with the snow line along the ridge above it
  • A bare shoulder of hillside under cloud, the grass burnt pale
  • A stream coming down through boulders between green wooded slopes
  • A dark wooden temple standing among tall deodars at dusk
  • Prayer flags packed thick over a rocky outcrop
  • A flagged path climbing between deodars, flags strung the length of it
  • Red chairs set out on a terrace lawn facing the mountains
  • A long low building below a snow face, forest running up to it
  • A gorge cut deep between forested walls under a blue sky
  • A red sky over the town at last light, aerials on the roofs
  • A hand-painted sign reading "You only live once" hung in a garden of blue hydrangeas
  • An open-air stage with painted panels behind it, deodars all round
  • A covered market walkway, shopkeepers behind their counters
  • A pale evening sky over black conifers
  • A forested ridge with a thin line of fresh snow along its crest, a green-roofed building below
  • Tall pines against a clear blue sky, red roofs below
  • The town spread across the hillside under low cloud
  • Evening colour over the ridges with the valley already dark
  • A bank of cloud building over the forested hills
  • A dark wooden temple standing under deodars at dusk
  • Houses and trees on the slope above the road, hills fading behind

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