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Dharamsala
Dharamsala (also spelled Dharamshala) is known as the home of the Dalai Lama, though in fact the Tibetan spiritual leader is based about two miles up the hill in McLeod Ganj, and that's where most visitors are heading. Dharamsala proper is a market town mostly useful for bus connections.
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Top attractions
These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout Dharamsala.
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Tsuglagkhang Complex
McLeod's main focus for visiting pilgrims, monks and most tourists is the Tsuglagkhang complex, a custard-coloured concrete monastic village that's home to the Dalai Lama (behind a guarded gateway) along with two colourful temple rooms and the excellent Tibet Museum, whose entrance you'll pass en route. Don't expect the visual drama of a Ladakhi gompa. The architecture is outwardly functional but there's much inside to intrigue. At 1.30pm (except Sundays) you can watch monks in lively debate in the central courtyard beneath high, expo-style canvas shades. Processing clockwise you'll pass a pilgrims' prostrating area then the door to the right in the westernmost building leads into the Kalachakra 'Wheel of Life' Temple (no photography) with its mesmerising mandalas and statues. Coming back around past the monastery kitchens, the last stop is the main temple room featuring fine statuary and the throne on which the Dalai Lama sits when delivering teachings.
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Tibet Museum
This must-see, two-storey museum sets out to remind visitors of Tibet's history as an independent nation, mourning the Chinese occupation (since 1949) and reporting attempts at Tibetan resistance. This is strikingly presented through sometimes-harrowing photographs and clear English-language explanations. Documentaries (₹10) are screened at 11am and 3pm.
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Men-Tsee-Khang
Men-Tsee-Khang is an organisation established to preserve the traditional arts of Tibetan medicine and astrology. The Gangchen Kyishong branch includes a college, clinic, research centre and astrological institute plus a well-explained museum. The museum includes illustrative thangkas, samples of medicines, their plant and mineral sources, and instruments that have been used for some treatments. Men-Tsee-Khang also runs occasional short courses on the basics of Tibetan medicine. The astrological folk can do a 45-minute oral consultation (₹2000; register in person one or two days ahead with your birth date, time and place), or a detailed life-horoscope online, which you'll receive by email and a hard copy within four months (US$85 if you apply in person, more online).
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Library of Tibetan Works & Archives
Inside the government-in-exile compound, nearly 2km downhill from the Tsuglagkhang complex, the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives began life as a repository for sacred manuscripts saved from the Cultural Revolution. Today it has over 120,000 manuscripts and books in Tibetan, and more than 15,000 books on Tibet, Buddhism and the Himalayan region in English and other languages. Upstairs is an interesting cultural museum with statues, old Tibetan artefacts and books, and a couple of complex 3D mandalas in wood and sand. Regular library visitors can become temporary members (₹100 per month for reading; ₹300 per month plus ₹1000 deposit for borrowing; passport photocopy needed for ID) to access the foreign-language collection.
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Men-Tsee-Khang Museum
Three floors of displays explain the sophisticated sciences of Tibetan astrology and medicine. Illustrative thangka s supplement samples of the plants and minerals from which medicaments are made: cinnamon wards against flatulence; cumin and coriander help combat anorexia; gold helps rejuvenation and longevity. Other curiosities include a brass hammer for treating tumours, insanity and body-ache. There's good explanatory matter in English.
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Kalachakra Temple
Visiting the Tsuglagkhang clockwise, as is required by Buddhist convention, you pass a prostrating area then a door leads into the westernmost building, which contains the Kalachakra (Wheel of Time) Temple. Mesmerising murals are linked to Avalokitesvara, of whom the Dalai Lama is a manifestation. Coloured sand mandalas are created here annually on the 15th day of the third Tibetan month.
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Cultural Museum
Upstairs in the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives is a small but interesting cultural museum with statues, old Tibetan artefacts and books, and a couple of complex three-dimensional mandalas in wood and sand.
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Tsuglagkhang Main Temple Room
Spiritually (if certainly not architecturally) the Tsuglagkhang's 1969 central temple room is the exiles’ concrete equivalent of the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. Behind the Dalai Lama's teaching throne is a softly gilded statue of the historical Buddha flanked by sacred texts. To the left is a bearded wooden 'starving Buddha' representing his six years of ascetic meditation at Bodhgaya. Behind that are Padmasambhava, the Indian sage believed to have helped spread Buddhism in 8th-century Tibet, and Avalokitesvara (Chenrezig in Tibetan), a replica of the 7th-century image from the Jokhang temple that was destroyed by the Chinese in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution. It contains relics rescued from the destruction and smuggled out of Tibet. On the right-hand wall, paintings depict the 33rd, 38th and 40th Tibetan kings, credited with bringing Buddhism to their country.
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St John in the Wilderness
Amid tall cedars 1.5km west of McLeod, this brooding Gothic church dates from 1852, and though rebuilt after the 1905 earthquake which destroyed its tower, it is one of the few remaining traces of the town's days as a British hill station. Services in English and Hindi are held at 10.30am on Sundays. The cemetery contains the rocket-like tomb of the Earl of Elgin, second Viceroy of India, along with the graves of many victims of 1905.