A nugget tucked away

You walk into the town of Bylakuppe in Karnataka in Southern India and you might actually feel you have travelled space and time, landing in Lhasa, Tibet. The monstary, Buddhists monks, Tibetian flat bread ans vegetable soup, everything around feels so much like Tibet and one has to pinch oneself to wake up and realise that you are actually some 2500 kms away from Lhasa and that too in Karnataka.

Call it the “Tibetian nook”, the place is beautiful with coffee plantations and very thick forests. This small place was ‘given’ by the Govt for Tibetan refugees after Dalai Lama fled into India in 1959. Though the ‘Tibetan capital’ in India remains Dharamsala, here in Bylakuppe, some 20,000 Tibetans reside peacefully. The whole landscape is dotted with monasteries and nunneries and prayer flags fluttering everywhere. There are farmlands everywhere and don’t be surprised to see ochre and maroon robed monks racing away through these farms on their cycles. One can walk up to the famous monastery there, Namdroling and sit and meditate, stroll around looking at the beautiful Thanka paintings. The morning prayer time is ethereal with the chants gently reverberating all around.

Really, India is indeed incredible. We have so much to offer, so many cultures, so many flavor and such vibrant colors. Surly there will be many more such treasure trove places like Bylakuppe which we do not even know about. Sometimes, we think it’s better that it is not well known otherwise tourists will throng the place, MakemyTrip and Expedia will market to the hilt and ruin the small, nondescript place, whose simplicity and lesser tourists is the main attraction. Yes, some treasures are better left undisturbed.