I am very grateful to Tobes who sent me a very interesting clip from David Stamboulis´ book Odysseus Last Stand published in 1992. The email it was attached to was labelled "say it ain´t true". It isn´t!
Stamboulis is a round the world cyclist who claims to have visited McLeod Ganj. He reports that the village is on the “Full Moon Party circuit” where “there is a series of wild orgies”. I have clearly missed out on these. He also claims that monks are too busy to attend the Dalai Lama lessons due to the popularity of DVDs. He also says it is one of the dirtiest villages he has seen India. I can´t believe it has changed so much in 15 years. It makes me think he has never been anywhere near McLeod Ganj. What a fraud!
Actually that is exactly how MG looked when I lived there, from March until May of 1998. Many monks were indeed busy watching DVD's every night (I never did say that they missed His Holiness' lessons, but they were indeed packed in the pirated movie houses every night watching mindless violence galore), and walking down to our rooms each day, the hillsides were total open rubbish pits (I later read an article on Dharmsala and HH addressing this precise problem)....and yes, large numbers of young Sikhs came up from the Punjab for the monthly full moon parties eager to hit on the western women they had heard such stories about. Maybe they have cleaned things up since then, but that is how it was. Dave Stamboulis
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