A Side of Sweet

Do a Good Deed with Just One Click!

For the month of April, I’m going to donate all advertising revenue from Running Blonde to Delek Hospital, the Tibetan refugee hospital where I am currently volunteering. Delek Hospital is located in Dharamsala, India, and provides very low cost healthcare to Tibetan Refugees living in and around Dharamsala. They are also have a tuberculosis treatment program that receives patients from all over India and as far away as Nepal!

Through the guidance of Dr. Tsetan Sadutshang, the personal physician to H.H. the Dalai Lama, Delek provides care for Tibetan people with medical conditions that range from meningitis to heart failure. Your donations will be used to replace outdated medical equipment, buy wound dressing supplies, and to cover patient costs when they do not have money to pay.

All you have to do to make a small donation to Delek Hospital is to click the ads that are featured on my blog. I will donate all revenue from ads on Running Blonde to Delek at the end of April. There are four ads on the blog. Three are highlighted below and one is at the very, very bottom of the blog if you scroll all the way down. Please feel free to click on all four!

If you are interested in donating to Delek Hospital directly, please click here.

Holi Festival in Dharamsala, India {Travel}

Holy Holi! I had the great fortune to celebrate Holi Festival in Dharamsala, India this year. Holi is the beautiful and exciting holiday to welcome spring by flinging brightly colored powders and rubbing them all over the faces of your friends, family and complete strangers! Holi celebrations are the craziest in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai, but Holi Festival in Dharamsala was still quite the celebration!

Luckily, everyone was more than happy to have their picture taken! I wrapped a few plastic baggies over my camera and packed some wet wipes and crossed my fingers that I could document this amazing day without sacrificing my camera!

Things kicked off around 10:00, and at first it was just the occasional person walking by with a streak of color on their forehead. Then it was a few crazy guys tearing by on motorcycles with their whole faces powdered.

Eventually, a local guy pointed down a road and nodded knowingly – “The big party will happen down there,” he told me. I headed down to a small temple and sure enough, there was quite the celebration happening outside! People had large feed bags of powder and were dumping it on each other and literally smearing it over each others faces.

The event culminated in a crazy battle-of-the-sexes human tower competition with the aim of knocking a clay vase down from a rope that was suspended across the street. It was a bit like a pinata, and I was happy to find a safe spot on balcony to enjoy the scene. The contestants were challenged with buckets of water and large quantities of powder to distract them from their quest.

Eventually, the boys won and the powder fight dissolved into a huge water fight. Overall, it seemed that things stayed relatively safe, but I know Holi has a reputation of getting out of hand.

Delek Family Dinner {Travel}

Anneke, Rosie, and Nisha cooked a homemade dinner for the doctors at Delek Hospital last week. Dr. Kunchok’s wife had never had Thai food, so the girls whipped up an amazing batch of curry! Even in the Himalayas, its possible to find coconut milk and curry paste if you know where to look.

Fresh Veggies - Dharamsala, India - Running Blonde

For dessert was Banoffee pie (bananas, cream, chocolate, and dulce de leche – yes please!), but I was too busy scarfing to get a picture!

Chocolate Glazed Cake Doughnuts

Erhmahgawd – homemade doughnuts! I adore cake doughnuts, but I’ve put off making them in the past because for some reason frying seemed so intimidating. I hosted another ‘Ladies Who Brunch‘ before I left for India and I figured making these chocolate glazed cake doughnuts would be the perfect way to overcome this fear. It turned out to be as easy as pie to get a perfectly crisp and golden cake donut – it just takes a cooking thermometer to make sure the oil stays at the right temperature…. Read More »

Tsuglagkhang Complex, McLeod Ganj, India {Travel}

Saturday, I thought I had the day off, so I visited the Tsuglagkhang Complex in McLeod Ganj, near where I am staying. It turns out, Saturdays are not a holiday in Tibet, as I found out when I returned to work on Monday. Oops! Looks like it’s six day weeks from here on out.

The Tsuglagkhang Complex is the home of the Dalai Lama when he is in Dharamsala I plan to go back, as you can hear monks debate on some afternoons and I missed them! It also includes the Tsuglagkhang temple and Namgyal Gompa, a Buddhist monastery.

Tsuglagkhang Temple and Tibetan Prayer Flags, McCleod Ganj, India

Around the temple is a walkway of Buddhist prayer wheels. As you walk, you hit the handle on the prayer wheels and set them spinning. According to tradition, prayer wheels are used to accumulate wisdom and merit (good karma) and get rid of negatives (bad karma).

Tibetan prayer flags – breathtaking! Tibetan Prayer Flags, Tsuglagkhang Temple, Mc Cleod Ganj, India

Holy Cow!

Tibetan Monk, Mc Cleod Ganj, India

The Dhauladhar mountain range:

I promise I’ll post more details about my time at Delek soon!

The Dalai Lama Stops By {Travel}

His holiness, the Dalai Lama, is the patron of Delek Hospital in Dharamsala where I am working. When he is in town, word spreads quickly and the people of Dharamsala stand on the sides of the streets for a chance to greet him as he drives by.

Oh, and this is the view on my walk home from the hospital:

I’m settling in quite nicely and have some good company in three lady docs who are spending four months at Delek. They are from London and in what is the equivalent of residency training in the US. Life is pretty good!