Where Next? Five Year Anniversary - Kristen visits Dharamshala, India

Five years ago, we hit record with a simple question: where should we go next? Somehow, that question turned into a friendship ritual, a passport of conversations, and a surprising education in places we had only half-understood. To celebrate our anniversary, we get personal, grateful, and a little stunned by how fast time moves when you keep saying yes to curiosity.

Then we jump to what’s coming and what just happened. Kristen is gearing up for an intense horseback trek and discovers she accidentally signed up for Georgia the country, not Georgia in the United States, which sparks a real talk about travel planning, training, and saying yes even when you’re nervous. From there, Kristen shares a powerful trip to Dharamshala, India, timed around a documentary focused on compassion and empathy, with a visit connected to the Dalai Lama’s world and Tibetan culture in the Himalayas.

We talk through the reality of the journey, including a 22-hour flight, high-altitude hills that turn every walk into a workout, and the moments that make it all worth it: prayer flags, ancient Tibetan scriptures, a butter lamp ceremony with more than a thousand candles, and wellness experiences like a sound bath of frequency-based sound healing. We also keep it honest with practical travel tips, from monsoon season to food safety, plus the sensory details you only learn by being there, like street dogs at night, monkeys, smoke, and smoggy air.

If you like thoughtful travel stories with real-world details and big-hearted takeaways, subscribe to Where Next, share this anniversary episode with a fellow traveler, and leave a rating or review so more people can find the show.

Map of Dharamshala, India 

Transcript

Welcome And Five-Year Anniversary

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hi, welcome to our podcast, Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol. I am Kristen and I am Carol. And we're two long-term friends with a passion for travel and adventure.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Each episode, we interview people around the globe to help us decide where to go next. Well, Kristen, this is our five-year anniversary. Isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Unbelievable. It feels like it just happened. It really is amazing how fast it's gone. And I'm so grateful for you. I know, me too. I'm grateful for you. This is so cool. So much fun. And you know, it's funny when we started, well, even before that, when we were talking, and you're like, I want to do a travel podcast, and I want you as my co-host, because I was doing that other podcast. I was like, Yeah, of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

It's so fun.

unknown 1:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Now when I hear people talk about different places, I'm like, oh yeah, we did an episode about that. Or I understand

Nervous For Georgia Horse Journey

SPEAKER_00 1:10

now about Venezuela and the the the colored mountain in Peru. And it's just, yeah, things I learned about. Some things we're gonna hear from you. I'm really excited about the whole Georgia thing that you're going to. That's very cool. I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

I I'm a little nervous because I keep trying to get horse saddle time and it keeps uh keeps getting diverted. And I'm like, oh no. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

And how long do you need to journey for?

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Like eight days or something? Nine. Nine days, seven hours a day, countering, trotting, and galloping, which I'm assuming we're stopping for lunch. So we're moving horses uh in Georgia from their summer place to their winter place. And then my friend, who yeah, I used to ride, so I I had two horses that I'd take out, and I'd bring my friends, and so one of them she wants me to do this trip with her. I'm like, absolutely. And then I clicked on the link thinking like it was Georgia the state, and then it was Georgia the country. And I was like, Oh, uh, well, I'm not gonna say no. So yes, I'm going. I'm a little nervous. I'm gonna be pretty sore.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So I'm trying to again just trying to get a how do you how do you like prepare for that?

SPEAKER_02 2:14

I guess you're really fine horses, but I can't. I was trying to shoot for like twice a week, and I was doing it, but one of the horses got got injured pretty bad. And I'm like, oh no, I gotta find another horse.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Oh no, oh gosh. I like gotta practice so that you can hurt yourself. So let's let's let's hear about your Dharamshalla?

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Dharamshala. It was sort of planned from there,

Why Dharamshala And The Film Crew

SPEAKER_02 2:40

basically from a friend who's doing a documentary on empathy and to meet the Dalai Lama. It's part of compassion and um empathy. And um, there was a lot going on on that particular trip at Dharamshala and for the Dalai Lama. And so that's why they picked this that specific week. And then that was their fourth and final trip for filming the documentary. She was looking for uh 10 people and she called me and wanted me to go. And I was like, oh, I want to, you know, we have our travel podcast. I was, you know, during COVID, we couldn't travel or do anything. So it's like we got to travel vicariously through everyone, and now I've got the itch. Like, I want to go travel. And so I still have that goal of two years traveling, and that stuff would be my my thing. But uh for now, my kids, you know, my daughter just graduated. She's going into USC Masters, and then my son, he's still in college, so trying to wait.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Yeah, no, it's I know I always thought, oh, they're 18. And when we first started this, like, oh, in about a year, I'm gonna just be traveling all over. Like, no, they're in college, they're still like you're just driven to like now.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

We go visit them, you know. Right, yes, exactly. And they'll she'll be in LA, so I'll be able to visit the folks and see her and everything like that. But so then back to Dharamshalla, and it was kind of a quick turnaround. So bought my ticket, ended up getting a kind of almost a one-way ticket from San Francisco to India, and then we had to fuel in India, and they didn't let us out of the plane. We were just in there, they landed, we were on some tarmac area, they flew fueled. I don't know, it's like an hour or two hours, and then we flew

The 22-Hour Flight And First Views

SPEAKER_02 4:20

to New Delhi. That leg of the trip was 22 hours. So do you sleep on planes? I can sleep anywhere. Yeah, so I like napped and I watched movies and I read a book, you know. What was so weird is I kept lifting the shade and it was always light, it never got dark.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Like I was expecting it would, you know, dim and you'd have like you were like chasing, yeah, you were chasing the sun.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

The light the whole time. It was tripping me out, actually. I mean, on the flight there, you're just looking, and I'm looking at the pictures, these picturesque snow capped mountains and then very green hills, pine trees. It's gorgeous, it's very tropical looking. Um wow. So Darum's shawl is in the mountains then? Yes, it's okay. Gorgeous.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Pine trees and uh snow capped mountains. And what were you doing? Like, what was your role in this whole documentary support?

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Just it was just being there for support. We brought a music program to a Tibetan boarding school called the Frequency School, and that was really special. And I was just honored to be there. She was also raising funds to the film. So I think that was probably the bulk of what she was trying to do. So there was that, and then she kind of curated with a uh Tibetan gal in her 20s. She was sort of our tour guide, I guess. Um, so each day we had a lot of activities. I was kind of hoping it was more for the film, and we did get to do things for the film as well. There was a guy who stayed with us, and him and his his father do things with um sound,

Temples Korah Library And Tibetan Culture

SPEAKER_02 6:00

and it's like a healing sound, and uh he's out of San Diego. And so that was part of the program. And so we did something with him um where we had to kind of hold each other, and then he would he was finding our frequency. And how that came about was one of the other trips. Uh, Natalie, there was all these monks, hundreds of monks chanting, and then whatever tone it was, it just made her ball, and she'd never had that before. And she was like, What was that? I don't know why. I just started doing research, found this company in San Diego, and then the son who I met, and he was so fun, he was just a nice guy. You know, we did that. We did uh there was a three-day conference on compassion for the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday. One of the days we went to the Dalai Lama's temple and uh just walking through it, it's just amazing. So they have this thing uh where the Dalai Lama lives and then the temple. Dharamshalla is like the straight up, straight downhill. It's just like everything is like this. So you're walking around straight up, straight down. I mean, it's exhausting. It's awesome. You're getting oh my gosh, what's the altitude there? Is it pretty high? I know you can see up to the snow capped mountains, but it's not 4780. And then you're looking up to the upper. That's funny. It says upper Dharmshalla. Oh, okay. So where I was, it was almost 6,000. It was 5740. I mean, our hotel, everything was like on the side of a hill. So it had a beautiful view of all the green and mountains, and then there was a soccer, football, I guess I'd say quotes, some sort of stadium that you could see far in the distance. And they had a lot of games, a lot of activities, and um music and fireworks that would come at night. What was really interesting and made me think about it was the monkeys and the dogs. The hill that the Dalai Lama lived on has this thing called a Korah, K-O-R-A. You have to do a clockwise walk around it. So you would walk, and there's all these flags, the colorful flags that you see usually on Mount Everest. First day we went to the temple and just got to really experience a lot. Then we went to a library and a museum. The library was not open to the public, but they opened it to us, and it was all of the actual scriptures. You know, they were like this wide and this long. It was kind of weird. Okay. And then they flip up this way, and then they're handscribed like ink. And so he showed us one, and then they're wrapped in fabric. So interesting fact, one of the gals was like, I want to watch the Brad Pitt movie, Seven Years in Tibet.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Oh, okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Watched it, and being in, you know, Dharmshallah, aka Tibet, and seeing all the things we were seeing, and then watching in the movie, it was like, Oh, there's the library, oh, there's that dress, oh, there's that. Like we could see all oh, so it was actually pretty accurate. Yeah. Oh, wow. And they have a certain um one day also we went to a nunnery, got to meet them, and we did this, it's called butterlamp ceremony, where we went in what looked like a glass gazebo, a really big one. And then in the center of it, there were over a thousand candles, and we chanted just like this calm little thing we said, I guess, a couple syllables with the nuns. And there's also there's 10-year-old nuns and high school, like they go from 10 up. Yeah. So there were kids. I took pictures with them and they were all like waving at you, and they have

Nunnery Butter Lamps And Sound Bath

SPEAKER_02 9:40

no hair, they shave their heads. And so we did this butter lamp ceremony, lit all of the candles, and it was just it was beautiful. It was really nice. And then we went to what did we also? Oh, there was like a garden area too. We did that beforehand. And um, what made me think of it was in the movie, they have this specific outfit that the women wear. It's beautiful. And uh there at the the nunnery gardens before we went to the school or the where they live, they had all those outfits uh on. And so when the people see the Dalai Lama, they'll wear that because it's like kind of a special sort of cool there since it was way in the mountains.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

No, we went in the summertime basically.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Yeah, yeah, it's warm. And then I didn't realize, but June is their uh monsoon season, so that's when the Dalai Lama leaves and everything kind of shuts down and tourism stops because then the streets flood. And I can only imagine because it's so steep there, like I wouldn't want to leave either, or I'd just not be there during that time. Actually, the first night we had to hike up this hill, this like straight up hill, and then we got to a house, and it was also built up on this hill. So we just walked up all these stairs. It felt like five flights of stairs or something. And we got to the top, and it was a studio, and we did a sound bath. I'd never done one. I didn't even know. Have you ever heard of a sound bath? You basically have a yoga mat, there's they're all lined up together, and then in the middle of us are these like metal bowls, and there's a guy. So you basically lay on the mat and you close your eyes and you relax, and then he plays just all the sounds. And so I was so exhausted by that point. And so we got up there, I laid down, and then I was out, and then I woke up to the sounds and it was over in an hour and a half had been. So that part was oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Oh, you gotta a great night's sleep.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Yeah, and then someone that was a Dalai Lama picked all our food places and we ate really good. It was really delicious.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Oh, okay. That's supposed to say what kind of food. Um, but I also did hear that monks that meditate all the time because they're meditating, they're not polluting their brain with worrying about stuff and thinking about that. They don't need to sleep nearly as much as a normal person. Like they could sleep like like three hours a night, like consistently and be totally healthy.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

With the nuns, I was asking them questions. This was actually, I'm sure, in the film, but we were interviewing them and we were sitting around a table, and then the three of them were at the head of the table, and they just wanted us to ask questions. And so, me being a recruiter and asking lots of questions, basically really interested in their lifestyle and what their days look like and how, you know, whatever. And she's like, let me give you a typical day. And I think they wake up at like 5 or 6 a.m. I think it was 5 a.m. or something like that, and meditate for hours and you know, certain things they do. And I think they have like a 30-minute

Monks Debates Food Sleep And Routines

SPEAKER_02 12:40

break for lunch, and then they do have a tea in the afternoon, but then they go and have dinner at like five or six or something like that, and then they still meditate and do more for hours until like 10 p.m. And then they have like a half an hour to themselves free time, and then they go to bed. And then there is this thing when I'm sleeping and it's it's hot, you know, because it is a little humid and stuff. So I have the window open and I hear monkeys. I hear in the middle of the night at 1 a.m. or and 5 a.m. There's just, oh my gosh, the dogs are like they're during the dairy, they're everywhere. They're just like on the streets everywhere. And so in the middle of the night, it's like they all come to life and it's cooler. And so they they go to war. Like, who's the you know, tough dog or whatever? It was just I was shocked. It was like war. And then in the morning, oh gosh, wake up and there's a lot of it's not incense, but there's a lot of strong smells like that that they must be burning and lighting. I don't know if they're and you can see um because we're in the mountain, we can see out to all of Dharmshallah, and you can see um, you know, garbage fires and and the pollution is pretty deep. Like you can see, it is a lot of it's like LA back when I was a kid. It's like really, you know, uh smoggy and and and yeah, and there's a lot of strong smells. There's a lot of strong smells, um, not only incensey kind of smells, but other smells too. But they have this thing in the morning as well, and I think it was like 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. And it was all the monks getting at the temple, and they call it debate. And okay. We when we went to go see the temple ourselves, it was the kids and they were teaching them how to debate. And so they get in, I think mostly groups of three or four, and there's two sitting on the ground, and then there's one standing up, and they do this clap thing, and it'll be whatever, you know, like the sky is blue or regarding science or um about their meal. It could be, I guess, anything. And so they'll try and convince them, and then the other person will, I don't know whether, let's see, says, practice Tibetan Buddhist debate uh or dharma debate, often taking place in the courtyards of monasteries, which is where I saw it. A rigorous century-old training method designed to sharpen logic, test understanding of Buddhist philosophy, and defeat ignorance rather than an opponent. Person standing up will be saying like what they're trying to make you believe or do, and then they just go like this. So you'll just see them all go like this, and then the person's sitting on the ground, and they're just, you know, the people are just listening from my hotel. It was kind of far away. It wasn't that close, but it wasn't, you know, miles and miles away. It's probably a mile away if that you could hear them debating for an hour, and it just sounds like louder chatter, like a party or something. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Louder, like it sounds anything else, like really big highlights, the food or matcha tea. I see yummy. And then I had Are they all vegetarian mostly? Uh you know, I I do think they do a lot of vegetarian, but we had meat as well. Yeah, we we really had more of a Tibetan meal at the end. We didn't a little bit here and there. It was kind of like healthy food.

Smog Street Animals Food Mistake Farewell

SPEAKER_02 15:55

So but it was a beautiful trip. Definitely do not eat the food in the airport thinking that you're safe when you get the in into the Indian airport. That's my mistake. Um, okay. Really, really sick with lots of bad things on the way home. Oh no, the flight home was luckily it was only 17 hours, not 22, but I suffered all the way home. That was not fun. But but it was a beautiful trip, a lot of fun, and highly recommend Dharamshalla. Awesome. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Well, thanks for the little recap of the one of your big adventures this year.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

And then we'll happy five years for us. So great. Who knows when we're gonna be at?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

10 years. Can you yeah? Hopefully, we'll have a lot of our own travel, not just chasing our children around.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

We'll have grandkids to chase around. Stop. Stop.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Okay, well, thank you. Okay, bye-bye. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, can you please take a second and do a quick follow of the show and rate us in your podcast app? And if you have a minute, we would really appreciate a review. Following and rating is the best way to support us. If you're on Instagram, let's connect. We're at Where Next Podcast. Thanks again.