It's an overcast Sunday afternoon, with rain threatening. After a long, happily meandering conversation with a Swedish friend in an outdoor cafe, I've taken shelter in the Green Hotel's internet cafe.

Yesterday, though, was a beautiful day, sunny with high clouds. That morning, I paid my first visit to Tushita Meditation Centre, where I'm scheduled to take a 10-day meditation retreat in early June. Tushita offers drop-in guided meditation sessions each morning except on Sundays, so I walked up to the center and found my way to the lovely Medicine Buddha Hall for the morning meditation. Afterwards, I sat with a cup of tea on the main wooden deck, quietly watching the small forest birds flitting through the tall deodar cedars and the scenery below me (Tushita is perched on a steep hillside above McLeodganj, and surrounded by forest). Tushita is a remarkably peaceful setting, and I felt quietly delighted that I have a place in the June retreat.

Eventually, I continued up to the village of Dharamkot, and then returned to a quest I'd begun earlier: to find the footpath to Triund, a viewpoint on a high ridge that offers spectacular views of the 17,000-foot-high Dhauladhar Mountains. The Dhauladhars are the nearest of the true Himalaya peaks, and loom over McLeodganj. Were there not a few trekking outfits that make part of their living taking paying tourists up to Triund, the footpath might be signposted, but it isn't.

First, I walked up a forest track from Dharamkot to Gallu Temple, which I'd visited before. When I asked directions from the owner of a tea stall next to the temple, I learned that the footpath to Triund begins just behind the temple.

I set out onto the path, which took me diagonally higher and higher through pines and rhododendrons along the side of a steep ridge above Dharamkot. It soon gave me views steeply down to Dharamkot and out to other villages, McLeodganj, and the main city of Dharamsala below and beyond.

If you've taken the dugway trails up to either the East or West Rim of Zion Canyon in Utah, the Triund path will seem familiar. It is constructed of large, flat stones fitted together with Civilian Conservation Corps-like exactitude, with fitted stone steps in some of the steeper places. (During the Great Depression in the US in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps employed young men to build trails and other structures in many national parks). In some places--especially reminiscent of the dugways--there are steep dropoffs on the outer edges of the path. But the path itself is wide and secure.

I had the path mainly to myself until I reached the "Magic View" tea stall (there's always a tea stall in India!), which I am guessing is about half-way to Triund. There, I lingered to drink tea and chat with the friendly owner and a group of university students from Chandighar, who were headed up to Triund with overnight packs. The owner lives year-round behind his tea stall, and gets new provisions when needed via donkey trains from time to time.

A little later, after the students had moved on, an English walker and his tiny puppy arrived. The puppy, Sembay ("Snow Lion") had insisted on walking all the way up, and he immediately flattened himself in a patch of shade for a restorative nap. We two-legged creatures relaxed and continued to chat on the veranda of the tea stall. With the sky clouding over and the temperature dropping, I had realized that the "Magic View" would be a good turn-around point for the day's walk.

I started back down at around 3pm, encountering a few other groups of trekkers on the way down, as well as the first snake I've seen in India. The snake and I scared each other: I jumped backwards as it hurried off the path into the brush below the path. Once it seemed safely off the path, I continued down. Later, I had the troubling thought of what could happen if tiny Sembay were to encounter the snake when coming down the path, but I remembered that his owner planned to carry him down, and guessed that the snake would be far from the path by the time they passed by.

Once back in McLeodganj, I looked back up to the ridge I'd walked along, and noticed that from here, I can see the Magic View tea stall, which now appears as a blue dot near the ridgeline far above town. I plan to return to the path soon to walk all the way up to Triund and, I hope to stay overnight there. There is a government rest house and a private guesthouse at Triund--and no doubt a tea stall or two as well.