Himalaya Tibetan cafe

Hello friends, this past weekend I trekked up Ben Nevis. Climbing to the top was tough at times, but it was an unforgettable experience that felt like a pilgrimage at times. Being out in nature was energising and the calmness of the landscape was a welcome break from the busy August we just had.
I’m glad to be back at the Café serving our regulars and guests, but the trip made me realise the power of a recharge. I’m more certain than ever that the Himalaya Café should build a retreat centre somewhere up North, where people of all backgrounds can find time to relax and mentally recharge. Just like the café, we want it to be a place for everyone, no matter their income, so would operate on a basis of paying what you can. What do you think about this idea? If you’d like to stay informed, then we have a mailing list. Just go to our Linktree (see link below) and click the first link to stay informed. We’re ready to start taking this idea from seed and if you can help, let us know.

https://linktr.ee/himalaya_tibetan_cafe

The Himalaya cafe is closed today as I’m having a little rest and recharging after a busy festival month but I promise I will be back to open the cafe if I survive the big trek up to Ben Nevis this morning 🙏🙏

Are wellness retreats something only for the wealthy? I want to share a dream with you and a plan to make it reality.
For 17 years we’ve been running the Himalaya Café on South Clerk Street. Our regulars know we’re a bit different from your regular café. Yes, we serve chai, curries and cakes, but over the years we’ve also served hundreds of free meals to those in need with our suspended meal service that allows customers to pay it forward.
These days it feels like mental health issues are everywhere. For some people they can recharge on a retreat. But what about the rest? Actually, we have a small meditation space at the Himalaya, free to use anytime you want, but we want to do more.
So, this is our dream: we want to create a Retreat somewhere up North of here in the countryside. A cottage or building we can renovate and call home. It will be a place for calm, where people can go and recharge their mental batteries in peace and nature. We take our inspiration from Buddhist principles, but this will be a place open to wanderers and meditators of all faiths and traditions and to those who just need a place to be at one with themselves.
And, like the Himalaya, we want to ensure this is a place for everyone, so we’ll operate on a sliding scale of pay what you can, meaning that meditative retreat is not just a luxury but a option for all, including those on the margins. This is what community means to us.
This is just the seed of our idea that we’re sharing right now, and we are wondering what you think about it? Can you help find a suitable place? Do you have any suggestions for how we might organise the payment structure? Should we ask for donations, and of we did, would you support us? Let us know what you think. We want to know what you think and whether you’d like to join us as we transform this dream into reality.
If you’d like to stay in touch as we plan this new venture, then leave a message below, or sign up to our Mailing List which you can find at the top of our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/himalaya_tibetan_cafe

How would you feel if your child’s school was closed down and their language and culture supressed?

Hello friends, we want to tell you what is happening in Tibet right now. Last week, Chinese government authorities closed the Ragya Gangjong Sherig Norbuling school in Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Amdo (Ch. Qinghai) Province. The school has been operating for 30 years and observers say that the closure is part of a broader crackdown on Tibetan cultural education where Tibetan language is the medium of instruction.
Here on the other side of the continent, we in Edinburgh offer our support and solidarity with all those who are keeping Tibetan language and culture alive. For decades, authorities have destroyed schools, monasteries, homes, and taken children away from parents, but we know that despite this, the spirit of the Tibetan people remains indestructible.

Bo Rangzen !!

🙏🙏🙏

This coming Saturday, 6th July, the Himalaya Cafe will be celebrating the 89th birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, one of the world’s most famous spiritual leaders, with a special birthday party of Tibetan cuisine.
The story of the Himalaya owes much to His Holiness. It was a chance meeting between His Holiness and Reka at the Scottish Parliament that inspired her to forge her own path and start a cafe. When the future of the Himalaya was uncertain, His Holiness helped publicise the fundraiser that ensured we could continue serving up chai and cakes to the community.
It’s also a time for us to say thank you to the community, near and far, who have supported us throughout the ups and downs. So, from 4pm to 6pm we’ll be serving up a buffet of food free of charge to all visitors.
See you there!

At the Himalaya café, we know the importance of local businesses to a community and the importance of the community to local businesses.
Our regulars keep coming back because we’re unlike any other café in Edinburgh, and perhaps the world. Whether you want to meditate, read a book, or even make new friends at a jam session, we have something for everyone. Our suspended meals also help those most in need get a hot meal when they need it. And, unlike the big chain stores, if you ask us nicely, we’ll serve up your chai and curry just the way you like it.
Edinburgh is a special city and we love and are proud of our independent shops. However, we’ve all seen a news story about one of our favourites closing down recently. It’s more important than ever that we support these places that provide character and community to our cities.
So, what’s your favourite local business? Tag them in the comments and let’s think local!

Wishing all an Auspicious Sagadawa Full moon 🙏🙏

Donate to our summer fundraiser.

Himalaya is a community without borders and our motto is that we are more than a café. This year we are raising money for Sami a young boy in India who has severe physical impairments.

I came to know Sami through his grandmother, Noorjan. I’ve known her for many years and always saw a little of my mother in her. Her husband passed away a few years ago and since then, she’s been the breadwinner of the family. She cleans houses around the village to get money for her grandchildren. Noorjan was gracious enough to pose for me to take a photographic portrait and I want to give something back to her and the other individuals whose images were part of the exhibition.

Now we’re giving back. With our fundraiser, we are specifically raising money for physiotherapy sessions for Sami, so that he can be more mobile in his every day life and more active in the community.

If you’d like to contribute, we have special postcards and prints available for sale or you can donate at the café. We also welcome any long term sponsorships.

This summer, let’s spread the love from Edinburgh to the Himalayas.

Now that the frost has thawed and the flowers are in bloom, picnic time has come! This time of year always reminds me of my childhood when the whole neighbourhood would go on picnics together.



Up the mountain we would climb. Fifteen families in search of spring. Between the forest and the scrubland we found the best spot. Blankets unfurled, lunchboxes opened. Curries, rice, and sweets. A community banquet.

After the meal, the children ran off to play football with balls made from rolled up socks and rags. And then hide and seek among the trees and bushes. The adults reclined and as the sun began to dip, bottles of rice wine made their inevitable appearance. By the time the evening arrived, the mountain was alive with songs that everyone knew the words to. Spring had been found.



Those were the spring picnics of my childhood in Mussoorie, a little hill station in Uttarakhand. I never realised at the time how special it was to live as a community, to eat, play and laugh together. My family would make pastries in the morning; rolling, kneading, stuffing, and frying with my mother as a production line manager. Beef-stuffed shabhale for the meateaters, tsebhale for the veggies. It’s the food I associate the most with those times.



Now I’m bringing my family recipe to the Scottish spring! So, bring your lunchboxes, bentos and tiffin tins and come and grab some tsebhale and shabhale pastries, momos and chai to takeway. The perfect food for sharing on a picnic!

It has been a very busy month for the Himalaya So I’m taking a day off just to rest and spend some time with myself which I very rarely get :))

Looking forward to seeing you all next week 🙏🙏

Have a great weekend whatever you will all be doing 💕💕

Last year, I made a trip back to Northern India. There, among the communities where I grew up, I rekindled old connections and made new ones. As a photographer, I wanted to capture the images of some of these friends and acquaintances who live at the foothills of the Himalayas.
When I brought these pictures back to Edinburgh and exhibited them, I was thrilled by the positive response from visitors here.

The Himalaya has always been more than a cafe and we know that community is the truest nourishment. Knowing that the communities I visited in India are always in need of support, I’m launching a fundraiser to help assist them. We’ll be selling the original photo prints from the exhibition as well as postcards of the images, with all money raised going direct to the people in the pictures.

This is Noorjaan. I’m not sure of her age, but she looks after a brood of children and grandchildren. I’ve known her for many years and always saw my mother in her. Her husband passes away a few years ago and since then, she’s been the matriarch and breadwinner of the family. She cleans houses around the village to get money for her grandchild. One of her grandchildren has severe physical disabilities and cannot walk, spending most of the time in bed.
Noorjan was gracious enough to pose for me to take a photographic portrait and I want to give something back to her and the other individuals whose images were part of the exhibition.

This year, I’m raising money for Noorjaan and others in her community by selling photo prints and postcards from my time in Northern India, including one of this image. If you’d like to contribute, please message or come down for a chai at the Himalaya. Let’s spread the love from Edinburgh to the Himalayas.

Looking forward to seeing you all in the Himalaya 💕

The most popular dish last week was something that isn’t even on the menu!

A jungle curry isn’t really one specific type of food, it’s more a style of cooking, one that takes inspiration from the wild. When you’re in the jungle you eat what you can find, from the ground to the treetops. It’s all about making use what you have available and that means that each meal is different. I don’t have a forest in my café, but I do have a kitchen full of all sorts of spice and vegetables, so when I tell you I’m making a jungle curry, you won’t know what to expect until the moment I put the plate down in front of you. Whether it’s tofu, cabbage, chickpeas, peas, ginger, carrots, chilli, garlic, or mushrooms, the jungle curry will always be a tasty surprise.

Maybe we should take a ‘jungle curry’ approach to life. We don’t always have the recipe, but if we make good use of the things we have, we can find ourselves with something delicious!!

So if you’re at the Himalaya and want to be adventurous, then put the menu down and order a jungle curry!

For my Birthday this year, I’m asking for donations to MIND (NAMH). I’ve chosen this charity because their mission means a lot to me. Working in a café in the heart of Edinburgh means I often see how mental health problems are a part of our community that we can’t turn away from. We live in a busy, rushing world and for some people it is so difficult just finding someone to talk to. I try to make time in the café and at times, I’m like a therapist to some of our regular customers. But I want there to be better professional help for our community and that’s why I hope you’ll consider joining me this year by making a donation to MIND, a mental health charity that respects and supports those who are struggling. Every little bit will help me reach my goal.

And sweet Rinchen and family came to visit us all the way from sunny California for the best chai in town 🙏

I have.been doing a bit of singing lately and managed to sing a little song with my good friend Joe and with a help of our good friend Biswa in his lovely studio !

I hope you will enjoy the mantra although this is just a little tester :))

Himalayan Meditation Mantra A mantra from the Himalayas. Listen, relax and meditate.

I have always known that I was from a family whose homeland was somewhere in the distance. Since I was old enough to listen, my mother told me stories of how she fled from Tibet as a young girl with her family in the 1950s. When the Chinese government occupation began, were forced to leave everything behind and cross the border into India. She always held out the hope that one day they would be able to move back to the family farm.

I have never forgotten my roots, but there are times when they tug on me more strongly than usual. Last month in Tibet, protesters took to the streets to object to the Chinese government’s plans to construct a hydropower dam across the Drichu River. The Gangtuo dam will flood the homes of thousands of villagers and six Buddhist monasteries, including Wonto, which dates from the 13th century. Once again, Tibetans are being forced to leave their homes and face an uncertain future in a unfamiliar place. I think about my mother’s struggles and journeys and know that if this dam goes ahead, these villagers will face the same pain of exile.

Today at the café I met a couple of Chinese students. They had seen my earlier Instagram post on the Drichu river dam. We talked for a while and they expressed sympathy for the situation in Tibet and the Tibetan people. We met and parted as friends with genuine smiles. My Mother’s hope of return never arrived, but other hopes still remain. From the Himalayas to The Himalaya, across a continent, perhaps here can be a place to plant some seeds of peace for the future.

http://TCHRD.org

Due to problem with my dearest phone, I won't be able to update the page much but just to say the Himalaya is very much open today and I look forward to seeing you all !!

It’s not the smell of cooking that takes me back to my Grandmother’s house, but the smell of incense. Like all Tibetans she had a shrine and every morning she would wake up early to tend to it, with offerings of water, prayers and burning incense sticks to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and to Buddha. She did this every morning while I was still tucked up in the bed I shared with my brother. I think I even smelled the incense in my dreams. We spent many a childhood winter at Grandma’s, with my parents away on business and my older siblings at boarding school. It was a time I have come to cherish more strongly with each passing year.

Her house was simple. Bedroom, kitchen, living room, shrine; everything was in one room. But we never went hungry at Grandma’s. As the afternoons turned into evenings, she would cook up a pot of barley soup filled with carrots, cauliflowers, peas and whatever else she could get from the market. People would pay a fortune these days for such healthy organic broth! Then, as night finally drew in, she would send us off to bed, sleepy and with bellies full of the love that only a grandmother can give.

Today is the start of a brand new year and what would a Tibetan New Year be without momos?

Momos are one of the most popular items on the Himalaya menu; who can resist these fluffy clouds of freshly steamed joy? For me, momos are more than just food, they’re a gateway into my cherished childhood memories. We would make them on special occasions like Tibetan new year or when we had visitors. Cooking was a family affair, and we would crowd around the fire in a production line. Amala would make the dough from flour and water, dad would roll it flat, and me and my siblings would mix the filling, usually beef, onions garlic and herbs, and fill the parcels. Then we would pinch it together into perfect little flower bud shapes and put them over the fire to steam.

Like all families in north India, we had a big metal steamer, enough to cook 50 or 60 momos at a time. None of them went to waste. My father, keen to see us eating well, would tell me and my younger siblings that whoever ate the most momos would be his favourite. Of course, we ate until we were stuffed.

Wishing you all a very happy Tibetan new year, may the year a dragon be filled with strength, happiness and prosperity !

Happy losar 🙏

Food has always been central to my life no matter where I’ve lived.

I grew up in the Himalayan mountains. Some of my earliest memories are watching my amala (mum) cook. I would help out by collecting firewood from the forest and collecting fresh spinach, onions and tomatoes from the garden. As a Tibetan family living in North India, our plates were always piled high with a mix of Indian and Tibetan food: momos, chickpea curry, dal bhat. I learned to cook by her side.

Maybe she trained me up so there would be someone at home to do the cooking while she was away on business. While my pala (dad) didn’t cook much, he did teach me how to make Thentuk, the Tibetan noodle soup you can see on the menu of Himalaya today.

When I was in need of pocket money, I would often cook up a pot of potato curry and go door to door selling it to neighbours. My first taste of culinary entrepreneurship at the age of eight!

Eventually I moved to Denmark and then Scotland, and found work in the hospitality industry. In Edinburgh, I got a job working at the Scottish Parliament, where one of my duties was serving the MSPs their morning coffee. One day, as I was serving the Presiding Officer, he told me His Holiness the Dalai Lama was visiting and asked whether I would like to meet him. I spoke to His Holiness for only a few minutes, but he gave me advice that would change my life. He told me I should do something to promote our culture. I went home and thought about what to do.

The goal of the Himalaya Café has been to nourish the people of Edinburgh with the food that defines me. It’s on the other side of the world, but the food here is the same Tibetan/Himalayan mix that I grew up with all those years ago in the family home. The views are different though: Arthur’s Seat instead of the Himalayan Mountains! However, the food comes from those same family recipes and is filled with the same love that my amala gave me all those years ago. I hope that you enjoy the food here as much as I enjoy making it.

Few days ago, I mentioned about doing a fundraising for a friend’s medical treatment, here’s something I’m organising in the Himalaya cafe, please feel free to come to this event, all the money raise will go directly towards the medical treatment 🙏🙏

Ta**ra means “to liberate”. It began in India but similar traditions and methods can be found around the world. Yoga and meditation are one aspect of Ta**ra, which use methods such as physical postures, breathing exercises, deep relaxation and meditation to help come into contact with the world around you and experience it more fully. In this way, you accept it and can then move on to what really motivates you in your life. Ta***ic meditation can be categorised into Energy meditation and Awareness meditation. We all have energy centres and energy channels throughout the whole body. These meditations use the energy to find peace and clarity through visualisation and breath.

Awareness meditation directs your attention to different things that step by step turn more inward and come closer to your Self or pure awareness.

Ta**ra is many more things as well including art, music and literature all designed to liberate us from our fears and inhibitions.

Life is the most interesting thing that will ever happen to you.

Celebrate every day to the fullest 🙏🙏