Dharamashala, India

To our excitement, the Indian Premier League (IPL) was having a tournament while we were traveling through India. We found a few options for games and decided to attend our first ever cricket match at the highest cricket grounds in the world: Dharamashala! Little did we know that McLeod Ganj and Dharamashala would be overrun by masses of Indian cricket fans that came to enjoy what is probably the most admired sport in India. When we arrived at what we thought would be a quiet and peaceful Tibetan town in the mountains, we were greeted by streets full of Indian tourists loitering in front of restaurants trying to get pictures of their favorite IPL players.

The box office was literally a large temporary plywood box with a hole cut out of one side, but after battling the queue jumpers for about 20 minutes we ended up buying two extra tickets from a group of coworkers whose buddies didn’t show. It was still 2 hours until game time but the stadium was rapidly filling up. It was like a dance party inside with a live concert from two different artists, and the fans dancing their hearts out in the stands as the Hindi music blared through the stadium.

Our section was open seating and we couldn’t understand why our new friends chose seats with what we thought was an obstructed view… but we quickly learned that this cage like obstruction was where the cheerleaders danced. We are pretty sure that many of the spectators were only there to watch the cheerleaders, who wore almost no clothing and had to dance in cages to protect them from the spectators.