Club Mahindra Whispering Pines Mashobra

... but now there is nothing but a small eatery. We had some tea and here we are ready to go on. We are driving through a narrow valley of Chandra River. The area looks totally uninhabited, and it's clear why - there is no vegetation here - neither trees nor even some grass - it's too cold here Mohan explains. He looks nervous, it seems he's praying all the time. After two and a half hours of driving we reach Kunzum La. There is a Buddhist temple on top of the pass. Mohan ...

... building along with the accompanying budha temple . Gifts of chocolate, biscuits, tea, and of course money have been left as an offering to these beautifully decorated statues in the temple. It's interesting to observe their prayer as it seems much more adoring than our geneflect and sign of the cross. Unfortunately didn't get to see His holiness, maybe next time! <br><br>We then take a 2km walk up to a waterfall on the other side of our hotel. the surrounding ...

Today I woke feeling a little roughed up from the previous night's goodbye party. I met Kunchok (Tibetan friend) and his French buddy in town to head to the Tibetan children's school. This took us on a small one lane road, and eventually for a fifteen minute hike through the woods. We reached the school a little after nine, and you could hear the Dalai Lama's voice echoing out of the open air children's classroom. Hearing his happy ...

... a conversation, but we ended up talking about some pretty deep stuff (somehow the ambiance of Xcite just seems to draw out interesting and philisophical conversation in strangers-- it would be a pretty good place to stage a meeting, Grego). Our last friend that we met here was a hardcore Buddhist that had apparently been raised Hindu. He told us about a sort of pilgrammage he went on-- he called it a meditational walk, from Nepal to central India and he was a pretty deep guy as ...

... the café to sell. Yesterday morning, on the way to the library, we noticed that the morning-shift volunteer had clearly misplaced the orignial marker for the cookies, so that in the middle of the counter sat a large jar of them, marked "mystery cookies." We bought two. We made it to the Library of the Tibetan Government just in time to find a seat for the teaching that was happening at 11. We satnext to a young refugee, who had spent the ...

... back to the house and collapsed on our beds and got a good nights rest. Today is our last day in McLeodGanj and we are browsing and shopping and eating some of the amazing food that we found here in town; a vegetarian Asian restaurant and an Italian restaurant that just blew us away. Despite having some of the best food we've ever had here in India, it was nice to get a change of flavours and something that reminds us of home. For Justin and I (Andrew) we are reaching our ...

... African Americans and racism. In a stroke of supreme Irony, the main recurring commercial was for an Indian "skin whitening" product. Here, as in Africa, darker is "lower class". Leaving Keylong we find a sign for (more) road work ahead (oy. the stretch from Zingzingbar to Keylong was exceptionally bad), which includes the compensation for the standard road worker at 2650 Rps/month. They work at least 6 days/week, so this works out to 90-100 Rps/day, or $2.50, max ...

Hope this works this time. This is just a test. I have great long reports to send to you once I get back to Delhi in 3 days time. I'm on my way out from the monastery. will visit my old monastery tonight, to manali tomorrow then and overnight bus to delhi arriving wednesday morning. all is well.

... the glaciers and steep streams and firmly into the Pin Valley, with its reddish mountains. Then the rain and snow came ("Raindrops are falling on my head.") that lasted two days straight. For most of the rainstorm, we read and relaxed in our tents. Periodically, I tweaked my tent--tightening a stake or adding a rock here and there to make the tent more waterproof. During this time, I finished ...

I arrived here in Manali on Saturday morning, the bus left Mcleod Gang at 8.30pm and arrived in Manali at the very convenient time of 4.30am. This left myself, a few other English a group of Israelis, a couple of Americans and one Hungarian at the very dusty Manali bus station, scratching our heads as to what to do next. Eventually hotel touts and taxi drivers appeared and we all went our different ways. The bus timetables in some of the ...