Hotel Castle Naggar

... t think I will try. I will say all of the Tibetans we have met here have been amazingly warm and welcoming to us, sharing their story, their culture and their friendship. Whether it was during English lessons we have gotten to participate in the past few days or my cooking class I took (I make hella good Momo's or Tibetan pot stickers) or the people we have struck conversations up with on the street, the warmth is apparent.



McLeod Ganj, Himachal Pradesh, India agrossma

... spectacular Himalayas. Granted there's not that much to do in McLeod Ganj (though it does have a cinema) but with 5 hours teaching a day I was pretty full up and the month glided by very enjoyably.

During my stay I met the 17th Incarnation of the Karmpa (no.2 to the Dalai Lama) attended the Dalai Lama's birthday celebrations at the main temple and met a truck load of interesting people from all walks of life. From the Canadian motor mouth (you know who you are) who ...

... which you do rarely see here), who was using an Iriver. I asked him if he knew how I could use my ipod, which he did not, but instead he split his headphone input to two and shared his radio with me. I caught the end of the Dalai Lama's speech for the day, and would enter tomorrow speech more prepared.

After hs speech, the crowd orderly lined a chalk outline on the street and waited with hands in front of their chests for ...

... walked downstairs to the refugee museum. Having been reading about the Tibetan situation for some time before coming, the museum didn't contain too much that we hadn't already heard of, but there were some particularly moving exhibits including possessions of the first waves of refugees and some grisly details of the Chinese occupation.

But McLeod Ganj is a lot more than just the residence of the Dalai Lama (who wasn't present for our visit-- though we will be seeing ...

... look back. I was touched. Of course I managed to lose the same bracelet somehow on the remainder of the journey but meh...it was my least favorite of the bunch anyway.

We shared a taxi directly to McLeod Gange and our guest house (that we hadn't booked yet). The ride was a little nauseating, mostly because of the turns I think. We arrived at 6am, just in time to see the daybreak over the Himalayan Mountains. We are not very high here, only ...

Hello everyone! So. After Shimla we got the deluxe bus up to Mandi. This is a lovely little town with some similarities to Shimla in that it is perched on a hillside but also many differences in that it isn't really a tourist place. The local people don't seem very used to westerners and so we were stared at quite a lot. They were exceptionally friendly though and mainly just wanted to know where we were from and what we thought of their country ...

... re still pushing anaerobic threshold just trying to push into the wind across this eternal plane. Another full day, dropping into the spectacular Pang gorge at sunset. We stop at the first set of parachute tents, having been warned that Pang is a truck stop pit. And it is, but nothing for it, there's no water elsewhere, we're exhausted, and it's getting dark. The folks in the parachute tent (which is a restaurant, and a bunk-house) were way too excited to see us ...

... from two cables and made camp the third night at a vacant shepherd's camp where there was a crude lean-to for a kitchen. We set up our tents on many years' accumulation of sheep and goat dung, making for a beautifully cushioned slumber. The fourth day, we got our first peeks at the BIG mountains all around. Up the side valleys, through holes in the clouds, big, rugged, glaciated mountains were everywhere. We ...

... about. Time past slowly, we passed through Chandigarh and finally after midday arrived at Kalka. Changed to the connecting toy train (Himlayan Queen) - a narrow gauge affair, slightly cramped and we set off - slowly winding upwards through the outskirts of the town. A loud southern county english girl and her mexican boyfriend chatted to me - she was rather irritating in that loud, inquisitive public school way, she seemed to take offence that after telling me that ...

... an idea of personal space and noise levels. Never a second goes past when someone is beeping their horn on the road etc. but the final night of our stay in the hotel was mad. Janice was feeling none to well and at around 23:30 i;d had about as much as i could take of door slamming and what sounded like cutlery and trays being moved around. My first thought was that someone was having room service collected but what greeted me when i opened the door almost floored me ...