Hotel Ekant Chail

... way out to the road where our driver, Sunji, was taking a nap in his taxi. We woke him up and drove to the main market street in Palampur.<br><br>Shopping in India is exhausting, the masses of people, the noise, the traffic&#8230; by the time we were finished at around 5:30pm mum and I both had headaches and were ready for bed. We paid our taxi driver (approximately $15 for the day), and took our heaters and other products home with us. A strange but successful day in Palampur.

... chapati - great success! &#8232;Mohan brought some vegetables from Manali - it proved that the local market was shut down by the local authorities because the prices were too high. So there is a deficit here! &#8232;The food is great and spicy, I even dring the local water - they say it's from a deep well. I try to accumulate as much heat as I can, and go to sleep at the hotel. There are three blankets there, I use all of them - one beneath and two on top of me. <br><br>

... tähti m**lib. Õpingud k*tkest*v*d K*dri j* Anu, kes meelit*v*d mind momosid sööm*. Tiibeti koh*s *nt*kse momosid ikk* k*m*lug*. Ve*me om* täis v*ts*d veelkord p*lveveskite juurest läbi j* h*rgneme, me K*drig* jääkohvile, Anu t*g*si hotelli.<br>Siest*ks vedelen hotelli rõdul, r**m*t süles, ning v*hin põhiliselt oru koh*l tiirlev*id kulle j* kuul*n pidev*t sign**lit*mist. Tän*v*d on väg* kits*d. Ennist nägime, kuid*s üks om* g*b ...

... d imagine them to look, but they still took our breath away. The temperature also dropped significantly, and by the time we got out of the bus we were actually wearing jackets. <br><br>Unfortunatley the bus dropped us off a few kilometers away from where we were heading, and we had to catch a taxi to the Dharamsala bus station. Oh-- Dharamsala isn't actually the home of the Tibetan Government, but for some reason this is the city that typically gets credit for that. Dharamsala ...

... for refugees to go into the restaurant business ("please" it says on its menus, "put up with our many mitsakes.") The place was jammed, but Anna and Jessica spotted us immediately and invited us to sit with them. They're back up in town for the weekend from the nunnery where they teach English, and their "Tibetan contacts" - two guys they've befriended, tipped them off about this afternoon ...

Hi Everybody, Hi Everybody, So since I last posted a blog, we've been up in northern India in the beautiful town of McLeodGanj. This small hillside town is part of Dharamsala and also the residence of His Holiness The XIV Dalai Lama as well as the Tibetan Government in Exile. McLeodGanj is a small tourist town, with people from all over the world, here to study Buddhism, Spirituality, Reiki, Cooking, and many other subjects. There are also many adventure seekers who are here ...

... and trekked up one of the mountains next to Kaza, both of which offered spectacular views. The funniest thing about being stuck in Kaza was that there was a group of Israelis there who insisted that they were in dire straights, calling their embassy and insurance companies several times a day. We didn't really think very highly of them, since they were ...

... was closed due to landslides and/or bridge washouts. This year it came to pass. I hired a jeep, driver (Lama) and guide - my friend Lara from Spiti Valley. They met me in Shimla and we thought we were all set to go when we ran full-speed into the Indian bureaucracy. I needed a special 'inner line permit' to go this way because the route goes so close to the sensitive border with Tibet. I had sent all my paperwork to the travel agency in Shimla 2 months in advance, so that they could ...

... mountains, our own valley possessing a huge glacier resembling a giant tongue, free from crevasses. I took a solitary walk up onto the glacier in the evening, enjoying the scale of the place. Day seven was the day of reckoning. We got an early start, approaching the foot of the tongue, and making our way up. We were all struggling a bit with the altitude. The day was made up of long, gradual ascents of ...

... in 1864. Pretty much until the fall of the Raj, the entire government would pack everything up and move from Calcutta or Delhi for the entire summer. It now functions mainly as a resort town and gateway to the more northern cities of Manali and Dharamsala (where the Dali lives). While still very beautiful, it pretty much looks like a little decaying European mountain town; it was pretty obvious that it had not been kept up very well. Shimla is also not the ...