Hotel Silver Rock Mussoorie

... Four hours later the temples of Hardwar are visible. Off we go to the taxi stand to get a taxi to Camp Silver Sands next to the village of Malakunthi. The Camp is an hour and a half away from Hardwar. The road seemed ever so long. We arrived at Camp Silver Sands, on the banks of the river Ganga, to be greeted by river guides Anvesh Thapa and "Major" Arvind Bhardwaj. After tent allotments a scrumptious lunch awaited us. Shortly after ...

... beggar children kept asking us for money and would not even go away when we yelled at them. Andrew ended up giving them 10 RS, but that just encouraged them more. They grabbed my arm and I slapped it away, this made them finally leave us alone. Then the driver returned with two other men who were nicely dressed and spoke fluent English. We explained to them our situation. Apparently they were both heads of other taxi services that were based out of this city, and they knew ...

... in some cases a riot. Luckily, I have only witnessed one accident and the aftermath wasn't too rowdy. These are three reasons why I would never ever drive in this country. Also, this is why I am glad that most of the road travel I partake in involves a large bus. Anyways, I finally arrived in Mussoorie in the pouring monsoon rain at about 8pm. And although I had heard it was a beautiful town, I was unable to experience it on Saturday night because the fog was so thick ...

... pizza dough from the oven and said "piazza." Then we realized we were having pizza for dinner and we were very excited. Sunday we met with the principle of the Landoor Language School (which is a three minute walk from the hostel), and got our books. It rained a lot and we didn't do much. It turns out the only access to internet we have is a 10 minute walk from the hostel (which is the reason for the lack of updates ...

... urban beasts such as Delhi, a go to guy....whether it is bindis, boardshorts, switchblades or cigarettes...they know where and how much your heart's desire costs. A rubber ducky for bathing in the tepid bath of Indian urbanity.... The next two days were spent zipping around with the girls seeing the sights....the Bahai temple, a lotus temple who's beauty is in it it's simplicity, I coud have spent hours inside the silent and cool sanctuary from the outside Delhi ...

... top when we turned a corner to see a nice guest house just as it started to sprinkle, which quickly turned into a downpour. Sweet! Next morning we finished wrestling the bikes up and over then aggressively breaking down the other side. A few days later we were continuing to bounce along towards Dehra Dun optimistically thinking we were 1.5 days out. Then we passed a sign saying Dehra Dun was 176km. On these roads we can do 70km/day so that sign ...

... moon rise, my first ever. The moon itself was beautiful and huge and bright, but then add to that the huge mountains it's rising above and the stars in the sky, oh man amazing. So, we sat there for like three hours, ate some dinner, then went to sleep. We set the alarm for 4:30 AM so we could see the sunrise, but it went off and we both just looked at each other and said uhh no and went back to sleep. When we woke up for real, it was around 9:30 and ...

... above. It is always a strange form of give and take as we take pictures of Indians in their daily lives and Indians take pictures of us in our daily travel lives. In fact we are quite often stopped and asked to be in a picture with some random family or group of friends. Strange but it seems to work ok, as long as the picture doesn't turn into an opportunity for a hand to travel where it doesn't belong. Anyway, the Ganga, this mighty river is glacier feed at its source ...

... let alone ride on. The bus had no power steering and was jam packed with people, food, kitchen sinks, blankets, mattresses, almost anything you can imagine, the only thing missing was a cow. Most of the two hours up the mountain was spent with my hands firmly clenched onto the seat in front of me with white knuckles and sweaty palms. A vast majority of the road didn't even have guardrails, not that the ones that were in place would stop a bus from careening over the ...

... Tibetan Monk friend Lobsang and asked if I wanted to join them. I said sure because I had nothing else planned. That is how I met Lobsang and the rest as they say is history. My 3 or 4 days turned into 2 weeks and during that time Lobsang and I met almost every morning to talk and walk around the areas surrounding McLeod Ganj. He wanted to practice his English and I wanted to learn about Tibet. It was a great match. Early on I also met ...