Prince Hotel Mussoorie

... is above 3000m (it is almost 10000ft) and Shaun caught the flu and we had to abandon the walk, much to Lisa's dissapointment (not, well maybe a little). At 3000m the daily max temperatures in in the low single figures, with nightime lows at 0 or lower. Add the thiner air, and it is tough just hanging around after being on the low, humid plains of India. We caught a share jeep back to Utterkashi and stayed 2 nights, then caught another one here to Mussourie. Mussourie is a ...

... time. After that we went to The Four Seasons Hotel (not a real one, but an Indian nock off that was really western and nice) to have dinner. It was so nice to have a dinner out. The Four Seasons is considered "expensive" for this town. A plate is about 150 Rs, and there is no way one person can finish one plate, it's huge! I had sweet and sour chicken on rice with a diet coke... just like home! Then we went across the street to the tavern, which is the local bar. It plays ...

... the south lies the sprawling city of Dahra Dun, the capital of Uttarkahand, the state we are currently in. We are located at around 6,000 feet and everything is lush and green. The mist rolls in and the trees are soft and fuzzy with moss and ferns. Reasonably so, because it rains almost daily now that it is Monsoon season, everything is damp and stays that way. Monkeys rule this area. There are two kinds, the small red/brown monkeys that are very ...

... beds are hard." I may not have mentioned this, but none of the mattresses are at all springy. You land on them with an unexpected thud. Monday I reuined a haggling session of Jenny's for a couple of salwar-kameezes by naively piping up "Gee, that sounds like a pretty good deal." She was nice about it, but she was pretty annoyed, too. We had been in the Palika Bazaar, an underground market which reminded me of a casino, in the overwhelming sensory input and ...

... where we got lucky and found someone with good English. They were very very kind to us, gave us tea, biscuits, a place to sort our stuff out for being bus-portable, and put us on the last bus out of the valley. We figured this would take a couple hours. There were 2 seats left, up right next to the driver, and, about 20 seconds later we found, to our shock and horror, that the continuous horn blaring is just as loud inside the bus as it is outside!! And a lot more frequent ...

... us to leave, and so we put on our shoes and left the celebration, only 15 minutes after we had arrived. I'll have to ask my teacher about this when I see her, though she was probably also unaware of the restrictions on foreigners coming to this particular celebration. At least we got to see a small piece of what an Krishna's birthday is all about...and next time there's a puja I'll be sure to go to a temple that's not located on government property!

... t yet tired of teaching the same basic stuff at least 5 times a day for the last 40 years. Other than going to class and studying a bit in my free time, I have spent much of the last few days marveling at the beautiful nature around me! Because we're at the top of the mountain, it is extremely foggy here every morning and evening, with the sun popping through a bit during the early afternoon. When the sun comes out in the ...

... actually works out as planned and a goal is achieved. I'm in a town called Rishikeh now. It's close to where the sacred Ganges river comes out of the Himalaya before stretching out across the plains and eventually to the sea. Rishikesh is famous for two things. The first being that the Beatles stayed here for a few months in the sixties and wrote most of the songs that became the "White Album"and the second being yoga. Yoga, meditation, Aruvedic medicine, gurus, swamis ...

... the distance on a hill towering above our false summit. We slogged on and on. We passed through some very rural villages perched on the steep side of the mountain with lush terraced farmland. We were soon looking down on most of the other peaks in the area. As we got nearer the 'temple' we could see that it was a modern white building with a satelite dish - maybe it was actually the residence of a drug baron...? Finally we arrived at a little shop below the temple ...

... that Travelbag were paying for our team to go on a trip to Mussoorie, I got a little over-excited as I thought we were heading for America. I later learnt that Mussoorie is a hill station 6 hours north of Delhi, nestling in the foothills of the Himalayas. Known to the Indians as Queen of the Hills, it sits at an altitude of 2,500 meters above sea level. Here, the screeching of car horns and the dust of Delhi is replaced by the sparkle ...