Sleeping at the Snow Line

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It has been a long time since I last wrote. Things are going well. After a long ride to Dharmasala (or Mcleod Ganj as nobody actually stays in Dharmasala) on my birthday, we were able to go out and get pure veg sushi. It was great. Being back in Mcleod Ganj is nothing amazing. It is still the same dirty, busy western flea pit that it was a year ago. There is still cow crap, beggers, fake sadhus, all that good stuff. I am actually staying in the same hotel as last time. It is a 5 minute walk from the hotel we have classes in. The first 2 nights were hell. There were some Indian tourists, young men, yelling and screaming all night. I figured I would put up with it the first night but after the second night I had to knock on their door. I tried to be nice but it was 3 am and they had the tv on full blast, their music on “full power” (as they say here) and they were screaming over all these to talk. When I knocked on the door I am sure the guy could tell I was pissed. I brought my clock and just said 3:30, sleep, quiet time. The guy said to me, Friends? And I said no, not friends, turn your damn music down it is 3:30. As you can guess they turned it down a bit lower but it was still blasting. I was able to tune out their TV with the noise of BBC news and I got some decent sleep. Although I had to do the same thing to another group last night.
Things have been fine here. Classes are great, and then we have after 1 to ourselves. I have been taking people around to all the great places I ate at last time. I took a group to the formerly owned Belgian place and got mutton momos and Belgian waffles, I took a group of Indian and American students to get falafel at the place I went to last year. One of the Indian claims he is now in love with “jewish food.”
Last Friday night a group of 3 Indians students, my jewish professor and I went to the modern orthodox Jewish house. I guess it is giving the Chabad a run for its money. The Jewish house is like a hippy jewish place that does veg Friday night dinners. There was a good group of about 30-40 of us. Arindum, my Indian friend loved the service and dinner. He is now addicted to Israeli food. It was long though and we got back around midnight.
Saturday morning a group of 4 of us went hiking up to Triund, which is a popular hiking destination from Mcleod Ganj. The hike is usually 4 hours from Mcleod Ganj but we did it in about 3 hours. It was a tough hike but that was probably due to the fact that we went up so fast. It is about 3-4,000 feet in 10 km so it is fairly steep. The problem was the view was all clouded over by the time we got Triund. However, about 1 km and 1,000 vertical ft higher is a placed called laka which is also called the snow line. While the snow line has receded about 30 minutes further up from Laka due to the early monsoon, it was still a nice place. There is one small chai chop which also offers sleeping accomadations under a tarp. After exploring the Gaddi nomadic camp ( The Gaddi tribe are nomadic herders that traverse the Dhadular and Pir Pangyal range every year with their flocks and are higher caste than the gujjars), Martine and Grady decided to head back but I decided to stay the night. It was way to nice up their and Mcleod ganj is a craphole.
The place was very basic, it had a small kitchen area and mostly tea and snacks. It was owned by a man and his nephew, however, the man left for mcleod ganj soon after I got there. I took a nap and lounged around as it was pouring rain. At about 4 pm it cleared up and I ran out and took some pictures. There was a huge rainbow over the valley which was great. I got a picture of it but it does not look so good because of the angle of the sun.
At about 4:30 some of the kids gaddi friends stopped by and we all hung out and played cards. The kid whos uncle owned the place asked if I wanted some whisky and we could all drink that night. He headed down to Triund, about 30 minutes walk down and bought a bottle of officers choice (Indias second worst whisky) and came back up. At about seven, while the sun was starting to set and after I grabbed some more pictures we cracked open the bottle and had some snacks. Between the 4 of us we got pretty smashed. It was good fun just trading stories and learning about their lives. I knew when I got up to use the bathroom and I stumbled outside that I should cut back on the alcohol. At about 10 we decided that weather permitting we would climb up to Indra pass (about 14,000 ft) and back to mcleod ganj ( a loooong day of hiking). However, after drinking so much and waking up to bad weather I headed down and hung out at the house of two of the Gaddis that came down with me. It was great, we had tea and watched bollywood movies. One of the kids spoke great English and has a brother working in Austria. He leads trekking tours after not being able to find a computer job yet. Overall the trip was pretty good. The best part was waking up to such a beautiful landscape after a great night of shots of the worst whisky one can imagine.
Today I made momos with my group at a cooking school. Needless to say it was a disaster but I hope to replicate the disaster with Betsy when I get home. Sorry for the long boring entry. It should get more exciting when I head off to Ladakh and end the program on Friday.

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