Hush.....

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So here I am in the foothills of the Himalaya's, the scenery is breathtaking and I haven't even done much exploring yet, I am just so glad to be somewhere where the air is clear, the air is also pretty darn cold too I can tell you, I have had to buy a couple of things to keep me warm because as soon as the sun has gone down you need to wrap up warm. but when I got my first glimpse of a rocky snowy peak behind the green hills I soon forgot to bother about being cold, I was just so excited to be here. Also it is so much quieter and really peaceful if you find the right spot, much needed after a manic week in Delhi.

The wheels on the bus....

On Sunday I woke up from my brief sleep and wasn't feeling too good, my head felt full of cold, I think mostly due to the pollution and the lack of any decent sleep. So the idea of a 13 hour bus journey that evening wasn't something I was looking forward to particularly...... I had paid 350 rupee's for a 'deluxe' coach and was told I would be taken to the bus stop. as it turned out we walked to the bus stop and I had to pay another 50 rupees to the guy who carried my bag - even though I would have done so happily, then we had to pay another 20 rupees in order to put our bags on the bus and then we had to 'donate' 50 rupees to this sort of police officer who came to make sure no one was stowing away on the bus from the Tibetan refugee camp we stopped at just outside Delhi to pick up some more passengers. So my inexpensive bus journey was starting to add up....

We were lucky the bus was only half full, so pretty much everyone got 2 seats to themselves and the seats reclined quite far back so I was looking forward a few hours of sleep through the night. Unfortunately any idea of a suspension on the bus had long since packed its bags and moved out, bumpy is not the word for it. Our bums were literally coming out of the seats and my insides felt like they were being rattled around my rib cage. Again my writing can't do justice to the extent of all this, to give you a small indication, two of the overhead locker doors managed to work their way off their hinges and flew off during some of the latter hours of the journey, once we had hit the winding roads up into the hills. After that we were all sat gingerly eyeing up the rest of the doors for fear of being bashed in the face if another one flew off!

So I pretty much gave up on the idea of sleep and listened to my CD's - courtesy of my little Jen, Ric and Mr parsons - thank you, they are all fantastic - and kept one eye out of the window. Leaving Delhi we had gone by some very poor areas, quite amazing and moving sights to see and difficult to explain really. The scenery was fairly uneventful for a long time, much the same as on the way to Agra, all very flat and nothing much to see. It was only at about 2am in the morning, after 9 hours of driving, that I started to sense a shift in the landscape, and we started to climb. After that, each time I looked out of the window the stars were brighter and you could feel the air growing cooler and cooler. We had stopped off at a large roadside cafe at about 9pm for dinner and then at about midnight we stopped off at a little roadside shop and then finally at 2am we stopped off and there was nothing but a group of men and a fire, we were definitely moving away from the big city.

There was also some great company on the bus, I met my Spanish friend Nuri, a and Leera from Israel and Lydia from London. When we reached Mcleodganj, the smaller town above Dharamsala, we were dropped off in the dark at about 5.30am, we all wandered up the hill and dithered around not knowing where to go or if anywhere would be open. A Tibetan man who had been on the bus advised us to go the Om Hotel, run by Tibetans and one of the best places to see the sunset from the balcony cafe below the rooms. Leera, Nuri and myself went along and sat out on the balcony watching the sun rise, the view from the hotel is fantastic. Leera went off to a smaller village up the road called Bagsu once it got light, and Nuri and I got ourselves a room at the Om Hotel and went for some much needed sleep.

Basically since I've been here I have largely slept. Yesterday I slept for 10 hours, got up, had breakfast and spent another 4 hours sleeping again! I am feeling 10 times better now and have got rid of the cold, the nights are so peaceful. Things don't stay open so late here and the healthy lifestyle of yoga and meditation is what a lot of people come here for. I vowed to stay off the beer for the whole 10 days that I am here, and then on Monday night went out and met a couple of blokes from England and broke the vow straight away..... But I am back on it now and have started doing a 2 hour yoga class everyday that is very tough and no fun at all with any sort of hangover so last night I had an early dinner with Lydia and read and slept some more. Also tomorrow morning I am going to try out a meditation class at 8am and then go on the walk to Bagsu, about 2/3 kilometres, where there is a beautiful waterfall then back in time for Yoga again, so I am definitely going to try and stick to the healthy lifestyle while I'm here, I am already losing weight ready for my bikini in a few weeks time even though I'm eating big hearty meals all day.

It is an amazing place, there is a large community of Tibetans here, in fact they run most of the hospitality industries around here and run a lot of the shops, there are new refugees coming in all the time as well and so they are looking for people to help teach English conversation, I thought they would need you to be able to sign up for months at a time, but it seems even if I can only spare a few days or hours here and there then I can help, so tomorrow I am going to go along to one of the organisations and see what I can do, I've been doing some reading on the situation in Tibet and it certainly makes you want to help them as much as possible.

So its a real mix of cultures, there is a large travelling community here and still a large majority of Indian people too, I am thoroughly enjoying my time here, I may move to the quieter Bagsu for a few nights, I think it's cheaper too, but even Mcleodganj that is supposedly very commercial now is still small and the market street is practically deserted in comparison to a Delhi market street. I am meeting lots of interesting people and some who are certainly more interested in themsleves and how many days they can claim they have meditated for, or how long they have spent travelling around India and how many places that you've never heard of that they have seen. There's an odd competetiveness with some people, as if they have to prove their 'traveller' status, but most of the time everyone is really nice.

I fear for my money slightly here though, i have already bought a comletely impractical green silk Tibetan skirt and a Tibetan shawl, both about 2 pounds each, and there are many more things I want to buy, I think I may have to send a parcel home full of goodies for when I return because there's no way I can carry anything else in my rucksack...oh dear...

Guru or Gere??

This morning I wandered down to the Namgyal Monastry, with the Buddhist School of Dialects, I was hoping to witness some of the 'debating' monks that I saw on Michael Palin's programme, but it was fairly quiet when I was there, The Monastry is just opposite the Dalai Lama's residence, apparently he is at home at the moment and there is a rumour of him opening up a new monastry on Friday, although no one seems to really know much about it, it would be amazing to catch a glimpse of him. There is also a rumour that Richard Gere has been spotted in the area, but apparently that rumour goes around all the time.....intriguing......

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Photos

Leera, Nuri and others...
Having just done a yoga class I look a little worse for wear....