june 5 - june 14 dharamsala

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june 4, 2005

mmmm we got ayurvedic oil massages today. one and a half hours of having a husband and wife team pour and massage oil into every pore of our bodies. i had the husband and he was delightfully violent with my muscles. my skin scalp and hair will smell like this for weeks, i am sure.

right now there is a cultural show of sorts happening down the street from the hotel, just across from this internet cafe. same place the dalai lama lo was the other day. it's in rememberance of tiananmen square massacre in 1989. everything is very anti-china here, as was expected. we just stopped by to watch girls dancing. all dressed in pink. so much jewelry and makeup. they looked like they were having so much fun!

okay, time to go home and take a hot shower and see about getting this oil out of my hair. mmmmm professional massage.

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june 5

hmmm the weather is lovely today. cloudy. foggy. breezy. went into a shop that we pass by everytime we walk from the hotel and had tea with the owner, john. he has invited us to dinner, so we're heading to his house in a few moments.

today has been a good day. good weather. feeling rejuvinated (sp?) after our massages. very nice. feeling restless. might be time to start thinking about leaving good ol' dharamsala. the winds of change are in the air, you might say!

i miss being physical. the massage reminded me how much i love using my body. i wanna tackle someone. or go for a run. or go for a walk through the woods.

mmmm dinner time i think.

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june 8

ah, the rain! yes, thunderstorms up here for the last couple of days, on and off. love nothing more than running up to the rooftop to feel the wind and watch the storms roll in and then listen to the rain fall on the tin roof. it was just raining. we're out for breakfast but our vegetarian tibetan place with the amazing bread and fruit salad is packed, so we hopped on over the ditch, puddle, and rubble to check our internet until a table opens up.

speaking of hopping over rubble, sliding down poles, and trying to shush the boys at the hotel next door --- last night we joined john and his kashmiri friends at their house (re: middle age fraternity) for dinner and got back quite late. much to john's dismay (he's very good about walking us home) we shimmied (sp?) down a pole into a pile of trash/dirt and then proceeded to climb the balcony -- all so we wouldn't have to wake samir and the manager. mangager dude is sick and well, we didn't want to piss samir off since we told him we're not going to kashmir and he was the one who was going to send us.

yes, that is right, no kashmir. instead, we will head back down to delhi and then to agra and then east to varansi and bodh gaya and THEN further south. varansi (sp?) is the holiest city for the hindus and bodh gaya is where the buddha found enlightment. we seem to have found a theme for our trip...

went hiking yesterday - was fabulous to do something physical. there is a waterfall not far from here which we went to see. good to know that capitalism and nature and god are all so close here. cafes and snackstands up hundreds of feet of slippery shale pathways. who knows who is paid to carry everything on his back up to these cafes. so strange. the water, as expected, was ice cold. visually it reminded me of the waterfall in china on that mountain -- but it is much cooler here and just dipping our feet in was plenty of submersion.

in other news, john and the boys, hassan, mustafa and the other funny boy who cooks some damn good food, are probably my favorite part about dharamsala. they have been so kind to us and john just cracks me up. he joined us for breakfast yesterday and of course dinner again last night and we stop by to say hi everytime we pass by his shop -- which is everytime we leave the hotel --- and he will be joining us to head back up to bhagsu (where the waterfall is) where arielle found a necklace she wants. john will be accompanying us to see if the jewels are real and if it's worth the 2500 rupees that the guy quoted arielle.

i trust john more than i trust the monks. and that says a lot.

time for fruit and bread.

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june 10

jack johnson was playing on the rooftop this morning while i sat and talked to teddy-bear-danish-boy and sipped the chai that shanty-boy brought me. samir and majeed (the aforementioned manager) keep trying to feed me. i guess it's not just a mom-thing.

right now arielle is next door at the coffee shop playing chess with the hot tibetan boys. they're such punks! one with tattoos and jewelry and piercings like whoa who was *breaking it down* in the back with the old school hip-hop that they were playing. the other guy, who was playing with arielle when i left, had on his glasses and cowboy hat and continued to tell us that we should go to kashmir and should not go south because we'll be the only tourists there during off-season.

perfect. i could deal with an empty beach hut. even if it is raining.

i love the thunderstorms here. i sat out on the roof yesterday afternoon for like an hour and a half watching it blow in and then listening to the hail and rain on the tin.

doing a lot of soul searching in l'india. i guess that's what it's all supposed to be about.

probably leaving dharamsala tomorrow night. maybe. we keep saying we're going and we keep staying. maybe this time for real.


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june 11

grrr i posted this morning but literally as i was reaching for the mouse to hit "send" all of the power went off and it was lost. oh well. such is life in l'india.

had a lovely day with john all afternoon. we were planning on going to the temple to just hang out and read and whatnot and met at john's. he and i started talking and then arielle came and we ended up there for about 4 hours. john's shop is *maybe* the size of my old dorm room in east --- smaller, actually. so he sits outside on the street in his chair and watches people as they pass by. so we sat, too. talked. played logic games. told jokes. just enjoyed each other's company. also bonded with the man who runs the interweb place next to john's as he tried to help us solve one of the logic riddles. then a wandering man came with a python around his neck. so we paid him and he stopped and let us hold the snake. probably about 6 feet long - a baby. attracted quite the crowd, the two tourists just chillng outside on the ground playing games and drinking several glasses of chai and letting a massive snake wrap itself around us. will post pictures someday.

we're thinking about getting a snake for a pet.

i still wear a skirt like every other day.

being here is making me want a motorcycle even more. today a woman came up the street on a huge red loud bike. not a harley, but it was still hott.

good day. oh, we finally bought our bus tickets out of here. leave on the overnight bus to delhi on monday night.

strange how after two weeks we know so many people. mostly kashmiris and a couple of tibetans. the annex hotel crew - majeed is one of my favorite people that we've met, samir is sketchy but respectful of boundaries, and shoju shanty boy is oh-so-sweet and apparently like 20 years old - who knew! john and his kashmiri crowd with hassan and mustafa and the g- boy who cooks for us and is always smiling. john is the best! i will remember him and his kindness for years to come. then there's our tibetan restaurant family and all of the tibetan boy punks and shish .....

and it seems that we only ever befriend men. our boys in china. our boys in memphis. our boys in dharamsala. even in amritsar where the women watched us closely, the only people we talked to or went anywhere with were men - our "sikh brother", the old warrior with his beeper, and dave.

*shrugs*

time to go pump water and take a shower. we've been in india for over 3 weeks already...


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june 13

ugh. change of plans, yet again. we're never going to get out of this town! so on the 10th we started trying to book a bus for the next day. didn't work out - everything was full for the weekend. we got tickets for this evening. should be packing right now. but no. why? because we were convinced we should face our fears.... we should eat at the om hotel again. afterall, what are the odds.... ?

yeah, that's right, we both got sick again. it was arielle's "pizza exotica" that did it this time. i only had 3 or 4 bites of it so i'm just mildly ill. too afraid to eat anything though. just drinking nalgenes full of water. arielle is dying. just wants her mom. when we came back from dinner i crashed. and by that i mean, i didn't even stir as she puked all night and showered and shat. i didn't wake up until 5:00AM. and then i realized i was sick. when i asked her how she was feeling and if she'd thrown up i got a death-look like no other. she was angry that i hadn't helped her last night, but i swear i was dead to the world.

now we've booked our bus tickets for wednesday the 15th instead. got fined 100 RS each for changing tickets the day of... oh well.

anyway. so i moved to her hotel last night. went and settled the bill at the annex hotel with samir and majeed this afternoon. for fourteen nights i personally owed 1,965 rupees... or about $46 american dollars. and that was with some of the food that we ate at their rooftop restaurant, too. we paid 350 RS for the first 2 nights and then 200 for the next 12 days. the hotel we're at now is 350 RS per night. also gave shanty boy a hefty tip - he was so good to both of us and he started bringing me tea everytime i set foot upstairs.

working on downloading photos at some point. any tips on what to use? webshots? picture trail? suggestions welcome, please!

ugh i suppose i should eat some toast or something so i can take medicine. so afraid of putting anything into my body....

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