away we go!

so tomorrow we must bid adieu to ma inja and each other for the next segments in our journeys. heather is off to europe and then the caribbean and i am kenya bound to visit my wonderful friend anne, whom i haven't seen in three years.

now we are in delhi, trying to buy as much as we can before we have to go.

and just a reminder, tomorrow (may 7) is heather fenwick's 30th birthday. that's right 30. please make sure that you include the number 30 when wishing her a happy birthday.

and on that note i am off to do more shopping before dinner.

some pho'os

just a few random photos for you! um, the following text just randomly popped up on the computer and i will leave it as follows for its remarkable...randomness. vietnamese anyone?

here we have an intunToi di lang thang lan trong bong toi buot gia, ve dau khi da mat em roi? Ve dau khi bao nhieu mo mong gio da vo tan... Ve dau toi biet di ve dau? http://www.freewebtown.com/gaigoisaigon/


so, here we have an integral part of the refuse recycling system - cows eating rotten vegetables in the street. behind them is peace cafe where we eat meusli curd fruit salad (the bfast of champions) every morning.


me doing the prayer wheel circuit at the central temple in mcleod ganj.

prayer flags - purdy.

i'm feeling bullet-y at the moment - but the computer is fond of spewing out more randomness so i'll save the bullets for later. in the meantime, i'm hitting the road to go back to india (dharamsala feels more like tibet) and will be back in six days to celebrate amy's 30th birthday. i will also use the opportunity to inform you that amy will be 30 on april 28, and i will still be 29. because she is elder. below is just computer-generated mayhem, make of it what you will.

xo -heather ;)

• the course i took on FC:\WINDOWS\hinhem.scrC:\WINDOWS\hinhem.scr
• deatunE may, vao day coi co con nho nay ngon lam http://www.freewebtown.com/gaigoisaigon/
  
• 
  
• E may, vao day coi co con nho nay ngon lam http://www.freewebtown.com/gaigoisaigon/
  
• E may, vao day coi co con nho nay ngon lam http://www.freewebtown.com/gaigoisaigon/
  

and . . . . we're back!!!

after a little hiatus from the blog and each other, heather and i have reunited (and it feels so good!) in dharamsala. heather had a very profound experience at her retreat and i done had myself a crazy little adventure.

i left dharamsala on an overnight bus to delhi and arrived there in the wee hours of the morning when the only thing that was open as a 24 hour internet cafe . . . i holed up in there sending emails and assuring my parents that i would be ok at this rainbow gathering. i met up with udi and we got a room to get some recuperationalization from our long journeys and explore the mayhem known as the main bazaar in paharganj, where everyone is trying to sell you something. poor udi was pickpocketed twice in the span of 24 hours, once on the street and once on the subway so he was happy (as was i) to make a quick exit from delhi, and by quick i mean an hour and a half long rickshaw ride (it should have taken 20 minutes) in delhi traffic (during which we were passed by an ox pulling a wagon) and then a 10 hour busride to some anonymous mountain town. after the initial busride we jumped on two more local buses and then hired a jeep to a little mountain village called lohali. from lohali it was a 2 hour hike to the rainbow gathering. if udi hadn't carried my pack i think the hike would have taken ohhh, let's say, 8 hours for me to do on my own.

the rainbow gathering was quite an experience. it was very hippy hippy love, but had a beautiful energy. everything was communal and voluntary. people pitched in for food if they wanted and volunteered to cook in the kitchen to feed all 150 people there. there was a little chai "shop", drum circles, and workshops like learning hindi and t-shirt cutting. everyone was very friendly and i saw quite a few folks that we had met previously in india.

i also gained a much greater appreciation for things that i would normally take for granted. for example, having tea involved: hunting for firewood, building a fire, and finding a position where the kettle would heat but not tip over. also, going to the bathroom required lots of forethought and equipment. everyone took care of bidness in a designated hole in the ground and you needed to bring: a bowl, ashes, tp, water, soap, and a lighter. if anyone would like to know why each of these were needed you can let me know. we were also camped 15 minutes up the hill from the stream which meant we (and by we i mean the guys i was camping with) had to carry buckets of water up to the camp. i felt like quite the prima donna, but it was good to know that i can really rough it if needed.

we left the rainbow a bit prematurely and headed to almora, also known as the sweater vest capital of india. i would say at least 1/3 of the men there were cruising the streets in hand knit sweater vests, it was quite a beautiful sight to behold. unfortunately i was beseiged by another bout of the sickies in almora and spent most of my time there in the room, where udi and shaun mothered me. i think i may have gotten giardia while at the rainbow, but am not sure yet. i did go to see a doctor and possibly got the cheapest misdiagnosis ever. i paid 5 rupees to see the doctor who pushed on my stomach in several places and declared that i had ulcers in my intestines (huh??) and get three prescription medications . . . 5 rupees is approximately 10 cents. in your face, private american health care system!

after spending a few days in almora we made our way back to dharamsala where i enjoyed a giddy reunion with heather. we will likely spend the rest of our time in india here where the weather is temperate, the food is so delicious and the people are wonderful.

and on that note, i am going to go gorge myself on something now.

lots of love and namaste!!

more radio silence

heather just entered another 9 day meditation course and i am off to the gathering of rainbows for a week, where there is no running water or electrity, let alone internet access. so, you can expect to hear from us in a week or so. love and namaste!

rollin' deep with hhdl

and for those of you not in the know, hhdl is the street name for his holiness, the dalai lama. a brazilian fellow told us that we would be able to catch a glimpse of hhdl the other day so we woke up early and made the trek to his temple and got front row seats to see him walk from his house to the temple. it was definitely worth the two hour wait. he cruised by as sweet and cute and holy as any man could ever be and he made eye contact with us and smiled his little smile. i reckon we are still buzzing from that brief moment.

dharamsala is a bit a time vortex. we aren't quite sure where our time seems to go, actually, that is inaccurate. we seem to spend most of our days cafe hopping and mingling with various folks. it is a pleasant way to pass the time.

i am off to meet some of our travel buddies at a rainbow gathering tonight. one of them has volunteered to meet me in delhi (for which i am eternally grateful) so i don't have to do the hard traveling on my own. it is going to be a few days of traveling, but it should right amazing.

-------

that was amy's forgotten post from this afternoon. my monk friend, thupten, and i saw her off at the bus stand to delhi today. she'll be back in a week and i'll just be getting out of my second meditation retreat - so it's all working out in a rather swell fashion.

happy easter to all in the meantime!

we done did it!

oy yah. been a while up on that there mountain, meditating and whatnot. the retreat was awesome. there was a really wonderful group of people (although we couldn't talk to each other :)

i did, finally, get mine. i've been pretty healthy the whole time in india and was just waiting for the other shoe to fall. and it fell. i wasn't feeling so well when i arrived at the retreat, with a cold, but then i discovered that i had giardia. for one day i was at about a zero. i went down to the clinic and got some medicine, which fixed me up over time. but that night, i was whimpering 'mommy' in bed, freezing my boot off. let me tell you that breathing and digesting properly are wonderful wonderful gifts that i no longer take for granted.

on the day of my escape from the meditation center to the health clinic, i snuck into an internet cafe and learned that will (that's canadian will, not my brother will:) is coming to india! after a long journey, methinks he'll arrive tomorrow at 630am - yippee!!

dharamsala has lots to offer - jewelry making classes, massage classes, buddhist lectures and meditations, restaurants and coffee shops. quite easy to spend the day lolling about having chai with friends. which sounds like fun but gets rather boring after being blown about by the wind for the last few months. so i'm thinking i'd like to do a class.

one of these days :)

we're goin' under

howdy ho & yo yo yo bloggahs!

comin' atchya from dharamsala, the residence-in-exile of the dalai lama and many tibetan refugees. it's situated in the himalaya mountains and super super peaceful, really beautiful. there's a pretty big tourist scene here, which we tend to shy away from - but this place is different in that there's so much to do: volunteer working with orphan babies, tutoring english, recycling programs. jewelry making classes, yoga classes, meditation classes.

which brings us to today. amy went up to tushita meditation center yesterday for the ten day intro course to buddhism. it's a silent meditation retreat with philosophy lectures. my retreat is called radical compassion. not to be confused with totally tubular compassion, it's 9 days and at the same place. i'm excited!

cold wet rain here - may have to invest in some proper warm weather gear before i head further up the mountain to the retreat, but the plastic poncho from santa claus is coming in mighty handy.

oh! almost forgot! we spent 4 days or so in rishikesh at the foot of the himalaya mountains. the ganga river starts near there so it's hard to believe that this beautiful crystal blue water is the same brown water that ran through varanasi.

we found a great yoga instructor by the name of kamal who pushed us pretty hard, and had instructional gems such as 'let not your mind to wander'. we also found swami dharmananda, the swami who gave lectures the last time i was in rishikesh - oh how i love this man! he's hilarious, and very gifted at breaking it down for westerners. he was supposedly lecturing on the bhagavad gita, a sacred text of india, but in the end he babbled on in whatever fashion he wanted to...much to our delight.

looking forward to our last ten days and a month in india - we've both become enamoured with this land and although i miss loved ones, i feel my heels digging in to this magical land.

love.