Monday, February 19, 2007

It snowed!

I told you it was cold! I bet you were sitting there at your computer thinking that the last screw had finally fallen out - cold in India ha ha - but I swear it snowed and we have the photos to prove it!

So the last week has been a bit of a mess in trip terms. The 2 day trek - we didn't do it because the track was closed due to the snow. Not that I minded in the end as I only have my sneakers, so it would have been a bit of fun in the rain, snow and cold. I even bought a pair of hand knitted Tibetan socks to keep my feet warm and wear in the hotel room.

Now, the hotel rooms are a different story altogether. One can cope with the cold outside, but when the inside temp is the same, and the only difference between in and out is that we were dry, then it becomes a joke. Actually we were lucky one couple had their room flood, so they were cold and wet...oops. We ended up paying about $5/night for a bar heater that was only useful enough to dry the clothes we got wet in the rain and that came back from the laundry wet! I took a photo of Jo brushing her teeth, wearing 3 jumpers and her beanie - inside! Lucky we took sleeping bags and thermals.

So the trek became a jeep journey, and we went one day early to our farm stay. We could have driven to the hotel for the middle night of the trek, but the leader thought we might get snowed in and we decided that heading lower was a better idea. The farm stay was on an orchard farm that they use for eco-tourism, they do lots of treks and camping stuff.

We chilled out for 3 days, our biggest adventure was a 7km each way walk to a village. It was some celebration day for Shiva, a Hindu God, so we went to the village temple to see what they did. Unfortunately many other people had the same idea, so we couldn't get near the linga - apparently 6ft - so I just played with the kids instead. They started by looking at my camera and wanting to seee photos of themselves, but I could see that was going to turn into a brawl as they were already pushing and shoving to see the pics, so I put it away and started shaking their hands. Then somehow this became a game of hands in the middle and whoosing sound as we threw them in the air. When I tried to rejoin the group, they all followed me, the others were calling me the Pied Piper. One girl even gave me her ring - it was cheap - as a gift. I wondered if they had seen white people before. Then we walked back along the road to the hut.

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