Somewhere in Northern India . . .

Hey everyone, sorry for yet another long blog, but like I've said before, READ IT IN CHUNKS LIKE A NOVEL (unless of course you're me and can't stop reading and sit there for 12 hours straight reading silly chick lit novels). I've been desperately trying to get to an internet source somewhere in this place since I got here but it hasn't happened (I'm at some sort of old hill station up in North west India right now). Jo, tell mom and dad I'm safe and sound and that I'll call them when I get the chance.

As for the rest of you, sit back, grab a chai and ginger cookie and enjoy.



Ah, the Sweet Smell of Adventure

I had my handy-dandy, super tacky, rainbow scarf (best 50 rupees I ever spent) wrapped around my head in such a manner that I felt exactly like one of those ladies you see in those textbook pictures of Ukrainian ladies lining up for bread circa 1950. My feet were bare and all around me, people were praying and chanting along with the disembodied voice on the speakers.

I was in the Golden Temple of Amritsar. A mecca for Shikhs where you can't throw a hunk of paneer without hitting someone with the last name Singh.

Having endured a FOUR HOUR train delay in Delhi (we amused ourselves by trying to take pictures of all the HUGE rats that were running around but gave up after we realised there were seriously hundreds of them), we'd arrived in flooded Amritsar totally exhausted and cranky and were dumped out of the autorickshaw right in a giant, murky puddle in the middle of a busy traffic circle. Cars, bikes and autorickshaws honked like mad but I pretended I was a cow and walked nonchalantly through the busy traffic to a less busy street corner.

I was submerged to my ankles in gross smelly market-street water, but seeing as I hadn't showered or changed in two days, I was cool with it.

What I wasn't cool with was my backpack. I had bought way too many tapestries and heavy things in Rajasthan and my bag was killing me. Sign after sign advertising good hostels or hotels proved to lead either to a brick wall (literally) or to a scary alley way where no one spoke a word of English. We hiked around for nearly an hour before we decided to go to the nearest place we could recognise which was the Golden Temple. Pilgrims and foreigners are allowed to stay there and eat there for free. FREE.

You can imagine what it was like.

I went to check out the shower facilities seeing as I hadn't showered or changed my clothes or underwear in a good three days by then and you can imagine what the four of us smelled like. It's not my fault! We had to spend two nights on a train in a row and there are no showers on the train! And it's not like I was going to doff my duds and sud up on platform 9 of the Delhi railway station.

I walked by the shower facilities in teh temple, took a look, gasped, quickly ducked my head, turned around and walked straight back to our beds.

When they said public showers, they meant PUBLIC showers. You could see everything. There was no way I was going naked in public in India. Not with the amount of perverts here.

So I sighed and decided not to shower yet again. And seeing as I was stinking so badly, I didn't want to get any of my other clothes dirty so I opted not to change again. And the very next morning at 7am, I hopped on a cramped, non-air conditioned, 10 hour bus ride straight to Dheradun.

We met some guy from Canada on the bus ride and he offered us a puff of his "bhang bidi" which is essentially Indian for weed. It's legal here and this guy was totally taking advantage of that. Fortunately, he was too stoned to notice how bad I smelled. He had a huge blonde fro and kept talking about how he can't wait to get home to get his BC bud, his double-double and a honey cruller. He did Canadians everywhere proud.

Represent man. Represent.

Sigh.

By the time we got to Dehradun, I was a walking stink bomb. For once, I was the worst smell on the street in India.

Fortunately, our contact that we were to meet in Dehradun wasn't available to meet us right away giving me much needed time to shower and wash my clothes (my clothes smelled so bad I couldn't even have them lying around the room without gagging). We were stationed at the local forestry and wildlife centre where we would be taking a three day course in wildlife immobilization.

Back to the Good Life

The next morning, we emerged, clean and smelling good from our rooms to eat breakfast. We settled down to a delicious breakfast of omlettes, cornflakes with hot, fresh milk (surprisingly, hot milk and cereal was pretty decent), toast with marmalade and butter and fresh mangoes. It was all prepared by the cook at the institute who beamed down at us proudly while we gorged on his food.

"Good? yes? you like?" he said and looked at us expectantly.

"Very good. thank you!"

He looked like he was going to die of joy. We gorged ourselves like good little piglets cus after a few weeks of being on our own and eating like backpackers, we were ready to be pampered.

We met our contacts at the center who were going to be our instructors in wildlife medicine for the next few days. One was a tiger expert and the other worked on elephants. Both were very intimidating in stature and in the facial expressions they wore (one used to be an army captain and has very thick eyebrows and a moustache) but once they opened their mouths and talked to us, they were the funniest and down-to-earth guys you could ever meet.

We gabbed all morning about wildlife veterinarian stuff and then in the afternoon, they treated us to a tour of one of their state's national parks where for the first time ever, I encountered an animal in the wild that was more dangerous, more unpredictable and far more powerful than any tiger.



Elephants.

This national park is famed for its tigers (non-man-eating this time), leopards and ungulate species but more than anything, the elephants here rule the jungle. They charge people, grab them in their trunks and bash them to death. One news reporter, bent on getting a straight on shot of an elephant met her death this way. Another man, the former dean of this institute, was also killed by an elephant. The elephants wreak havoc wherever they go and often terrorize villages and farmers, chowing and stomping down a year's worth of good grain and harvest.

I sat in the back of the jeep and bounced for an hour and half to the national park. A combination of anxiety over getting trampled by an elephant plus the bumpy, twisty ride had me ready to puke up my curry lunch (prepared again by the eager-to-please cook at the institute) by the time we arrived at the basecamp in the park. They gave me a few minutes to recover, brought me some chai (of course, there's always time for chai in India) and then we piled into the jeep again and entered the jungle.

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle . . .

My second time in the jungles of India. I'm still baffled at how innocent they look. It looks like nothing bad could possibly happen in there and each time I see a wild animal, I'm still a little surprised.

Before long, we spotted our first sighting of the day. A quiet white-spotted deer herd calmly grazing in the shadows. You could tell they were far more wild than the deer we saw in the Sunderbans as they bolted as soon as our jeep got within 20m of them. Then we saw some amazing birds (including hornbills- google them if you don't know what these look like, they're super cool!!!!!), a wild Indian buffalo here or there and lots and lots of monkeys.

We went on for a few more mintues and came to the second base camp where a giant trench was dug around the building. A huge rifle was sitting on the front porch.

"This is where our researchers stay in the winter when they do field work," said our instructor. "Can anyone tell me what this trench around the building is for?"

We all stared at the massive grass-filled moat.

"It's for the elephants. Otherwise, they would come and knock down the building and kill us."


I was just digesting that thought when suddenly, we heard a strange barking sound. It was in the far distance. "It's a sambur. The biggest indian deer," said our instructor. "Come, let's get back in the jeeps. There must be a tiger nearby."

We got back in and again, the bark sounded. It sounded again a few minutes later, then we heard it no more.


We spotted some more deer and indian buffalo before we stopped again. We were at the top of a small hill closely shaded by trees. Our instructor told us to get out and move slowly and be on alert. "Anything can happen in elephant country," he said.

I strained my ears but heard nothing but cicadas, crickets and birds. "One night, we saw a bear, a leopard and a tiger all crossing this area within three minutes of each other."
I stared at the trees and rocks. They looked pretty normal and I had a hard time believing anything as ferocious as a tiger could possibly have tread where I was standing.

A Close Call

Back in the car we went and I was just about to lose hope of seeing anything exciting when I noticed something rustling in the trees ahead of us. Something big. We bounced past it in the jeep and I strained my eyes to see what it was. I caught sight of a huge grey rump.

"IT'S AN ELEPHANT!" I shouted and everyone gasped and our driver stopped the jeep and reversed slowly. The jeep following behind us where our instructors were riding also stopped and they were right in front of the trees where I'd seen the animal lurking. In both of the vehicles, we all waited anxiously to catch our first elephant sighting of the day.

Like something from a dream, an enormous elephant and her little calf emerged from the trees. We watched them silently for a few minutes and they, in return, regarded us with curious stares, not more than a few metres away. The mother elephant seemed more suspicious than anything and stared hard at the jeep nearest her.

She raised her trunk and started stomping. Our instructors and the driver in their jeep were quick to act. In two seconds, they'd started their engine again and were zooming ahead towards us on the road with the giant female elephant in tow. Our driver quickly revved up and soon we were bouncing at high speed down the road. I glanced back. The female charged at us and then stopped midway and stood staring at us aggressively in the dust.

Once we were back at the basecamp, our instructors informed us that the female elephant had deemed us harmful to her calf and that what we had witnessed had been a warning charge only. If she had really meant business, I'm not sure I'd be here typing this right now.

Elephants never Forget

We went back to the wildlife centre for the night and the next morning, returned to the jungle. The jeep ride was just as bumpy as the day before but this time, I'd made sure I was well enough hydrated and gravol'ed up so that I wouldn't get sick. unfortuantely, this meant I had to seriously pee by the time we got to the jungle.

I bolted behind the basecamp building and found all the doors locked. Desperate, I looked around, found some bushes and whipped my cargoes down. I've never been one for peeing in the bushes but desperate times calll for desperate measures. Besides, it beats using a squatter toilet.

My instructor later mentioned, "Do you know what freedom feels like?"

I thought he was asking a philosophical question.

"I'll tell you how to feel freedom. Go down that hill and where there are a lot of bushes, go and RELIEVE YOURSELF! TILL YOU HAVE PEED IN NATURE, YOU HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED FREEDOM!"

I laughed, but he was totally right.

I finished my outdoor nature call just in time as one of the monsoon rainstorms hit. My instructor and the three other girls I was with all crowded on the verandah of the building and stared out at the jungle while water poured from the sky. It lasted for nearly twenty minutes before we finally got fed up and grabbed two umbrellas and my handy-dandy rainbow head scarves and wandered out in the rain.

Our instructor led us into the jungle to a little clearing where, to my utter disbelief, there was a small, young, male elephant standing between two trees with all four of his limbs tied up. He tried to rear up when he saw us but the ropes held him tight to the trees.

Sarah started to protest that we should free it but our instructor informed us that this was a special case in which the elephant was being tamed for domestic use. It was an orphaned elephant whose mother had been hit by a train and killed. It was then taken in as a pet and spoiled very badly by the owners till it listened to no one and started getting aggressive. Tying it up was the only way to train it into proper behaviour.

Apparently, this is one of the accepted methods of taming elephants in india and you leave the elephant tied up for days like that until they finally listen to your commands. It could be up to months before it works. In the case of this elephant, they predicted it would take around a week.

To be fair, they feed the thing and walk it each day and loosen the ropes a bit to prevent any leg sores or arthritis, but as soon as its daily walk is over, it gets tied up again until it behaves. The elephant eyed us angrily and began angrily goring the tree that its front legs were tied to but try as it might, it couldn't free itself. I guess it's like kennel training your dog. Your very very very big dog.

"Now you may think this is cruel," said our instructor, "but the reality is that if it is managed well, this can be a very good way to domesticate the elephant. It takes the wild out of them but it does not hurt them. After it starts to listen to you, you must not ever treat it badly or hurt it in any way. You musn't beat it or anything. Elephants are smarter than you think. If you've treated them badly before, they will remember it and sooner or later, they will hurt you."

"So in essence," I shouted over the rain, "you're saying that elephants never forget?"

He seemed not to have heard of that saying before so he answered with a strange seriousness and said, "Yes. Well, I'm not saying they don't forget things, but if you've treated them badly, they'll remember."

The elephant was still goring the tree as we ran back to the basecamp in the rain.

I was first to emerge from the trees back to the camp and I stopped in my tracks and just stared. The others followed behind me and did the same. "OH MY GOODNESS!"

Our instructor came out of the bushes behind us and saw what we were gaping at. He laughed. "We called in a special favour for you guys!"

Our "surprise" was a gigantic elephant right at the entrance of the building. It towered almost to the roof and dwarfed the two jeeps beside it. There was a small man standing beside the elephant's head holding a spear and patting its trunk.

He shouted some commands to the elephant and it lay on the ground.

"Go ahead, you can touch it." said our instructor. "This is Arundathi. She is 75 years old and she is our best elephant. We use her when we are tranquilizing other elephants and when we need to tranquilize tigers and leopards."

We walked up to the huge pachyderm and hesitantly, I reached out and stroked her side. She was rough and her hairs were like bristles on a broom. "She cannot feel that. You must pet her stronger! Let her feel you!" I rubbed harder and the elephant seemed to sigh and enjoy the scratch.

We gathered buckets of rain water as it gushed from the roof (it was still raining cats and dogs at this point) and gave Arundathi her bath. She luxuriated as all four of us poured the rain water on her and scraped the mud off her back in handfulls.

Eventually, she got up again and our instructor gave us an even bigger surprise. "Now she is clean, you must go for an elephant ride!"

The elephant was instructed to lie on her belly and before I knew what was going on, I was hoisted onto the tail, then the rump of the elephant. I scrambled to hang on as she slowly got off the ground and the elephant trainer had to reach back from the front where he was sitting to grab me before I fell off. I was glad he got me in time as by the time I steadied myself, I realised I was waaaaaaaay off the ground and really high up. I know it sounds really redundant, but elephants are BIG and TALL.

I hung on tight for a bit then relaxed as I got used to the swaying motion of her gait. It was still raining out and the water streamed down my face and all I could do was laugh and grin like an idiot while I got soaked on the back of the elephant. Our ride came to an end and then came the fun part of getting off the elephant. The driver commanded her to lay down on her belly again and even then, I was several feet from a safe jumping distance from the ground.

I noticed the smooth rounded abdominal wall of the elephant beneath me and the elephant driver gestured to me and I knew in a flash how to get off. I swung my legs so they were both on the same side of the animal and then, with a whoop, I pushed myself off and slid down her side as if she was a giant grey slide.

My ass was wet and muddy and smelled of elephant dung on the ride home but I didn't care. All four of us were covered in elephant mud and we revelled in it.

Brokebutt Mountain

The next day was a day off from our course for us and we were told to visit the mountain town of Mussoorie. It's situated 6000 feet up a mountain and the only way to get up there is by a freaky winding road with no marked traffic lanes and way too many speedy, crazy, Indian drivers. We got up there safely and managed to adjust to the slight altitude change in a bit and we opted to go for a horse ride.

Now it may sound funny, but I've never ridden a horse before. I know, it's a shame for an Alberta girl but there it is. Up to that point, I'd ridden on camels and elephants, but never on a horse. SArah, our group's resident horse-lover was appalled and dragged me to the pony stand where she bargained for an hour long ride and shoved me up onto a horse.

I was terrified. The saddle was super hard and the horse was smaller than anything I'd ridden before so I felt like my legs were gripping nothing, besides which, my legs were too short for the stirrups so my feet kept slipping out (then again, I suppose horseback riding in sandals is never a good idea). To make things worse, my horse was a new horse on the team and it had a foot problem which made it bob its head up and down just like I'd seen in those videos my prof showed me in our horse lameness lectures.

I gripped the reins for dear life and Sarah told me to relax or the horse would sense my nervousness and get nervous too. Yeah. Like that was supposed to help me. Anyway, she gave me some basics and then hopped on her own horse. Judy needed help getting on her horse and the guys at the pony stand were only too glad to "help" push her up on the horse by grabbing her ass. "What have we gotten ourselves into?" I thought.

I confessed to the guy who was leading my horse that it was my first time on a horse and I was nervous. He smiled his betel nut-stained smile at me and asked me how old I was.

"23. Why? How old are you?" I asked suspiciously.

"24."

He looked not a day younger than 40. He smiled again in his creepy way and slicked back his oily hair and we set off.

The guy decided that I liked going fast on the horse and before I knew it, I was bouncing up and down, doing a death grip on the saddle and yelling like an idiot. The guy finally slowed down only after I'd thoroughly bruised my ass and my dignity and decided to give me pointers on how to ride a horse properly.

"You have to press your legs up to front like this. Right here, touch the saddle with your leg!"

I slid forward on the saddle but unsatisfied, he told me to slidea bit more forward. "Right here, on your leg! Needs to touch saddle!"

He reached over and grabbed my inner thigh.

"Whoa personal space!" I yelled. And he backed off a bit after feigning not to know English enough to understand what I meant.

We started going fast again and my ass was suffering severe bruising and my knuckles were white with the death grip I had on the saddle. My poor lame horse was bobbing his head up and down like crazy and when we eventualyl stopped, I turned around to hear Sarah yelling at her horse driver. He was apparently beating the horse because it wouldn't go fast like he wanted it to.

"DON'T HIT THE HORSE! IT'S LAME. THAT'S WHY IT WON'T RUN! IT'S IN PAIN YOU F*CKER! I REFUSE TO RIDE THIS HORSE. HERE'S YOUR MONEY, NOW F*CK OFF!" she yelled at him. Did I mention that Sarah is not only a supreme horse-lover but also the president of the animal welfare club at school?

I got off my horse too and limped over to where Judy and her were standing.

We decided it was time for food and ate at a cute little Tibetan/Chinese restaurant (if only the two cultures could be as harmonised and peaceful as they were in that little restaurant) where our waiter was this total rocker dude. Go figure. An Indian rocker who has his own garage band and lives 6000 feet up a mountain. I expect great things from him one day.

Anyhow, he recommended we go on this hike up to the top of the mountain to this place that's not even listed int he Lonely Planet guide. We eyed him suspiciously but he seemed genuine enough and he went on to explain that the place is at the very top of the mountain where you can view almost all the good Himalayan mountains. It was apparently a lookout where the height of Mount Everest was first estimated using teh height of other known mountains around it. There was a house there where teh surveyor lived long ago but it was now ruins.

The view was supposed to be stunning and the beauty of it was that no one else would be up there. It was apparently so off teh beaten track that only locals knew about it. Somewhere where you could be alone in India. It seemed too good to be true. But it wasn't.

A Walk in the Clouds

We got a taxi and went all the way up to the top where the taxi could no longer drive, then we hiked the rest of the way up. It felt like we were hiking through clouds. Once in a while, mountain village people would come out of the mist and trees, dressed in amazing vivid colours and hauling giant baskets of leaves on their backs and smile at us. We'd ask them where the site was and they'd direct us this way or that with a nod of their heads.

Occasionally, a flock of sheep would come out of the bushes onto the path and baa their way up to us before disappearing again in the clouds and leaves.

I pulled out my handy-dandy rainbow scarf again and wrapped it around my shoulders as a shawl (did I mention it was the best 50 rupees I ever spent?). For the first time in India, I felt cold. Gosh it felt good.

Eventually, passing an old man with a herd of buffalo, we finally reached the top. It was a slight plateau and in the near distance, I could make out some ruins on a hill. I was out of breath but exhilarated. A group of six little boys were playing soccer in the fog. With their beige clothes and rosy cheeks and the tattered soccer ball, they looked just like a painting. Some chickens were grazing nearby, once in a while clucking out of the way of the stray soccer ball. A few sheep were lying there watching the game and a grandpa and younger woman were sitting on the stoop of an old wooden house watching the boys intently. We walked up and asked them if the ruins at the top of the hill were the Everest site.

They turned and looked at us calmly and nodded. Then they turned back and kept watching the game. We left them behind in the mist and climbed towards our final goal.

At the top, I felt like Julie Andrews at the beginning of "Sound of Music". I wanted to run around on the top singing my lungs out and dancing in the mist, but luckily for Sarah and Judy, I resisted. It was breathtaking. If I looked at the horizon, mountains faded away like in a Chinse water painting. I walked right up to the edge and looked down and below, all I could see was mist and a giant sea of clouds. Someone had strung some old tibetan buddhist prayer flags above the trees and they danced blue, red and yellow in the wind above me.

And then it hit me. I dont know what it was. Maybe it was the sudden cold or the change in altitude but it hit Judy and I at once.

"Um, guys, I kinda need to pee."

"Me too."

We looked around sheepishly, glanced around to make sure that no one was around and for the second time since I've been here, I went into the bush and relieved myself. "Make sure you aim downhill!" said Sarah.

I did and all was good till I got up and out of the bush. I then noticed my arm and my right leg were kind of burning. Like I'd been stung. I'd been squatting in some sort of poison ivy.

I felt like an idiot until Sarah and Judy piped up that they had done the same and we all nursed our stinging limbs the rest of the evening. Ah well, the mountain was so great that it was worth it. And besides, none of us got stung on our bare asses or anything. Good thing too as my ass was seriously black and blue from the horse-back riding. There's only so much whoopin' an ass can take in a day.

Just Shoot Me

We returned to the wildlife centre and the next morning began our real immobilization training. We got to use the good ol firearms again and so I managed to shoot yet another two guns in my life. One had a CO2 cartridge to launch smaller darts and smaller animals or animals in a closer range. The other rifle was a powder charged beast that youc ould put giant darts in to capture elephants, rhinos, buffalo and bison (the latter two species are different in India and are considered pachyderms).

We did target practice indoors in our instructors office on this poor defenceless cardboard box. i was so scared I was going to hit the wall or something but my shot was almost right on.

Then we headed outside for the serious shots and practiced on a different defenceless cardboard box and drew lots of attention to ourselves on the campus. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to practice on any live targets although we all volunteered Judy as a target. She refused.

When Bad Food Happens to Good People

All the girls in my group have bad GI problems but for some odd reason, after my bout of Delhi Belly, I've been free of any problems. Our GI upsets have been worrying the poor cook here though and he's been freaking out every time the sickies in our group refuse to eat anything for fear it will just come shooting out the other end. He's so eager to please and he's so sensitive that he takes it personally if we don't eat all of the food he makes us. Unfortunately, he makes enough food for ten people and it's all curry. PLus I found worms in my tomatoes one meal after I'd eaten half the plate. They were tiny, transparent little nematodes and they wriggled around in the seeds and reared up at me menacingly.

We've all voted to go on antihelminthics when we go home. Worms would explain why I'm so hungry here all the time.

Finally, the other day, the cook got so upset that when Sarah and Judy and I didn't show up for dinner (we were up in that town in the mountains and had problems getting a taxi to drive us back on time for dinner and Ronalee was the only one who didn't go out to the mountain top that day as she was suffering really badly from diarrhea), Ronalee went alone and found the cook sitting at the dinner table in the dining hall with all the lights turned off and when she flicked on the lights, it was like that episode of Seinfeld when Jerry says, "I made dinner enough for two!"

Anyhow, the chef was like, "I made dinner for four! Only one shows up! All my food is wasted! I make dinner special for you every meal. Every meal is special! All wasted!"

Ronalee felt so bad because she was only going in to the hall to say she didnt' want any dinner because she was so sick. Instead, she had to sit down alone at the table and pretend to eat. She said that whenever the cook when to the kitchen to bring out another dish, she'd take the sauce of the previous dish and smear it all over the plate so it would look like she'd eaten. Then she'd take a few grains of rice and scatter them artisitcally over her plate so it would look like she'd had rice too. When he was there, she'd take some foodi nto her mouth and then when he wasn't looking, she spat it out in her chapatti and after the meal, she took it out and threw it all away.

I'd say she was pretty ingenious and she shared her secret with Sarah, the other poor Delhi belly sufferer in our group and we had it down to an art. The chef was still suspicious and i swear he was watching us from a hole in the wall or something cus he'd take away my plate, from which I'd actually eaten, and then take away Ronalee's plate and stare hard at it, and then at her, and then back at the plate, and then stalk into the kitchen.

Finally, as a joke, Judy and I came up with "Operation Kellog" which we carried out as a plan to sneak in some tasty strawberry cornflakes into the dining hall and eat it instead of the nasty stale cornflakes we were getting in the morning. She took the bag out of the box, rolled it up nice and tiny and shoved it into her purse. At breakfast, she took it steathily outo f her purse under the table and snuck some into her bowl while the cook was busy frying up an omlette. She passed the box to me and I did the same. The cereal was stuck in the bag for a bit, but I quickyl shook it out and rolled it up and shoved it under the table just in time for the cook to come out.

Unfortunately, the strawberry cornflakes in India are bright flourescent pink. The cook would definitely notice something was wrong. He put an omlette on the table and turned around and I quickly sprinkled some stale regular coloured cornflakes on top. He turned back aruond and looked at my cereal, I feigned innocence and asked Judy calmly to pass me the milk. The cook turned around and left to fry up the next omlette.

We poured the milk into our bowls and realised too late that the cereal was turning our milk a bright pink colour. We wolfed it down and held the bowls up to our faces so no one could see in. I drained the milk and put the bowl down. It had a pink ring around it. I hastily poured some milk in and rinsed it out.

Judy didn't do the same and when the cook came out again, he glanced at her bowl and just stared at the drops of pink milk at the bottom. She offered a sheepish smile and he went back into the kitchen. I told her to quickly rinse her bowl with milk and she did and good thing too as the cook came out again almost instantly and gazed into the bowl as if to make sure he had seen pink milk in there and that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. The milk was a nice white colour.

He stalked into the kitchen and hastily flipped the last two omlettes onto our plates and eyed us all suspiciously and went back into the kitchen.

Minutes later, as I finished my second cup of coffee, he came out and offered to make us an "English dinner". It was like an invisible white flag of defeat and acceptance was flying over his head. We felt bad. He only wanted us to like his cooking, but unfortunately, we were Indian fooded out. And greasy omlettes and stale cornflakes weren't cutting it anymore.

But anyhow, such is what is going on with our food and GI systems here. As I mentioned before, I dont have delhi belly anymore. Instead, I've gotten the worst cold ever and I keep sniffling and sneezing on everyone. My nose is continually running. Sigh, if it's not one end, it's the other. Our instructors here had to go fetch me kleenex today as my runny nose was actually disrupting the lecture.

ANd that's about it. I could go on and ramble about the gigantic spider I found above my bed the other day and the disgusting insects that attached themselves to my bag and actually larvated there, but enough.This is a long enough blog as it is.

Closing Thoughts

And so my time in Dehradun is drawing to a close. I'm heading to Dharam sala tomorrow, home of the Dalai Lama. The anti-Chinese sentiments are strong in this area as there are a lot of Tibetan nationalists living int he area and for once, I am glad to be called Japani. I've already told the other girls in my group that "for the record, I am a Japani when I get there!" They all laughed, but I seriously can't believe how bad the feelings are towards the Chinese in the area. Well actually, after reading some Tibetan literature here, yeah, I can.

Thanks to all who e-mailed me. Nice to know you're out there and enjoying my adventures (or misadventures depending on how you view it!). I'm not sure when I'll next come to computer so perhaps you'll have to put up with more long, drawn-out blogs like this one. I apologise in advance but there is just so much happening here all the time!!!!

Keep the e-mails coming as I totally got a kick out of reading them (Dani and Wayne, thanks for coming out of hiding) and I vow that when I get some 8 rupee stamps, I will send out my postcards!!!!

Take care everyone and Namaskar!