Fri 25 Mar, 2005

hello again.
Today is Good Friday, but here in McLeodganj it's HOLI - a Hindu festival. It basically consists of throwing dry powder paints at everyone. And I mean EVERYONE. There's no apparent religious reason for the festival - just any excuse for a good party. Rob and I were in the street for maybe 20 minutes, and we got absolutely covered in colour - red, pink, green, yellow, dark blue......you should have seen us! people just come up to you with a handful of paint and squish it right in your face, custard pie style. We got laughed at so much! Rob has a scalp full of pink, which will shine through his hair nicely. And of course there happens to be no hot shower at our guest house, and it's gone noon so we can't get a bucket of hot water! Damn!
Apparently today is the least of it - the blokes will have been drinking all night and then tomorrow they do more paint-throwing and also lots of groping. Fun. I've already had a load of paint tipped down inside my top.
Anyway, it's all part of the fun!
We walked up to the nearby Bhagsu waterfall yesterday - quite a climb, but really worth it! I got quite emotional as it was so overwhelmingly beautiful, and because I keep RE-realising that we're in the Himalayas!! It's just so crazy! The Shiva Cafe is further up, and there are loads of painted pieces of stone and slate that people have done and left there leaning against the rock face. It's really lovely. (We did one too.) We'll go up again and take a photo of each stone. We got chatting to about 10 lads from Amritsar who have come here for Holi. They were all about 15 or 16, and insisted on having their photos taken with us. Then a thunderstorm got up - quite spectacular as we were so high up in the mountains, and the rumbling was amazing. We sat the rain out and drank hot chai tea, sweet and spiced. Then came down the hill which was quite treacherous - thank god there was a proper path.

We finished our massage course yesterday - it's been brilliant. We got a certificate and everything! May well do the advanced course.........after the Indian cookery course we're doing next week. aaah, the stress of it all.......(couldn't be further from the truth)! I'm also going to actually HAVE a massage from our teacher tomorrow morning - it should be great. I might not be able to get back up the hill to the guest house afterwards, though - I'll be pummelled and stretched and god knows what!

Not much else to report that I can think of. Of course, gorgeous things happen all the time. And we're gonna spend about 3 more weeks here anyway, so we have all the time in the world. It's a great place, loads of people here, fresh air (a blessing after those polluted cities), endless fantastic food (really good), beautiful scenery, cheap living, good shopping, just a good place to get away from it all. Haven't been to see the Dalai Lama's teachings yet.

We connected our digital camera to the computer today and tried to get our photos onto CD, but there was a problem with the computer and we lost some photos. Nothing major - we still have most of them - but really annoying. so we'll have a look for a better connection before we try again. The ones we looked at were great, though, so we'll get them onto the net and you can all have a look.

I need to get out of this internet cafe - they're playing Celine Dion. I'm stArtiNG To tWitCh.