it's sunday night and i have to be at the temple tomorrow at 7.30am so i should probably get to sleep early tonight..
i finally found a faster computer as i tried for half an hour earlier today just to load this website with no luck.. so this one is lightning quick in comparison.. even had time to see how the red sox are doing ;)
sorry i just had to laugh to myself at some fellow americans trying to figure out how many US dollars are in 8000 rupees.. the dollar is apparently sucking quite hard thanks to our lovely president, as this time last year it was 80 rupees to the dollar, and now it's less than 40, with the dollar at its lowest ever. woohoo
so pretty much immediately after i wrote the last entry i ran into a kid on the stoop outside the place, and he himself was staying with some people he'd met in/on the way to manali (where i'll be off to at some point). so we had a good time walking around, had some dinner and afterwards a few drinks on the roof of this crazy tourist-centric restaurant called xcite with all these random dumb phrases like "beauty is in the eye of the beerholder" or "beer doesn't make you fat it makes you lean (on the table, wall, etc etc)". and while we're sitting there these punjabi indians in a big group are just plain unabashedly ogling us (not sure if it was the women or the shaved head of the UKer but they just stare.. and dont even flinch/budge/blink when you stare back or give them the eye or what have you). i'm guessing this is more common with indians who dont see western tourists that much, but these guys (who told us they were insurance salesmen) were actually cops - as the waiter explained as he apologized profusely for them..
anyways i ended up getting locked into their hotel as the gate closes/locks at 11p and we were still hanging out well past that.. and despite my hotel being right next door not 50ft away, there was no way to catburgle my way over there, so i ended up on the floor. (also my own hotel closes at midnite but there's a tibetan guy who
sleeps there and will open it if you can wake him up.. but i would have
felt bad at 2am or whatever it was by then). as some of you well know, i've done my fair share of sleeping on the floor - i did it for half a year at summit #3 - and no surprise it was more comfortable on the floor there than my own bed has been. it's a level surface at least, and my bed has a sort of semi-permanent body-shaped indentation which isn't quite conducive to a good night's sleep for me.
anyhow today we walked up to the bhagsu waterfall where there were a bunch of indian tourists (some locals too i'm sure) hanging out.. esp as it was a hot sunny day which is rather rare around these parts, so it was quite packed.. got a few nice pictures which i'll have to upload for y'all tomorrow, though i have a feeling i'm going to do that on flickr.com from now on. it should be faster and easier for me..
so these fellow travellers have been around quite a bit.. the aussies - david and penelope - have been to 25 countries including india, and i'm not sure about the rest (ben (israel) and steve (UK) and francesca (UK? but in india for a while i think) but i'm sure it's quite a few respectively. ben's just been to japan and i will def. have to go there at some point whenever i can.. beautiful, clean, everything i expected of japan i saw in some of his pictures.. but tonight i don't know where they've gone to, though i suppose i didn't look hard enough probably as it's not a big place mcleod ganj. there's a couple musical events going on tonight - a jam session at carpe diem where a UK-born indian named danny is putting on a quite impressive beatbox but unfortunately to a less than impressive "backing" band. and there's a tibetan band playing at one of the restaurants down the way but i didn't feel like parting with 150 rupees to catch just the end of the show.. so here i am instead, hope y'all appreciate it ;).
i must admit i do miss america a bit. at least my friends and loved ones.. i am looking forward though to diving back into the rest of india - the crazy india.. this is the peaceful, tourist-friendly india up here.. compared to delhi this is paradise. but that's a couple weeks off about, so i'll not think about it. found a good book to read - bill bryson's a short history of nearly everything.. i'd been looking for brave new world but can't find it anywhere, despite there being copious copies of 1984 for some reason.. so i picked this up - i think i heard about it on jon stewart.. haa.. speaking of which,, american television gets around .. everyone else has seen survivor and southpark and family guy and american idol and all that noise, while we dont even get BBC World. (i've probably mentioned about bbc world before.. how we only get a half hour on PBS and even in the farthest reaches of the poorest 3rd world country they have bbc world). such is america.. and do they ever love talking about american politics. nearly got into a debate last night with a kiwi-man who for some reason took offense to my comment that voting for rudy giulianni is essentially the same as voting for four more years of bush.. what're you gonna do..
anyways it's decision time for me - whether to go to carpe diem for a few minutes or to head for bed.. as much as i love my beautiful hot shower my room is kind of depressing as the balcony isn't really good for reading/writing and i'd rather not just sit in bed doing so. i need air and background noise.. well, hope all is well with everyone back home. all my love.
