Good bye dharamsala
Sunday, June 25, 2006 at 02:38AM Tonight Deb and I take the night bus to Shimla...it leaves at 9:30pm and should roll into shimla at about 7am. our fingers are crossed that it is more comfortable than some of the other buses we have taken...that have seats like school buses without any sort of cushion at all. We were spoiled on our way here as there was a deluxe tourist bus that was very similar to Greyhound buses in canada with reclining seats and all...but sadly no deluxe buses travel to Shimla.
We went to the teaching of the Dalai Lama yesterday which was a pretty incredible experience. We were seated about 40 feet away from him, in an area that was almost 100% monks...I wish that i could have brought my camera in (but it was not allowed due to security reasons) because every direction I looked there was a photo just waiting for me. Some of the monks have some weathered faces filled with such kindness that it turns them into real characters. The teaching itself was interesting...hard to follow at some times because the dalai lama would speak and then he would stop and the interpreters would speak (we listened to english on a radio with headphones) so sometimes there was a 10 minute delay from point to point...which made it hard to follow sometimes. He is here all week and Deb and I might go again this afternoon if the rain lets up.
I have never in my life seen rain like this. the monsoon has started here now and yesterday it was raining so hard that you could not see 5 feet in front of you. Our room has a balcony that overlooks a ravine and then the rest of the town is perched on the hillside across the ravine. Well it was raining so hard that the town completely disappeared. All we could see was water driving down. It was incredible. No wonder so many places here flood, I can't imagine a drainage system that would be able to handle that amount of water.
Deb is off getting another thai massage and I will follow her shortly. We had to check out of our hotel room at noon and our bus doesn't leave until 9:30, so we have a few hours to kill and wonder about...so a massage seemed like a really good way to spend 1.5hours of that...wouldn't you say. Especially when it is raining.
Well this could be my last post for a few weeks. The cottage we hope to rent outside of Shimla isn't really near an internet cafe...so we could be out of reach for a while...
