RaveBurbleBlog

The animal life in Chitkul is quite different from that lower altitudes. There are lots of donkeys, no snakes and I didn’t meet one single cow wandering around the village. I was trying to think what was so different about the buildings, aside from the fact they’re a different shape, when it finally dawned on me - there are no bars on the windows. Hah - no monkeys! You almost need bars to keep the insect life out at night time though. We watched that many moths, etc, do a kamakazi act into the candles that we lost count. But several times at bat (who we decided shall be hereonout christened ‘Sadie’) flew into our veranda room and did several sweeps up around the ceiling before exiting again. Paul tried to tell me tales about bats loving to get tangled up in blonde hair, but I wasn’t falling for that one. Besides, after my imaginary snow leopard scenario the other night, a little bat certainly wasn’t going to scare me! Funny how men remain boys in some ways. [read on]

Another day went by, consisting of lolling, drinking chai and chatting. We had an afternoon rest from this exhausting business in our concrete cell, reading and doing crosswords. A local guy went past our open window (which wasn’t actually very public at all), happened to notice us (hmmm) and insisted he was coming around to the front for a chat. Paul cut him off before he got to the door (I was feeling too lazy for talking) and he turned out to be one of the local schoolteachers. So somehow Paul ended up at his place, tasting the local brew (Angori), which has the kick of a bee-stung donkey and smells like tequila. It transpired that this guy found out I was a teacher (all right, literacy tutor, but YOU try explaining that to them), and he wanted us to visit the school the next day. So we found ourselves entered into his appointment book. [read on]

Something we came across here in Chitkul was the occasional "Debta" (sp) stones. There was often a patch nearby where a fire had obviously been going. These stones are 2 or 3 feet high, stand alone and are not to ... [Continue reading this entry]

For me, the first night's sleep in Chitkul was terrible. I think it was from overtiredness, but I went to bed super early, had a crappy sleep then woke up at about 4.30am (again!) and ended up sitting outside on ... [Continue reading this entry]

Finally, we got onto the final bus of our burst up the mountains. This was fun as well. We were tearing along quite nicely, when suddenly the bus driver screams to a halt after a landrover passes us. The guys ... [Continue reading this entry]

We were very lucky to be on a bus with quite good seats. This meaning our knees did not touch the seats in front of us. The ride was very mountainous, which I was to find out as we went ... [Continue reading this entry]

Well, we ended up staying another night in Shimla. Sheer exhaustion dictated that this should be so, not to mention acclimatisation to altitude. The room we had (on the 4th floor, naturally, according to Murphy's law, which is continuously having ... [Continue reading this entry]

We did a bit of thinking and decided to go back and change our train tickets. Taking into account India time plus factoring the monsoon into it, we decided that the likelihood of our first train being on time and ... [Continue reading this entry]

I woke up this morning with this in my head. Let's just put it down to tropical air and too much time on my hands... Before I came to India I took the Phart for granted Then a case of Dehli Belly Made my ... [Continue reading this entry]

The train ride back to Delhi was marvellous. And much to my very facetious satisfaction, Paul woke me up far too early for the trainstop and we had to look out the window for ages until we got to our ... [Continue reading this entry]