Follow Me Around the World

As already mentioned before Dharmasala is where the Tibetan government is in exile and where the Dalai Lama lives.  Today we got up at 5am, had breakfast and left by 630am.  Now because we got a new hotel in Delhi after everyone complained including the professors and since touro had to eat the money for that night, Professor Artusio said that we were cutting costs on porters and we were carrying our own luggage to the bus.  I was furious as I had sealed up my bag and put my cover on thinking someone else would be taking it down the hills.  As it turns out I was wrong, and I had to carry my huge bag with everything I had bought and two other backpacks.  The walk would be long and treacherous for me down steep hills approximating .6 of one mile, which is long with 100 pounds of stuff on you.  I struggled to get my stuff to the bus stopping frequently.  I didn’t feel anything in my knees at the time but as it would turn out later, I felt the effects of carrying all that stuff in my left knee.  I am hoping it is nothing severe but we will get to that later.

The ride would take almost 12 hours as expected and it would only be about 300 kms.  We stopped several time to pee in the bushes and had this awful boxed lunch also along the side of the road.  For the first few hours Sarah and I chatted to kill time and eventually I said that I needed quiet time to study and listen to my music.  She fell asleep and I read the rest of the time.  I needed to catch up on some of my work as I had been slacking a bit.

We arrived in lower Dharmasala at around 530PM and then took jeeps up to Mcleod Ganj which was about 9 kilometers up the mountain.  Apparently that is the nicer part of the area.  Angela and I were in a jeep to ourselves, I think mainly because of all the luggage we had and how it was the last jeep in the lot.  We took the guy who arranged the jeeps for us along for the ride as well.  We arrived at the hotel which was up a steep hill, an offshoot the main road in town.

When we got to the hotel, Cait was not happy.  The room was very tiny and we already had a crappy room at the last place.  After raising a huge stink about it, going to all the professors about it, we eventually switched rooms with two other people and had a bigger room.  I backed her up on this one as we really did get shafted, and since everyone was paying the same amount why shouldn’t we have a nice room for at least half of the time.  Furthermore, I definitely don’t agree with professors or administrators getting the best rooms in the hotel.  They are paid to be here, and we pay a fortune to be here.  I took out a loan for this program, I mean come on.  I think it is preposterous that professors get fantastic rooms.  Sure they are professors but they get paid for this.

Once we settled in to the room, Cait and I tried to get dinner outside the hotel since it was not covered but that didn’t work out as it began to rain like crazy once we got down to the bottom of the hill of course.  We had some tea at a shop, waited the rain out a little and went back to the hotel and had dinner.  Sarah, Cait and I split a bottle of red vino, and called it a night after dinner

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