Live from Himachal Pradesh

Wow, there are so many things happening, it will be hard to recount much of what transpired since the last posting. Also, I have some really amazing photos, but finding an Internet Cafe that will allow me to connect my laptop to their network is challenging.

I forgot to mention in my earlier posts that Julian Leuthold from LA was very kind to loan me an old 12" PowerBook G4 he had sitting around, so that I could leave my more precious MacBook back in the States. Thank you Julian! So far it is working amazingly well for downloading my photos and preping them for the blog. I was also able to connect to Wi-Fi networks in London and Delhi. Hopefully in our next city I'll be able to connect it to the Internet so that I can upload some photos.

We got on the bus at the Tibetan Refugee District in Delhi just after midnight two nights ago. Our bus is a fairly modern model with reclining seats but no air conditioning. The air quality in Delhi and much of Himachal Pradesh especially on all the highways makes LA smog look like a clear day. My lungs really took a beating, and that in combination with sleep-deprivation pushed my immune system down to the point where I got some pretty nasty symptoms, fever, coughing, headaches, runny nose and sore throat. I slept 18 hours last night, took Cipro for my bronchitis in the morning and later in the day visited a Tibetan Doctor. I'm feeling a bit better now. I guess the lesson is that one needs to do whatever possible to get as much rest as possible when traveling this way. Yesterday we arrived at around 6 PM and I showered, set all my equipment batteries on recharge, and went straight to bed.

Everyone else did a little shopping and exploring the town. This morning I felt really awful with a high fever and nasty cough, deep in my lungs. Kunchok and Justin shared the room with me,. Hopefully I'm not contagious, but I have not been coughing much because it hurts too much.

Justin bought a lot of medicine for people if they got sick, and he was very kind to offer me cough syrup and lozenges and pain killers. Between all the rest and medicine I took, I think it is helping. I intend to get some rest tonight during 4 hour bus ride and then at the next stop. Today we all had breakfast together. We all ate the same thing, cheese omelet, white toast, and some kind of Indian-style potato dish. After that we split up. Some of us walked down the hill to the actual city area, which turned to be quite a trek down rugged rocky foot path that was lined by mani stones and cows and had beautiful views of the mountains and town below. The mountain peaks rise precipitously over the town, and appear to be only about 10 miles away as the crow flies, looking very close. They are still covered in quite a bit of snow, but the weather in the area has been unseasonably warm in February, after a very cold winter, so we lucked out. It felt like it was approaching 80 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, and it stayed in the 50s at night. It is hazy and by mid-afternoon the smoke from all the cooking fires just fills the air with particulate. The walk down the hill was arduous for me in my weakened condition. I lagged behind and probably complained a little... sorry to everyone who was with me (we took a cab back up the hill later on).

We visited a temple office that is in charge of Dharmapala offerings and made an offering. Then we went to the beautiful Dharmapala temple next door and made numerous Dharmapala offerings in a secret room and wrapped up the session with the Dharmapala offering in English from The Buddha Path. That was totally amazing. Then they served us tea out on a patio with majestic views of the temple with the mountains as the backdrop.

My photos from today would thousands of words, and the bus is going to leave in a few minutes, so I should head back up the hill to the hotel. Hopefully I'll be able to update earlier posts with photos as I find the time.