Archive | April 2009

Stressed Out in McLeod Ganj

Hey everyone, how’s it going out there???

Well, after Deer Park we took a taxi to McLeod Ganj, right by Dharamsala. A lot of people in my group are loving it and loving the homestays, I am definitely not. It’s just stress central on soooo many levels. I decided not to stay on longer – for a lot of reasons, and so I’ll be going home on the regularly scheduled group flight, which should be fun. It’s kind of a bummer not to be staying but I am also so ready to be home, to not be around zillions of people all the time (that’s one of the things that bugs me most about the homestays, barely a moment of privacy or time to myself at all, ever, it’s making me crazy), and to chill out.

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Amritsar and the Border

Apr6

Golden Temple at Night

Another quickie blog here from Amritsar, not far from the Golden Temple.

Gotta talk about the border first b/c that was one wild adventure. Our group went to the India-Pakistan border yesterday to watch the closing ceremony they have every day (there is also an opening ceremony every morning). I forget what the exact place is called but it is the only place where people can actually cross the border from one country to another (we couldn’t do that, you need Visas and all that, we were just there for the show). It was wild. First off, we saw tons of marijuana growing along the road on the way there, just humungous pot plants. I tried to get pictures but failed. The other thing we saw lots of were trucks full of sacks of potatoes.

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Further Itinerary

Apr2

This was originally a reply I wrote to Story Teller on the last post, but it got kind of lengthy and seemed more like a post, so here it is:

Hey story teller, where in India are you located exactly???

It seems the droughts have been a pretty big problem in Sikkim.

So, not on my way home yet. In Darjeeling now, and tomorrow flying to Delhi so we can take a train to Amritsar (and I think we’ll also visit Lahore, right on the Pakistani border while in Amritsar, I’m certainly hoping to). From there we go to Bir and McLeod Ganj, and after that, our group has two weeks of free travel, and we’re pretty sure that what we’ll do with our free travel time is go to Ladakh, it was a pretty clear consensus.

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