the Dalai Lama and I

Bikes sold, I boarded a local bus to Dharmsala - home of the tibetan government in exile - to rendezvous with the Dalai Lama himself! OK not really but I did meet up with Holly who arrived swiftly from London then Delhi. It was really good to see each other, not least as Holly had smuggled some red wine and stinky cheese across international borders. HUZAH! So with that in mind we sat back, joined and amazed by a few other travelers, and smashed the lot.

It was about time for a holiday within a holiday so for the next week we did a lot of bugger all in the little village of Dharamkot. Kind of a halfway house between 'real' India and a traveler village, the locals are friendly and the tourist traffic was fairly light - Compared with that down the hill in Mcleodganj. It hasn't been completely trashed yet. There are also quite a few meditation/yoga retreats so there are more than a few wide eyed folk wandering around with cowshit on their shoes from all the star gazing.

We ate well, drank even better, had a crash course in Indian cooking and even managed the odd walk in the hills, being after all, resigned to the life of pedestrians. Since riding bikes in India we can't help but stare, poke, prod each and every Enfield we see, more so now we had lost ours. Outside our favorite cafe I saw a Bullet for sale and went over to have a gander. I was blown away when I recognised the sellers email address as that of a Swiss guy I met in NZ 7 years before. I called him up in the vain hope that Mathieu actually remembered who I was , he did, and then spent a really funny evening catching up on 7 years of goings on. The world ain't such a big place after all.

In the mean time Holls talked about going to Thailand - our next planned stop - and agreed that neither of us were immediately excited about the prospect. After the turmoil of the last few weeks we figured we should treat ourselves to something a little more adventurous. So, in a moment of carefully judged (ahem!) madness we booked flights to Kazakhstan instead. Plan B involves over landing from Kazakhstan to Mongolia (through Russia), but also involves at least three visas. Panicking a little we decided to head back to Delhi earlier to sort out the red tape.

We had become quite settled and once again bade farewell to a bunch of really sound people and headed down the mountain toward the plains.