Hello fan club! Greeting from McLeod Ganj!

Before I say anything, let me clarify one thing: people, is not ME who won the world cup but Italy! It's so funny, I got so many messages, email and facebook post saying "congratulations!" hahaha, well, thanks! I don't think I've helped much;)

But let me say something about this little piece of heaven where I'm right now. It's absolutely GORGEOUS! I cannot explain how much I love it up here (well, let me tell you that I'm really tempted to quit my traineeship and just stay here until August!). We were supposed to leave McLeod Ganj tonight but we're staying a day longer...we're about 1700 meters high (5600 feet), it feels nice and chilly (last night I had to wear a sweatshirt!! Felt really strange, I really didn't remember how it is to feel a bit cold!). I woke up this morning and from my hotel I had tihs amazing AMAZING view of the valley below, with very colorful little houses, wet clothes hanging out from windows, the clouds around the mountains giving an idea of being in a isolated little heaven, away from every day Jaipur traffic, away from the heat, away from work, just away, away...we got here last night after many many adventures! Since I've left Jaipur so many things have happened and life is so unpredictable and I don't want this to change ever!

Friday night before we left we were in a dinner/hang out party at Marjolein's. We came back home, I still had to pack (I know, I never learn!), finished packing at 2 am, woke up at 3.30 to catch a rickshaw to the bus stand. We had to weak up this guy who was sleeping in his rickshaw but he seemed so happy to take us there! He had pumped up Hindi music for the entire way...at 4.30 in the morning!!! Caught a bus at 5.30, tried to sleep, got to Delhi where we found out we could catch a bus to Amritsar at night. We just spent the day "dutch shopping" as Marsha taught me: look, look but not buy (of course in dutch it sounds much better but i won't attempt the spellling!). There is one street in old delhi with a huge beautiful bazaar...on the way back I'm going to buy so many souvenirs! By the way - Landon - prepare yourself to take some stuff back to Mizzou with you for our angels:) Then we tried to do some sightseeing but Delhi is terrible, impossible to walk in, we even got chased by a cow! (and let me say that cows in Delhi are twice as big as cows in Jaipur...not sure what they feed them with, but I was definetly scared!), so we just sat in a nice restaurant (where we peed at candlelight!) and waited for the bus. Once at the bus stand we realized we got cheated big times: we payed for the bus twice as much and got soooooooo angry! But it was too late to get back to the travel agency, but they will hear from us when we're back in Delhi. So yeah, Delhi is not my thing...didn't seem like a good start!

Got into the bus, "slept" in there, got to Amritsar at 7 am where we went to see the Golden Temple. Before getting in we found the "dorm" for tourists to sleep in for free. We stopped there to shower and leave our backpacks, but while Marsha was showering I completely passed out, she followed me and we ended up sleeping for few hours (which was very nice after 2 nights "sleeping" in buses!). Met a nice guy from New Orleans, talked a while...very interesting! It was my first time talking to somebody from there after the flood...he works in constructions there (not suprising, eh?) and had amazing stories and comments to say. We finally got into the Golden Temple...quite breathtaking! We had to wear headscarf and take our shoes off, we walked in in this marble building that surrounds a holy lake, people where bathing there, everybody so colorful...and then the temple! A gold gem that sticked out from the pure white around! Even the sky was incredibly white (which I thought at first would ruin the atmosphere but no, it gave it that feeling of suspance, of waiting for something to happen...). I took amazing pictures there that I'll upload once back in Jaipur (if I ever get back!). Left the temple for the bus stand and as soon sa the bus left a monsonic rain fell from the white sky, cleaning up the dirty, dusty city of Amritsar...but we were already far away.

The bus stopped at Pathankot where we were supposed to catch a bus to Dharmsala...but there were no more buses! Scared to have to spend the night there (aka, missing the world cup final game) we found that there was another bus going to Gaggal, which is closer to McLeod Ganj. We took a chance, had to sit for 3 hours on our backpacks on the dirty bus floor. Once in Gaggal we took a taxi that finally tooked us to McLeod Ganj.

We were on time for the world cup final! I couldn't believe it we made it...for the longest time I thought we couldn't make it...and the funny thing was that once in our room, we thought for 2 seconds about just staying there and sleep. We were soooooo tired! It was Sunday night and it was the first hotel we saw since Friday!

But we got out of our room, in 10 minutes we already saw 3 people we knew (the backpackers in India are just a nice big community!), got into a room with widescreen to watch the match. The room was full ot tibetan monks, and I sat in the back with 5 guys from Nepal who were crazy about Italy and for the whole match they kept screaming, jumping, huggin each other...I joined them and had an amazing time! (and that helped me stay awake as well, while Marsha - poor thing! - fell asleep on her chair!). As the last penalty was shoot, I had several images scrolling in my mind: my friends and sister in Parma, my mom and family in the south of Italy, my dad, brother and stepmom at the Caribbean, my Italian friends at Mizzou, my other crazy-for-soccer friends at Mizzou, my uncle in London, my Italian friends in Jaipur...one big big party! All connected by the same game...and me, in a room with tibetan monks jumping around with my new nepali friends in McLeod Ganj! I gave some thoughts to the randomness of life...

Today Marsha is not feeling well and is resting in the room...I will now walk around, do some sightseeing and arrange for a bus for Manali for tomorrow night. Tonight we're going at a jamming session in a cafe here...a guy strongely reccomended it to us!

I feel great, this town is so beautiful! Very peaceful, people are interesting (a lot of them come here for months to study Buddism), people are not pushy, no starring (AMAZING feeling!), I've never felt in love with a place so fast! I'm seriously considering spending more time here, but probably not now...I never imagined I would have loved this so much! I really feel like I discovered an unespected pieace of paradise....

Coming soon with more stories!

p.s. oh yeah, I have to write few lines on the court process in Jodhpur! Last weekend, in the bus on our way to Jaisalmer, my finnish housemate Jaana got harassed by a guy. It was ten of us girls in that trip, all fed up with indian perverts, and we made a big HUGE deal out of it! The bus deviated to the police station, where Jaana had to file a report and the guy got arrested. After few days she was called to go to court in Jodhpur, and of course we wouldn't let her go alone (and we wouldn't let such an opportunity to see a court process in India go away!). So Marjolein Hardy and I joined Jaana and we had a very interesting time! The four of us really click together...for the entire trip we had amazing conversation, different opinions, really good discussions. During the process Jaana got accused of being drunk in the bus and just imaging the whole scene...but luckly the judge was a woman (and that was so strange for me! but it really made it much easier...), and seemed to believe Jaana 100%. The pervert's family came there, crying in front of Jaana saying that his parents were on death bed and were going to die if the guy was put in jail...but none of us had pity for them. I really didn't believe a word they said, but even if it was true the guy had to pay the consequences of what he had done. We still don't know how many months he will need to spend in jail, but probably quite a few. Nop, don't feel bad for him at all! My heart becomes a stone now when it's about indian perverts...