Dalhousie

Nav and I are experiencing the mountains!! YAY! The weather here has been like fall in USA, but the sun is warmer when it shines full strength. Level ground is mainly for our convenience, so there is not much of it, just enough for a road. There are no walking trails, except for the Kalatope Wildlife Sanctuary, where we saw little wildlife, but many beautiful views. Most of the mtns here are covered in pine trees, so those of you who know of my love for pine trees can imagine how pleased I am with the surroundings! There are also many flowers n grass that would be found in Michigan, so this place reminds me a little of being up north.

We got on the 4:45 am sleeper train. The train guy for our car was a sleaze--he was allowing people on who did not have a reservation, so there were people lying in both of our berths! The audacity!! Luckily, a young family of 3 kindly didn't protest as we placed all of our luggage, and a cannon-ball shaped Jamie, onto one of their berths. Navjot was talkative with them, and we all understood that we were victims of a problem we had no hope of solving. Navjot managed to get to one of our berths and move out a mother and her daughter out (sounds heartless, but it wasn't theirs---the audacity!!--) so he could have a place to sit. This allowed me to stretch a little, and take photos of the plains of Punjab thru my little window. Later, another mom and her daughter sat on the original families' berths and just faced me. I felt they were doing this to stare at me, and I got annoyed. However, I cheerily asked to take their photo and doing that allowed me to try to make this interaction more positive. Again, the bulk of my annoyance came from the fact that they didn't have their own spots on this car! RRRRR!

Then, we arrived in Pathankot and met our taxi driver and his...? traveling buddy? The driver was this well-built road warrior with long, greasy hair and bloodshot eyes. I was really worried that he would be more insane than the Haryana bus driver I wrote about when we traveled to Shimla in 04. I tried to get him off his game of total ruthlessness, taking the constant curves at 40 mph, overtaking everyone, by expressing American style road rage at every opportunity. I had thought that maybe he would drive more slowly, carefully, then I would shut up. This approach really got on Nav's nerves, and it proved completely ineffective. The driver was totally crazy, and we really had to lean into every turn to lessen the effects of motionsickness, which we did have, despite taking the meds...they helped, but to ride a rollercoaster for two hours without stopping is a great challenge for our inner ear. And, I hate to admit it, but he was also a very competent driver: he would honk at all the hairpin turns, and we reached Dalhousie in 2 hours--30 min less than the estimates.

The Alps Resort seemed dumpy at first....but it has a fair amount of land landscaped with roses and other pretty flowers, a ping pong table and a pool table (which we haven't used) and the surroundings are very quiet and peaceful. I had some laundry done for a little over 2$.

Day 1: Walked around Bakrota Hill: GREAT MTN VIEWS....mostly pine trees and terraced farming (for potatoes!) and in the distance were snowcapped mts on one side. The other had glacial lakes.

Day 2: We walked to Panchpula, where there was a rock garden and a couple of waterfalls. Here we met our first in a long series of saffron sellers. These guys appear out of virtually nowhere, selling strands of red saffron in small steel containers.

Day 3: Khajjiar: Touristy place. A bunch of clueless people taking people parasailing. We saw a lot of crashlandings. The best part: it was for kids only. GREAT. However, it has a long, flat-ish park, surrounded by pine trees. People strolled, and cows grazed.

Kalatope Wildlife Sanctuary: A great walk, except when lazy people passed us in cars, or made a bunch of racket at the rest stop, and I even think my guidebook warned me about the loudmouths!! The final climb, to about 8200 ft, about killed me, despite my exercise n training at the gym.

Daikund Peak: This is straight above Kalatope, higher on the mtn. From the top, the snow-capped mts looked almost eye-level. Khajjiar sat way below us, a little green bowl of land admist the steep tree filled mtn sides. I preferred this look at Khajjiar to my actual visit there.

Can it get any better? No. We brought enough $ to get us started. Now, we thought a tourist town like Dalhousie would have ATMs....that work. NOPE. Dalhousie has one ATM, and it is not working for us. So, our new problem is to find a way to access our $ so we can pay our hotel and get over to Dharamasala and meet up with our other players: Cailin and Heather. Wish us luck!