Monkeys welcome you to Rishikesh

The following was written yesterday but no wifi until this morning:

I spent the night on a sleeper train listening to the Beatles, rattling through the Indian countryside, and now I'm in the yoga centre of the world. I have to be at the ashram at 5:45am for yoga. Yikes.

One of our group has already been bitten by a monkey and is receiving a series of rabies shots. You hear that, Werner? Monkeys are not toys!

I just spent some amazing days in the Chamba valley. It was a sequence of just incredible events and moments. The Himalayas are gorgeous and the family we stayed with were wonderful. The drive up into the mountains was a pukey affair and, when we got to the end of our road, we still had to climb 30 minutes up steep winding narrow paths to get to our eco lodge. When we got there the family held a welcome ritual for us. Actually, we've been participants in a number of rituals since we've been here. Indians are big on holding rituals. So far we've been anointed, bindied, be-scarfed, be-hatted, be-malala-ed, painted, watered and a few other things I can't begin to describe.

The mountain we climbed was sandwiched between 2 Himalayan ranges -the Dhauladhar and the Pir Panjal - and and it was a beautiful but steep & gruelling climb through terraced mustard fields, pastures and crumbling homesteads. There were temples, goats, cows and villagers all around us. Once we got to the top, it was magical to be up there, looking down on other mountain tops and seeing white peaks all around us. There was some snow on our peak so we made a snowman, to the delight of some village children who were watching us. We gave ourselves the "Best Use of Goat Turds Award" when we used them as eyes for our snowman. It was crazy awesome to sleep on a mountain top, huddling around a floor fire pit to keep warm at night. Heavy rains caused avalanches on some of the paths so coming down was an adventure.

The Dhami family gave us a wild Holi festival. Bonfires are a part of the night before Holi and all the fires on the surrounding hillsides looked like stars. We burned all the illnesses and difficulties of the winter, sacrificing popcorn, wheat and jaggary while Prakash's sons jumped a fricking tall fire. The next day we played Holi with the family before being taken to the Deputy Commissioner's official Holi party. We thought the family party had been crazy with coloured powders being smeared all over us. At the Deputy Commissioner's they had shitloads of colour and water hoses and the Chamba military band, local dignitaries, a dj playing Bollywood music and a totally bacchanalian scene going on. When we arrived, Holi was in full play - men dancing with men and women with women. As soon as we showed up we were instant celebrities. Men pulled at us to dance with them or take photos with them, whiskey and food were put in my hand, hundreds of cameras and video cameras documented our every move as people smeared colours on us and little boys shot us with water cannons. A few drunk guys became particularly focussed on us and some of the DC's guys had to run interference. The media were there and we ended up in the paper and likely on the tv news. Crazy, right?

I love this place!