The best day so far . . .
We're in McLeod Ganj, home of the exiled Tibetan community. It's absolutely gorgeous here, and there are bald-headed Dalai Lama lookalikes everywhere. We're riding a high after yesterday's morning jog evolved into a 9-hour trek across massive Himalayan snowfields to a little hut on the side of a mountain where we feasted on Masala ramen noodles and chai, cooked up by a jolly mountain man who had just tromped through the waist-deep snow the day before to open up his shop for the year.
During the hike we ran into a British guy who raved about a Japanese restaurant in town, so after we got home and had a long, wonderful, hot shower, we went out for our first (and likely only) sushi this year. While inhaling our food, we started eavesdropping on our tablemates, and Rahul suddenly realized that we were sitting next to his favorite travel writer, Pico Iyer. Once Rahul got over being starstruck, we introduced ourselves, told him that his newest book is on the short list of "necessities" (chocolate, red wine, tampons, hummus) we're having our friend Courtney bring out from America next week, and Rahul and he ended up bonding over being lazy Indians from the West who travelled in India without bothering to learn Hindi. Full and happy, we made our way to the local cinema (read: a basement room with six sofas and a big-screen tv) and watched a badly-subtitled bootlegged DVD of Sideways.
We had begun the day with inappropriate clothes, no water, and not much of a plan, and ended up finding a beautiful mountain, a teahut stuck in the middle of the snow, a Japanese restaurant in Little Tibet, a radiant, unassuming writer and a great American movie we'd been dying to see. Not to mention the best brownie we've had in a long time. Being on the road again is damn good.
During the hike we ran into a British guy who raved about a Japanese restaurant in town, so after we got home and had a long, wonderful, hot shower, we went out for our first (and likely only) sushi this year. While inhaling our food, we started eavesdropping on our tablemates, and Rahul suddenly realized that we were sitting next to his favorite travel writer, Pico Iyer. Once Rahul got over being starstruck, we introduced ourselves, told him that his newest book is on the short list of "necessities" (chocolate, red wine, tampons, hummus) we're having our friend Courtney bring out from America next week, and Rahul and he ended up bonding over being lazy Indians from the West who travelled in India without bothering to learn Hindi. Full and happy, we made our way to the local cinema (read: a basement room with six sofas and a big-screen tv) and watched a badly-subtitled bootlegged DVD of Sideways.
We had begun the day with inappropriate clothes, no water, and not much of a plan, and ended up finding a beautiful mountain, a teahut stuck in the middle of the snow, a Japanese restaurant in Little Tibet, a radiant, unassuming writer and a great American movie we'd been dying to see. Not to mention the best brownie we've had in a long time. Being on the road again is damn good.
posted by Meghul at 4:19 AM
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