crucial

Started studying yoga with one Vijay, a very good and warm teacher. Two mornings of this, starting at 8.30 and going for 2 to 3 hours, and my body is pretty sore but broken in. Its said (and its true) that you will make more progress in India in 3 months than you would in a year at home. Going everyday helps. Vijay also has the most amazing chanting voice, this bizarre microtonal swooping intonation that he uses to end the practice. As a musician, its even distracting.

Walked up the mountain behind the town, a long and beautiful. At the top there is a big mess of prayer flags and sheets of paper with tibetan buddha comics on them. Looks like a tibettan rave aftermath. Like a lot of monk had one hell of a sunrise/sunset. I imagine every hill from here to Nepal has this at the top of it and at every decent vista.

Down by the tushita meditation center I saw two cows all of a sudden go at it, locking horns and bellowing. Everyone stops to look and next thing we know the alpha cow has pushed the other one off the side of the road into the stinging nettles. "Its okay," I'm assured, "he's strong." They throw rocks at him to get him onto his feet and direct him out of the bushes. India of course has cows everywhere. Yaks can't survive under 3000 Metres. I am right now sitting next to Tashi who was born in Tibet. I ask him why, he says its just because of the temperature. Apparently the Yaks needed salt (because there are few lakes in Tibet), so they sent one down the hill to India. It was hot there and he turned into a Buffallo. So there you go. More likely they went up the hill, but I'm no expert.

The monks walk around McLeod Ganj here like Jedi Knights. They are the heavies. Only talked a bit here and there. More usually walking up the hills, maybe we start talking or at least a little grunt back and forth. Its easy to arrange an "english lesson"/hang out time. I often see westerners (or is that northerners ?) sitting down with a handful of monks. I'll probably start straight in with "so let's talk about the diamond cutter sutra ...."

Finally have some good conversations with some westerners around here. I meet a cool german guy from Koln who also has binaural mics and a minidisc. He also saves my life by hipping me to the fact that its easy to connect to the windows XP machines and upload pictures to the web. I'm getting the driver right now...so soon we have pics. An interesting Israeli and an English woman, both with long histories of living in Nepal.

This morning I heard flutes, and then I see some old american guy trying out the wooden flutes. "Hah," he scoffs knowing they can't follow his english "you should try playing a metal traverse flute. Betcha can't play one of those. Mine costs $3000 !" and then for my benefit: "these people, they live in fantasy worlds." shit head.

I still have to say the food here is boring and is probably what will eventually force me to leave. Even the "best indian in town" was really really bland. I should buy masala just to doctor the food.

Finally found good breakfast: parantha and eggs and chai for 12Rs :

So I'm getting into the flow, will probably help with some website building for people, like Tashi here.