The Weary Traveler

It was about 6:30 as the sun was rising over the mountains. I’d been trying to sleep for hours on the bus, but finally gave up. When I opened my eyes the picture I saw almost made the last 12 hours of the worst bus ride of my life worth it. The bright orange sun began putting off it’s orange glaze over the most lushus green covered mountains. As the sun rose further it drifted over more green until it hit the river just below. It was a true masterpiece.

So to be quite honest, our journey from Kushalnagar to Dharamsala was long, completely tiring, and really not that pleasant. We left last Friday and took what should have been a 5 ½ hour bus ride up to Bangalore. The bus got a flat tire though… and my impression after waiting for an hour and a half for them to change it was that they really didn't know how to change the tire. I’m no expert, but there was a lot of banging… I didnt think that was typical of changing a tire… But eventually we did make it Bangalore.

IN Bangalore we stayed one night while waiting for our train to leave Saturday night. Banglore guys… it felt just like any big city in the US. I’m putting a few pictures on. For those of you from Vegas, it felt a lot like the strip shopping ways, maybe a lot like down by the M&M factory. It serious is just like downtowns in America, full of shops, etc. We even caved and bought ice cream sundaes at the McDonald’s. It felt like home- and there were quite a few other white people too. Remember, we only saw two in Kushalnagar for the week and a half we were there.
Saturday night we went to board our train. The train left at 7:20 Saturday night was was suppose to arrive in Dehli on Monday morning at 10. It was quite the experience! We went pretty much over almost all the country, seeing all the green. There were some beautiful places we passed to be certain! But there were also some destitute places along the way. It’s interesting because here I’ve noticed that poverty is not hidden away. In the states, we have the ghettos, where most of the “poor” congregate. Then as you get to other parts you have nice houses, etc. Here, they have the most beautiful buildings… right next to run down shacks. The most beautiful next to the complete destitute… It's interesting to see. Startling in many ways.

But back to the train ride, we met some interesting people. Lots of people just see the white kids and want to know where they are from, what they are doing, etc. Lol although I think the funniest thing to watch was the last night we cracked out the cards and started playing hearts. By the end we had a small crowd gathered around watching… Lol Americans playing cards, go figure right? Oh, but that reminds me. One, these trains are cheap- so they are dirty to be certain. The bathrooms… you def try to avoid. But also on these sleeper trains you have 6 in each compartment. When its night time you put the seats up and it forms 6 beds. Perfect number right? 6 for 6. But the problem is they also let people get tickets to board the train without sleeping places. So at night you end up having a lot of extra people without beds… It just made me think because we would never do that in the states. But here they crowd as many people as possible…

After the train ride we stayed in Delhi that night and then boarded the overnight bus ride that I mentioned at the beginning. 13 hours, from 630pm-8am up to Dharamsala. The experience is so hard to describe… I think the closest thing I could compare to in my mind is what I thought a bus ride in Africa would be like. Now what that means, I don’t know because I’ve never been to Africa nor ridden a bus there. But its what I pictured it would be like. Now don’t get me wrong- I never feared for my life. But we went on some crazy roads where I thought we’d lose a tire. It was overnight… but not a one of us sleep a wink. At one point we even forded a river… yes, we drove over a small river in a bus… I literally laughed outloud and said where are we? But we made it up to Dharamsala.

It is beautiful up here guys! It's just tucked away at the foothills of the Himilayas and it is astoundingly beautiful. The most shocking thing though is just how many westerners there are here…. They are everywhere! There are Italain, French, American, Israeli, etc food everywhere. You can’t walk down the street without running into more westerners. It was a huge shock since for the first 3 weeks we hardly saw any…

Anyway, I think that is all for now. It was a long journey up here… But we are finally here in this beautiful place.