manali: hippieville

this is the reinactment of when i bit it!!! i was looking very intently for the post office and fell off that ledge into the gutter and hit my knee... dont worry i am ok and no one saw, chris just heard the huge thud!
here's where we ate breakfast one day, bythe river.
this is the veiw from our hotel room, it you cant tell, there are some water falls on that hill, very beautifu!

so, we are now in manali, we werent planning on staying so long, but needed some good rest and some good western food. we are surrounded by israeli hippies! they definately outnumber the population of this town! we leave tonight for leh. it will be a 16 hour jeep trip. ay ay ay. not much news. it rains here so much, we had to stock up on warm clothes for our truip up to the himalayas! leh is at 3500 meters! everyone we have talkedto says its beautiful! we miss everyone so much! we love you, sent us updated of what is going on in oklahoma!

mandi...market or parking garage?

you say parking garage... i say its a market!

with a temple in the center!

well, that's that, we only stayed there a night, but it was pretty cool. we ate some awesoe chinese chili cheese stir fry... it had chucks of cheese in it that were all covered in this super tastey spicey sauce!

Tattapani: hot springs and a wedding

Tattapani sits on a river and also has sulphur hot springs, we stayed at a place that gave ayruvedic massages. we took a stroll down the river bank, it was very pretty

foggy foggy veiw from the bus... like fairy tale land!

Dear Gram, if i didnt have to carry it for 3 1/2 more months, i would bring this rock home to you!


so we were headed out of our hotel sunday night and saw some people dancing and walking down the street. we went to watch and were told it was a wedding. they said we could join in and dance and then invited us into the party (like the rehearsal dinner) we got necklaces and red dot on our heads, we danced more, ate some wonderful dahl and rice and drank chai! and... they invited us for day 2 of the wedding, begining at 7 am
they dressed the groom and we all loaded up, drove up the hill about an hour and walked 30 minutes to go "get the bride"
here they carrying Naresh, the groom up the hill to the brides house
this is the ceremony of wedding the two, their faces are covered since they haven't met. there are family, friends, religious men all around the circle

here Naresh and Sarla are walking around the fire 7 times, to signefy the 7 lives that they will be married.

we were so lucky to get to join them, everyone was very nice to us. we felt like part of the family after the 8 hour ceremony but we were pooped! so we rested once we got back home and went to say bye to them later that night, there was still one more day of the wedding, but we had to move on!

shimla

so shimla is a beautiful little india/english town up in the hills. its rainy and chlly and foggy and there are monkeys around everywhere, along with lazy dogs!


here is a pile of dogs that laid in this same spot for hours, nothing seemed to bother them, not people, cars, other dogs!
heres a pic of the people strolling on the street, there are no cars in central shimla and everyone just walks around and chats and looks in stores and such, its really cute.
see the fog? the buildings were also so cute, hybrids of english cottages and indian cement buildings.

loooook who india loves!!! me too obama beast!pretty sunset over the hills!

chandigarh: monsoon

this is around our hotel. Chandigarh was set up by a modernist name le corbusier, its all rectangles! it was a weird town, but pretty cool.

here's chris at the Nek Chand Fantasy Rock garden. its all recycled building materials and more turned into sculptures and art. it was cool!

my new outfit (the top half) at the rock garden too. this is right before it started POURING!

here's us in our cycle rickshaw, in the monsoon, our rider had to stop because it was raining so hard, he was super nice, and since it didnt ever stop he rode us home in it, )we would have walked or taken a auto, but we had already made a deal with him and we couldn't get out in the rain b/c we had the camera!!

it was seriously the hardest i have ever seen it rain, and it was flooding too. we rode home in about a foot of water, getting splashed by cars and the like, but we all had fun and we made a friend with our rider!

now we are in shimla, pics to come, it takes way too long to upload!

tomorrow we are off to Tattapani to some hot spings and aruvedic treatments!

its cold up here and foggy and rainy!

Old Dehli

we have spent the last couple days exploring the wonders of old dehli, with the wonderful smells, spices, paper stores, children, the largest mosque in India an much more. we ate some amazing naan and dahl, had some fresh pomegranite juice, and some other tasty treats. the city life is a little criazy for us, so we are definately ready to board our 5:50 am train up to Chandigarh. after that to Shimla.

this is at the top of the mineret in the mosque, theres the city below, smog and all. really a very beautiful view.

this is part of the mosque, made of sandstone and marble, we spent the morning here people watching and relaxing, then our feet got too hot (you have to remove your shoes before entering) so we headed back on the caotic streets.

hereès a glimpse of a not-so-busy-dehli-street. lots of scooters, cycle-rickshas, cars and people, oh dont let me forget- cows, oxen, goats, carts, all sorts of things.

also, i got a whole new outfit today, pretty exciting.

we love you all very much, sus and chris

dehli

hello everyone, we made it safely to dehli last night, found a hotel and got some sleep. today we have just been orienting ourselves with the new city and country. we are happy to be here and ready for an adventure! we have already had some good food... banana dosas, sweet lime, and mango juice! we will update more soon. love and peace from around the world!