I love the Himalyas

Well I have been here in Minali for a couple of days now and I can definitely understand why so many damn hippies flock to this town to stay for extended periods of time. Everywhere you go there is a breathtaking view of the snow-capped mountains, all it takes is one second to look up and see the postcard panorama. Saul and I have not yet begun to do all of the crazy extreme sports that they offer here, we have been just bull shitting around and checking out the different areas of the town. Tomorrow however we begin doing all of the different activities there are to offer, for example we go white water rafting at 10 in the morning and that should be pretty rad. After that we are gonna hike to the top of this mountain, where there is a giant waterfall, you can go behind the waterfall and if it is a sunny day you can see rainbows everywhere. Thats what we have been told anyway. Day after that its mountain biking and zorbing, (rolling down a hill in a big giant clear ball!) Then I think we are going to finish the week off by going up in a hot air balloon!

Yesterday I also took part in my first session of Yoga, they have a beginners class just down the road from our guest house. The session runs for an hour from 10-11, and it costs 100 rupees which translates to about two bucks. I really had no idea what to expect with this beginners class of yoga, and I really didn't think that it would be all that hard, as it turns out I was so very wrong. The class was so much more intense than I had expected, I sweated my balls off doing all the different streaches and whatnot, but I did feel really good after that. However today I woke up with aching muscles all over my body, I never realized how great of a workout yoga can be. The best part of the whole class was this older woman that was right next to me. The entire class she was moaning and groaning everytime we would begin the streatch, and the way that she was moaning was very explicit. I had such a hard time keeping my composure and not busting out laughing. Even the yogi thought the noises this woman was making were a bit ridiculous and over the top, he kept walking over to her, correcting her posture and she would let out this guttural cries that began to make me very uncomfortable. He kept asking this woman, "you cannot streatch without making the classical music?" This was such a trip, Saul and I joke about it for the rest of the days and we had to tell the tale to every other traveller that we met up with.

After Yoga yesterday we went and took a short little rest and then started talking to the cool dude that runs our guest house. We asked him about short treks near the town we were staying in, and he told us of this waterfall that we should go check out, "The Rainbow Waterfall." He gave us some very vague directions about a pine forest, traveling 30 degrees away from the marked trail, and then something or other about a big U-turn when you come to a cliff. We set out with the intentions of finding the top of this waterfall, but as we were traveling "30 degrees" away from the path, we ended up just at the bottom of the water fall we were aiming for. At the bottom though there were about three or four big rocks that created a nice little pool of water, and the roaring waterfall was the background music to this certain site. We chose to just hang around there for an hour, where we met some crazy tibetan kids that were vacationing here too. These kids have such skewed ideas of what the United States is its really funny when they ask you about all of the women that we supposedly get, they asked us "just like James Bond? Right? Right?" We ended up just joking around with them for a while, and they were making some really raunchy jokes, it was a pretty good time all in all. We got to jump into the cold river and swim around a little bit as well which was very nice to do indeed. After we set back out, we asked a couple of the other people around about getting to the top of the waterfall, and they showed us where we strayed. Apparently the 30 degree angle that we thought we were taking was not quite enough because you need to get all the way up this foothill/mountain to reach the trail that winds around these big rock faces. With not very much daylight left we headed back to town, but now we are very determined to make it to the top, so we will head out tomorrow after we get back from rafting.

Well untill later, everyone have a nice week? I forget what day it is....

Peace,

J a k e