Bhang! Bhang!

Dharamsala. Home of the fattest dogs in India. All we saw every day were huge packs of enormous dogs waddling through the streets or, more commonly, passed out snoring on doorsteps. So cute and chunky and so much better to see than the poor scraggly mangy skinny skittish little fellas slinking around every other city we've been to.

We met such a cool group of international travellers here: the crazy Azim (originally from Malaysia, lately from Melbourne)



Jessie and Larissa, from Vancouver and Brazil respectively. We heard Jessie's voice outside our room on the first day in town and Sarah instantly recognised it. Turns out they were in the same English class at University of British Columbia a few years ago!



Rounding out our group was Mona (aka Barati), a gorgeous blonde German girl who's lived in India since she was seven years old, and Ludo the Italian stallion. And some random Indian kid Rae picked up at the waterfall. She likes em young.



The dream team went for a nice walk to the next village, spent about three hours ordering 2 sandwiches and a banana shake (which is the usual pace at most cafes in India) and then hiked up an incredible valley to take a dip in one of the freezing pools terraced below a stunning waterfall. Then hiking further up to a little place among the trees called the Shiva cafe where, stupidly undeterred by our experience with happy pizzas in China, we decided to share a few bhang lassis. Our game of cards quickly deteriorated into a game of staring into the distance, giggling and spending at least 45 minutes and a whole pad full of paper trying to work out a bill that ended up being a dollar each. It was the principle of getting the mathematics right, you see.



The walk back down at sunset was just about the most amazing thing we'd ever seen as the orange sun lit up the valley of green sculpted-looking trees, gurgling water with woolly goats and sheep grazing on the slopes and red and orange robed monks pacing serenely by. When we stopped to watch for a while, Sarah's description of what we were seeing brought Rae to tears and I was rendered simply speechless for at least an hour. That's a long time for me. I blame the lassi.