a third blog post

some thoughts
Traffic in Delhi! A terrifying place to be. There does seem to be some sort of system, but your first mistake is to assume that signs or traffic lines mean anything. The number of lanes of any given street is instead decided by the number of vehicles that can fit shoulder to shoulder, and as this changes fairly frequently, a street becomes a terrifying game of tetris with cars sandwiched between busses, auto rickshaws, pedal rickshaws, and pedestrians. And monkeys. Once we got out into the country, we noticed an entirely new set of rules. First, any time you decide to overtake a bus or 18 wheeler, you must signal your intentions by honking for a while. This is the most exciting bit, as each car seems to have a very distinctive honk, and our bus seemed to have a variety of different tunes and pitches, depending on the situation. Once you have tested your horn for a while, you can move on to rapidly flashing your high beams; once you have sufficiently blinded everyone in front of you, it is safe to wildly veer into the other lane (not that lanes exist) and pass. Also, honk any time you go round a corner, see another car, see any pedestrians, change gears, change the radio station, or notice a motorcycle. Cows are not to be honked at.

Kangra Fort! Our first weekend at Sara we took a daytrip to an old fort that Brad, one of the students from Miami, had visited several times in his previous trips to Dharamsala. The fort itself was in various stages of deterioration, but the scenery surrounding it was still pretty astounding, and the very top of the fortress had a pretty convincing white tree of Gondor.

Various Campus Goings-on: The other day I woke up to a huge commotion down the hallway. Some back story: the campus is the home to a pack of dogs with their own strict hierarchical society that has decided to live in peace alongside its human neighbors. The dogs watch over us and escort the girls to and from their dorms at night, which the girls are very thankful for as the monkeys of Sara see the girls as easier targets for general harassment than the guys. Now back to the other morning. Hearing this commotion, I assumed bootsy (the dog alpha male) was laying down the law among the other males as he will do at least once a day. I could not have been more wrong. As I found out, the monkeys had staged an invasion of the mens dorm, and had infiltrated the southwest wing and were moving along the second floor towards the north. The Dogs had alerted the humans to the danger, and the hallway was filled with monks waving brooms and smacking the wall with their hands and shouting to try and scare the monkeys away. As the monkeys neared my room the monks had started pelting them with pebbles, and finally the vermin were forced to retreat into the jungle.

Trip to Guggel! I have absolutely no idea how Gaggle is spelled or pronounced, but it is the closest town to the Sara campus, about a half hour walk from our dorms. The town isn’t the half Tibetan half Indian mix of Dharamsala or Mcleod Ganj, and is instead our source of actual rural Indian culture. It should go without saying that all this really means is that Gagul is our source for Lassis. Having a real lassi in India is a truly wonderful experience, but you have to be careful; the common tourist may be surprised to find large chunks of yogurt cake mixed in with the liquid (Yogurt cake probably isn’t a real term, but it’s the best I could do to define whatever was floating around in my cup). It should also be noted that our fine Lassi-smith was a vendor who mostly sold nuts in a dark alley a block from the main street of Google.