Thursday January 16th,1986
I've been doing a lot of practices lately instead of writing in my journal since Rowhshie's been so sick. We left New Delhi and headed up into the mountains when Rowshie got Deli Belly. She had a bad reaction to medicine there. After that I intuited that most tropical illnesses die off in the mountains. Also I had heard great things about Tibetan Doctors.
As we entered Dharmsala by bus we magically met Lama Ayang who had given us Phowa in Santa Cruz, California.As I was unloading our Baggage off of the top of the bus Windy was speaking with him. She introduced Geshela to him. We then moved into the Kailash Hotel with a most spectacular view of the Himalayas rising above us.Upper and lower Dharmasala are at 5600 feet and 3600 feet respectively. It's about 60 to 70 degrees farenheit during the day and below freezing every night. We are looking around for weekly rates in other hotels. The whole family with the exception of Rowshie went to meet Lama A. He asked us to come again this morning. I came alone. He gave us a letter of introduction to the head of his Lineage. And sent us off to meet him.
January 17th Stan is allergic to something here. We need to get more medicine for him so he stays well. Rowshie is still weak from her bout with Deli Belly but she is getting better. We are at 5500 feet now in the Green Hotel. 1st hot shower in two weeks. Only cold ones until now. Hot is wonderful!
There are many golden colored monkeys, mongooses, and large silver and black apes.The silver and black ones look to be 4 to 5 feet tall if they stood up like humans. We are told not to go into the pine forests at night as apes and monkeys hunt in packs and can be dangerous. The eat small dogs rodents and whatever they can find. We visited a Hindu temple in I believe Varanasi before New Delhi. It was dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey God. We had to be protected from monkeys competing over food temple offerings by monks wielding 5 to 6 foot staffs common to police and miltary here in India. Bank guards carry double barrelled shotguns instead of pistols. This really indicated to us the gap between rich and poor. In New Delhi in an underground mall, men in plain clothes carried kalashnikov submachine guns. To increase the surreal nature of our experience in New Delhi, there is a park above the underground mall where men ask to clean your ears for a small price with miniature spoons. They showed us letters of reference from many westerners. We weren't impressed. But it was difficult not to laugh because of the cultural difference. Many experiences we had seemed to be out of movie and could not be explained in any way by us to this day.
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