Cookies and cool karma

We're again wallowing in our own sweat after 10 days in the sweet coolness of the Himalayan foothills. Tomorrow we set off for Nepal - in the footsteps of countless intrepid travellers of yore - by plane. With Royal Nepal Airlines. (Lonely Planet entry: The notoriously unreliable, cancellation-prone Royal Nepal Airlines has a chronic lack of aircraft. It is worth flying with any airline other than RNA. I haven't told Amanda that bit yet.)

And then and then...
To Mcleod Ganj, seat of the Tibetan government in exile and home to the 14th Dalai Lama, the restless and the disenchanted flock in desperation from the West in search of enlightenment and wisdom. Despite the disquieting whiff of spiritual tourism in town, the Dalai Lama's complex, temples and monastery, as well as the Buddhist monks themselves, exude a reassuring serenity and a genuine sense of goodness.

And we too, without looking for it, have a moment of cosmic coincidence when, only due to our search for my lost bandanna, we meet Stephen over a choc-chip cookie in the cafe of the Hotel Om. He took a year out to get away from it all, and 17 years later is still journeying. We talk for hours about randomness, ego and the mind, and his two-week stints in a cave. The next day we spend two hours playing with his version of Tarot cards, and leave feeling happy.

From there we catch a bus to chilled Chamba, a town of many Hindu temples, no tourists and welcoming locals. Despite our initial (oh how mistrustful we are) reluctance, we take chai (sweet tea) in the house of Amirjeet Singh, civil engineer, and his wife Anju, English teacher. We meet the children, look at all the photo albums, take family snaps and promise to send them the prints.

We leave Himachal Pradesh and descend back to the plains for Amritsar, where the Sikh Golden Temple bowls us over. We join 30,000 pilgrims in a free meal provided in the dining hall of the temple and are humbled by the incredible friendliness of everyone there. We lose count of the kids who want to show off their English (and laugh at the boy who mistakes Ricky Ponting for a South African cricketer).

Mary joins us from Chandigarh for the weekend, and together we go to the spectacle that is the daily closing of the Wagha border between India and Pakistan. A sea of people on both sides sing and dance the virtues of their country while the tall guards try to out-strut, out-prance and out-bellow each other. As the sun sets, so do the flags, the last patriotic chants echo across the divide and the gate closes. (Apparently, until recently the crowds then used to storm the gate to hurl insults at each other, but for good reason that practice is now prevented by the burly, moustachioed guards.)

So far so belly good
The food in India is truly fantastic (not good news for me lovehandles) and - may this country's many gods keep it so - neither of us has had any tummy problems so far. Even the goat dressed up as mutton is yummy, although everything is obviously mostly vegetarian. And nimbu-soda (fresh lime with soda water) is probably the most refreshing drink known to the hot and bothered.