movin' on

We celebrated Losar today with our students and friends at L.I.T. We shared tea, stories and laughter. Songpo showed us the traditions of the Losar alter. The we all shared a delicious meal of goat and radish soup, pak, (roasted barley flour that you mix with a little tea and make a ball in your hand, then eat it), and an assortment of Tibetan sweets. After the food, Songpo and Shakya presented Phillip and I with Katas, a white silk scarf that is given to people at a time of departure. It symbolizes good luck and success for the upcoming journey. We all shared mutual thanks. It was wonderful to be included in their Losar festivities, and to be honored in this goodbye ceremony. Each student has touched me in a special way and I will continue to hold them all in my heart. They all said repeatedly they would pray for Phllip and I, and we said that we would also be praying for them and the whole school of L.I.T.

I thought I'd give you guys a little snapshot of our plans for the next month. The rail tickets have been bought, but otherwise we will still keep things flexible and go where we feel called with in our ability.

First, we hit the road tomorrow at 6am heading to Rewalsar, via Mandi. From there, we will head to Manali, where we will likely be met by snow showers. We will stay for a few days and hopefully enjoy the hot springs there! Then, it is time to head south. Upon arriving in India, the heat drove me north; Now, I feel ready for some warmer temperatures! We will go to Shimla, take the Viceroy "toy train", which is supposed to be incredibly scenic, down the mountains to Kalka, where we can catch a bus to Chandigarh. We have one mission in Chandigarh - go to the airport and change our tickets home for sometime in late March. When this is accomplished, we will take a bus ride to Dehra Dun where I want to check out Vandana Shiva's farm-school and seed bank, Navdanya. Then, to Haridwar for Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering of people for a religious purpose in the world, (so I've heard). We have a train ride from Haridwar to Varanasi on March 1st. We will stay in "the city older than time" until March 5th, then take a train to Delhi. We will stay in Delhi until the 9th, then take a train to Mumbai. From Mumbai, we are goin' to the beach! Oh yes! We plan to travel down the Konkan coast to Gokarna, in Karnataka state, but may make some stops in Goa along the way. Then back to Mumbai on March 18th and flying home sometime soon from there.

Of course I will share the details along the way, but I thought some of you (Merry, Mac, Eddie and Susie in particular) might enjoy seeing our planned destination written out in this timeline. You can follow us on the map if you want!

It will be interesting to travel again, since we have been so grounded in the Dharamsala area since Christmas Eve. And Dharamsala has been good to us! Now, I feel ready to move on and we are both excited about the places we will visit. We came to India to travel, then wanted to be in a stable location so we created that, and now feel ready to be travelers. So! May the roads and rails be kind!