shimla, delhi, leh

well, since my last entry we have travelled up into the himilayars to leh, at 11,000ft we landed into the highest airstrip in the world, the weather was beautiful blue sky so we had an amazing view of the snow caped mountains and the moon like plains and desart, truly a magical place, the people are all very nice and humble, all into their climbing and outdoors life, apart from our hotel we first checked into more of a private cottage run by a millitant guy call situ, he dident speak much english and was quite strict about when me and jamie should have dinner and get up out of bed. which dident go down well with us so we ate at pizza de hutt (good pizza) on both nights and checked out of his hotel on the second night, partly due to dogs barking right outside our window and the very uncomfortbal beds, so we went and stayed at the hotel across the road, that situ kindly arranged for us, after we told him we were leaving.
our trip for the day was to go visit a couple of buddist temples, one being 1100 years old with 1000's of pictures (painted) of the gods dotted all round the temple, photoraphy was strictly forbidin, but i managed to get out my ipod nano with hi-def video recording and hid it in my pocket with the camera pointing out away from the monk, gonna put stright onto youtube!!!
in the morning we visited the hall of fame of the army, (the place felt a bit like isreal with millarty officals all over town) we learnt about the war between pakistan, being fought on a large glaciar in the mountains, it cost them 1m dollars a day and has been going on since....? well a long time. i asked people what they were fighting about and no one could give an answer, religion, tertory, but the area they were fighting for is all isolated mounatins areas, nothing worth setting up home, because it way too cold up there.
we also visited a place that claimed will move your car up hill due to the earth's magnetic field "magnic mountain", but nothing happened, i asked our guide if it ever worked, he just smailed and looked emabarassed (dident speak any english) all he could say was 'no'. he dident seem that borthed by the mountain and it seemed more like somewhere to bring tourist, but the sceanic view looked cool anyway.
i would like to come back to leh one day and hike a mountain and white water raft down their river. defintly worth a visit.
we then flew back to delhi for one night and checked ourselves into a well known international hotel chain, because the last place really dident need a second visit. we got to sit by a pool and get a good night sleep, after visiting the all you can eat buffett of course. (jamie has five plates of food!!!) i had two!
this morning we left for shimla and arrived early, the roads hear whind all the way up and over the mountains and the houses cling onto the sides of the mountains like the flavars in brizil, we got to our hotel, which is in the art -deco style from the 1920's, very interesting place full of pictures of old movie stars from the 30'-60's clark gable, fred astair, sean conorry, tom cruise all signed, the family that lived in the building were indian royalty and one of the princess was the toast of hollywood in those days and hung out with all these people, also there are three tiger heads, jamie said "thats where all the tigers went".. on a wall" it does feel like we have gone back in time to the empire times, the family still live here.
this after noon we went to the last vicory's house and where the indian and british goventment used to come in the summers when it gets to hot in delhi, its a old scottish designed building, looking a lot like reading blue coats boarding house, we paid for a tour along with 20 others, we had to wait 30mins till the tour started and he showed us two rooms!!! he did show us the table where ghandi signed the independence of india (and used in the film ghandi) when the guide wasent looking i touched the table! (he he) but we were annoyed that we only got to see two rooms in a massive building, its now home to the indian socity of advanced science.

we're in shilma for one more day, then back to delhi...oh i saw a bollywood film 'kites' was quite a laugh i will try bring a copy home with me. (its the biggest film out right now, set in las vagas and staring a spanish and india couple. 'really cheesy!

we're in mumbia on the 25h then back home on the 30th, we have cut out goa and kochin because of the rain and our bellies. and we miss home ;)

oh while we we're in leh and walking down to town jamie manages to walk right into a cow!!! it was dark and the cows was black, but very funny.
we have also been watching the monkeys in shimla, their everywhere, one came up to jamie and ask for mans secreat of red fire, then they all broke into song. 'wanna be like you hoo hoo'
well i had to make a kipling referance altough disney might have had something to do with that one.

missing everyone,

ollie and jamie.