rain, damp, mould and now cockroaches!

ravi and ben in class
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Still in Bhagsu although we have recently moved as our rather small room was becoming a bit claustrophobic and the damp was making our things go moudly!

we had to say goodbye to ben's cowboy hat and his board shorts only just made it

the last couple of weeks have been really fun although the majority of my time was spent in the guesthouse as the restaurant was a great place to hang out, the internet cafe was decked out with webcams and headphones and we discovered a Ravi who was running a jewellery making course two dorrs down from our bedroom!

tim and traci working hard
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i wasnt that taken with the idea to begin with but i thought i'd give it a try - it was five hours a day for a minimum of 3 days and me and ben ended up doing 8

it was loads of fun and the teacher Ravi was a really nice guy - although slightly prone to telling stories about students who had given him trouble who he'd had to kick out of class, we were very well behaved!

we were quite pleased really that we had to stop as Ravi has gone to Delhi for two weeks as we were spending a fair bit of money on the silver for the things we made and i was starting to think i might like to make a tiara, god knows what that would have cost

hard work with monkey paws!
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anyway Ravi left and we spent a few days exploring with tim and traci, we wandered up the hill to a nearby village and we wandered through the valley where we saw wild mongooses and tried to feed them lentils - they were seemingly unimpressed!

we also took a trip to McLeod Ganj to watch a bootleg version of the new Pirates of the Carribean film - the cinema was a small room that had the inside of a bus transplanted into it with a big tv at the front and the quality of the film was poor to say the least, you could barely see anything and the soundtrack was virtually unintelligable, luckily there were subtitles however these had been done by someone who had a VERY basic knowledge of english and certainly couldnt understand anything said in a jamaican or scottish accent - they did however attempt to translate the guys who were speaking spanish! very entertaining but we had to give up in the end!

the beautiful ring that Ben made for me
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then tim and traci had a couple of "last days" as they were attempting to get their butts in gear to see Rajasthan, they finally made it on the third last day and after they'd missed the first  buses!

after they left our plan was to move out of our damp stinky room and find somewhere at the bottom of the hill and therefore closer to McLeod Ganj then see about some voluntary work

however after a day of looking at other rooms we realised that everywhere stank of damp and ours was in fact one of the best budget places, i decided the miserable weather was getting me down so we both said bollox to the plan and decided that we'd leave asap, then we decided as we were only staying for another night we could afford a better place so we checked into a proper hotel with a tv and room service and a baby cockroache infestation!

things i made
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we're too lazy to move again so we're getting bug spray insted

plus the hotel makes the best indian food we have had so far, i have to admit i've not been very impressed with the food - personally i think we do it better in england - they dont even have mango chutney!!!!!!

all the curry's have been really heavy and rich and the meat sucks but this place is something special, the curry sauces are light and delicious and the chicken is no longer scraggly gristly pieces of butt meat, i'm even back to wanting curry for breakfast!

more things i made!
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but i think we're going to move on tomorrow - heading to Amaritsar for a couple of days and then Rishakesh .... maybe!

xx