End of India... beginning of Israel (Heidi)

I love reading all the fabulous posts!! Yay! Can't wait to see the Ghanan skirts, and it's just so good to hear that everyone is having an amazing time, even if there are gunshots involved (hope you're staying safe, Jeff).

My last week in India was simply amazing. Sara and I took a trip up north to Manali, a mountain town nestled in the foothills of the Himilayas. It was a quick trip (34 hours of travel for 36 hours there), but it was memorable and totally worth it. After a flight to Delhi and a 14 hour over-night drive, awaking to the beauty of the area instantly erased any thoughts of the distressing travel. It was like looking at Glacier National Park (western Montana) on steroids, or getting thrust back into an ancient time when everything was bigger - trees, rivers, mountains. After temperatures constantly in the 100s, the 50 degree weather was refreshing and cause for hot tea and jackets, which was fabulous! Being 50 miles from Pakistan, and 30 miles from Tibet, there was tangible Tibetan and Budhist influence here, far different from the Muslum-dominated Hyderabad (which itself is unique in the Hindu country). We did a little light hiking and exploring and found a fabulous Boreal-like forest over looking a river with prayer flags, mist-covered and all!

The second day we had every intention of going on a day hike... but when we got to the trail head we were completely blown away by a mountain carnival at 9000 feet. It was incredible -- paragliding, horse rides, zorbing, blow-up bouncy houses -- all in this little green valley surrounded by white caps. Somewhat reminiscent of Hilton's description of Shangri-La, without the whole 'no contact with the outside world' part. Needless to say, we were distracted from our hike, and eagerly embraced fact we were tourists and this was all here for our entertainment! So we went paragliding and zorbing, and when it rained we sat on the mountain side by a fire created by our paragliding guide. It was so dreamlike and really indescribable. The best part was that there was absolutely no semblance of order, so the paragliders just landed into crowds of running people and zorbs just assume people would move (we actually saw one kid get rolled over by one... but she was ok).

After falling into the rabbit hole... this is the sight of our Solang Valley madness.
Getting ready to jump off the mountain!
Zorbing! (aka: rolling down the hill in a huge plastic ball while two people are inside strapped down in an inner sphere)
All in all I had a wonderful time in India and have no doubt I'll be back. I would love to spend more time in the north and I've been told that I just have to visit places like Goa, Chennai, and the Kashmir province (once it settles down a little bit).

But now, a new adventure begins in Tel Aviv! Yes, India is over and I'll now start working on my summer GFE in Israel. A couple days before I was to arrive I found out that I was granted access to a national drill that is being conducted here, so my plans quickly changed and I've been staying in Tel Aviv (instead of going strait to Beersheba) for the past couple days. I will be spending my first 10 days here and it should really be an incredible learning experience. They're going to be sounding the missle siren on Tuesday! Too cool! Here's an article about the drill: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346492354&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

So far I've been really impressed by Tel Aviv -- it's really clean and has a beautiful charm about it. Plus, my hotel is right on the beach... and since everything shuts down here during the Sabbath, I've been spending plenty of time on the sand! I do think I'll be learning some Hebrew -- while most people speak it, aside from menus, most writing on stores and signs don't have English. Oh, and the airport security that I was so worried about going through turned out to be practically nonexistent. It was just simple questions at the passport counter, took 10 minutes. But there was one lady who I chatted with in the hotel and she's a US citizen with no Arab stamps, but she has an Egyptian middle name or something, and she was there for 9 hours.

Welcome to Israel, I guess!