Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all. Laura and I spent it in the gorgeous hills of Darjeeling, taking scenic train rides on the toy train (wait until you see the photos, it's fun in a post-colonial sort of way) and trekking to the Tibetan Refugee Center to buy a handwoven rug (!). A fun Christmas gift to ourselves.

That, due to back-orders, won't be finished until Nov 2009 so we'll likely see it Christmas next year. Or even in early 2010.

We've had the usual cell-phone issues. Plenty of battery juice, but the minutes drained like glaciers melting off the Himalayas due to global warming. And no one knows how to give us a refill because we bought the damn thing in Mumbai. So instead we missed our families and consoled ourselves with a happy Christmas feast with the latest travelling friends: the mysterious and entertaining Phil, our new friends Bjorn & Anna (more on that soon), a young Aussie couple named Michael and Tarsh we met that night, and a nice gent from southern British Columbia who we met only in passing.

We packed and split town the next day, headed to a safari at a distant nature reserve ...