Steve has been bothered by a nasty head cold so we haven't taken any long trips since returning from Gangotri/Gaumukh, but we have had some interesting local experiences.   We spent most of a day with Tenzing and Tsering visiting the Tibetan part of Mussoorie, "Happy Valley".  There is an active Tibetan community centered around a Buddhist temple and several schools.   Of the two largest schools, one is sponsored by the Indian government, intended to help integrate Tibetan refugees, and the other is a boarding school for orphans supported by European organizations (we didn't find out which ones)  The temple is active and we, too, made brief prayers in the Tibetan Buddhist manner, instructed by Tsering.  The photo shows us with two of the resident monks.  We walked to the top of the nearby hill with hundreds of prayer flags blowing in the wind, carrying the prayers printed on the flags up to heaven. 
 

  Happy Valley is at the other end of Mussoorie, about 5 miles from our house.  From the top of the prayer flag hill we could see a lot of mountains (but you see them everywhere) and a large Hindu girls' school situated on and just below the old polo grounds from British days.
 

  We had a lunch of delicious momos (something like wonton) with an unidentified meat filling at a small cafe on the grounds of one of the Tibetan schools.  Tenzing says the meat is "water buffalo" but who knows.
 

  Later in the afternoon, we joined the crowd watching the Ram festival in Landour bazaar, our end of Mussoorie.  This festival celebrates the defeat of Ravan by Ram as related in the Ramayana.  The small parade consisted of about five "floats" on the back of trucks spewing black exhaust.  Each truck carried people dressed as characters from the story.  One had Ram, Sita, Lakshman, and several children "monkeys" from the army of the monkey king Hanuman.   Hanuman himself walked among the crowd, bopping children on the head with a (soft) cotton mace and scattering candy he took from shopkeepers.  A loud brass band accompanied the parade, serenading the shopkeepers and collecting small contributions.  It was all great fun.  It ended about 3km away at a large papier-mache statue of Ravan.  We didn't see this part but were told that Ram shoots a flaming arrow into the statue and it burns up. 
 

  Yesterday morning Judy joined a Woodstock teacher and eight students for a hike down a back mountain to one of the streams that supplies the Mussoorie water system (when that system works which it didn't for three days recently).  The water is pumped up about 1000 ft (change in altitude) by a series of three pumping stations.  The hike started at 10AM and she got home at 3PM, tired and hungry.  The hike passed through the terraced fields of farmers, oak and pine forest, across dry outcroppings and lush areas where the water flows down the hill.  There are 150 varieties of ferns, many interesting birds, and other wildlife.  They lunched along the stream by the bottom pumping station then up a steep trail past the second and third pumping stations.  Near the top Judy had a chance to meet a very large and possibly aggressive flying squirrel.  This animal has an approximately two foot long body and 2 foot long bushy tail.   It was in the bushes near the trail and when she stopped to look at it and call to her trailmate it must have gotten frightened and jumped toward her.  She jumped too, fell down, her trailmate watched it jump into a tree, and a minute or so later it soared from the tree down the mountain about 500 feet to another tree. 
 

   So much for local adventures.  We'll keep you informed.
 

Love,
 

Judy and Steve