White Water Rafting

Today I went white water rafting! I had to meet at the company's office at 9am however when I got there they said they had made a mistake and nobody else was going on that particular trip; they asked if I minded swapping to another route with a small refund which was fine with me. The strange thing was there was nobody else at the office and as I was bundled in a jeep by myself I started to worry what was happening and the driver didn't speak English! We drove for half an hour to the middle of nowhere and I was left in the van for twenty minutes not knowing what was going on; then a group of seven Indians emerged out of a house, got in the van and started chatting away to each other in Hindi. I didn't want to go the whole day in silence whilst surrounded by a group of people so I suppose you could say I 'forced' my way into their conversation! They turned out to be amazingly nice, about my age and with similar jobs and by the end of the day they were feeding me their homemade Indian sweets (laddu), all speaking English and inviting me to their houses in Mumbai when I go next month. In fact I have been invited to stay at people's homes all over India (and the world!) with people I've met in the last three weeks and I've also made plans to meet up again with other travellers I've met along the way (for example in a few days I will meet up with a woman from Chile that I met at the meditation retreat).

Suited up!

Whilst we were in our wet-suits waiting to get into the rapids it was so unbelievably boiling that I thought I was going to faint! However when we got into the raft and it nearly capsized I felt how freezing the Indus River was as it comes down from melted snow at the top of mountains. There were three rafts in total and we were having splashing fights in the icy stretches of water between the rapids. Someone fell in and a little bit later a few of us decided to jump in; I spent almost twenty minutes travelling in the rapids beside the boat holding on to the life line (there is NO WAY they would allow that in England!)

On the raft!

Afterwards I saw a pet monkey attack a stray dog whilst the owners looked on, laughed and encouraged it.

If you can put up with twelve men in a cafe relentlessly and unashamedly staring at you then you can eat dinner reeeally cheaply at the non-tourist places here. I had two samosas, which were made from scratch in front of me, with homemade chilli sauce and a cup of chai tea for 30 rupees (30p). They were amazing and I ended up chatting to two American girls that came in a little while later so it wasn't too bad.

Samosas filled with potatoes and spices.

There women everywhere on the street selling tiny, sweet apricots for 40 rupees for a massive bag.

After spending three weeks in the state of Ladakh and using Leh as my base town I will start to slowly head to the south of India, visiting many places on the way. I leave at 5am for Manali and it is apparently a "spine jangling" twenty hour coach journey through valleys and mountains split over two days with a night in a tent. The owner of my current guesthouse has given me a stick because she thinks I will need it in the early hours of tomorrow morning when I walk to the coach station because of all they dogs, cows and donkeys roaming around in the dark!