We’d been traveling for 3 weeks now, and somewhere around a week or so ago, we both kind of clicked into our rhythm and came to feel at home on the road. India is still busy and challenging and at times in-your-face with all the differences, smells, mysteries, uncertainties, frightening things (like the driving). But it is no longer overwhelming, or foreign in the sense that we feel like we’re still on the outside looking in. We have found a sense of place here, and though every day and every transaction from meals to browsing shops to getting from place of arrival to place of stay still requires first-thought rather than being second-nature…we feel like, for the most part, we know what we are doing now. It is a welcome feeling!

We spent our days hanging out with Kasper, checking out Leh, playing chess and sampling the cuisine on offer – generally comprised of Thukpas (Tibetan noodle soups), chow mein, banana pancakes –a pancake…with a banana on it, that is – and momos, their word for steamed potstickers.

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Wash it all down with a big bottle of fresh Kashmiri apple juice and wait for hours and days for the internet connection to come back on for the town, and throw in a whitewater rafting trip through the stark mountain landscape and you’ve got our life in Leh for the first week. You can visit the town of Leh for yourself in the album. We were especially familiar with our little stretch of Leh between our hotel and up the hill to the Gesmo and Happy World restaurants.

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Surprisingly, considering we were in the Himalayas after all, the rafting wasn’t as intense as I’d thought it would be. Still, it had some pretty landscape which you check out for yourself in the rafting album (and at least check out the dodgy wetsuits!). It had been nice to get out into the hills, but for a bit more than a few bumps in the river, I set my sights a few weeks down the road to Nepal…

Meanwhile, we continued to adjust and started getting used to the…quirks…of this land we were in.

[Electricity Video]