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Zoe and Ed's Travels
We have been relaxing and doing very little indeed. We are staying at the Grand View Hotel in Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh. It really does have a grand view; from our room we can see the snowcapped peaks of the start of the Himalayas. We are at 2000m here in Dalhousie, so we are taking it easy, and avoiding altitude sickness by staying in bed as much as possible! We decided to splurge a little on the hotel, hence the grand view, the separate living room and bedroom complete with large amounts of wood, and the bath-tub with lashings of hot water (all rather in contrast to the other places we've been staying in India). And all for only 20 pounds a night (although this is also in contrast to other places we've been staying in India, which tend to be more like 3 to 4 pounds a night). We like it here!
We got the bus here from Amritsar. Three hours to a place called Pathankot where we changed buses, and then another three hours snaking up into the Himalyan foothills via a series of hairpin bends and alarming drops beside the road. We were slightly worried about our rucksacks, which we had placed on the roof of the bus, but everything arrived OK.
Our room also has two TVs with a good selection of channels, so we've managed to watch quite a lot of sport: England v Pakistan cricket plus three Premiership football matches!
It is so calm and peaceful here that one can hardly believe that one is in India! It makes a real change not to be constantly surrounded by the sounds of people shouting, spitting, bus horns, and general road noise. It also helps that we're very much out of season: it is quite cold here, but we're coping thanks to our warm weather clothing which we have with us from Mongolia. We have a small convection heater in the rooms, which is just about up to the task of heating our palatial quarters (high ceilings and all).
We're going to be sorry when we have to leave!
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