The Himalayas Return

"Tomorrow festival", tells us the friendly guesthouse owner.

- Tom Landau

Not a big surprise. India is the queen of festivals. The next day, we hop on a bus. After half an hour of a bumpy, curvy, uphill road while standing, we've reached Bahu. The moment we stepped off the bus, it became clear that this place has seen few tourists, if any at all. We walked about 3-4 km on a mountainous dirt road. The landscape reminds of the hills of Kathmandu Valley and makes me dearly miss Manegau, my second home.

Two kids join us on their way back from school. They're asking questions about Israel - that weird place they've never heard of. They're having trouble pronouncing 'Jerusalem'. We walk on and on, and at some point we're starting to hear a man on a speaker and lots of drums. Once we got closer, we discovered that there are two completely different event occurring simultaneously. In the forest clearing below us, there was a temperamental cricket game going on, with a respectable amount of spectators, considering the area's population. Anyone who wasn't watching the game at the time, was probably celebrating the festival in the nearby bigger clearing. Drums, weird trumpets, shouts, street food, chai, ice cream, tridents, goats, people staring waving enthusiastically greeting us - they had it all back there.

I came back with a huge smile, and with the feeling that I got lucky and had the chance to experience a bit of the authentic local culture.

Let there be night. Let there be day.

'No seats', said the conductor. Since we could obviously see dozens of people standing in the crowded bus aisle, his declaration was a bit redundant.

So we hopped on the bus, packed like sardines near the door. Rotem, who wasn't really awake yet, and also, on top of it all, didn't sleep well at night, looked pretty miserable.