Sunday, I struck out with some Israeli friends I met at our guesthouse.

After eating Japanese in McLeod, we trekked up to Bhagsu. There, I was privileged to watch and take part in some sort of ruckus sunset ceremony.

The Japanese restaurant (a couple of weeks ago):

Taking place inside a colorful temple, the general aim of the observance, as explained by a fellow onlooker, was to make noise.

Bells of every timber cascaded off of the granite walls and floors of the temple. Ringing, banging and clanging the bells were a small group of children and an Indian man.

The temple itself was a two-story building with two stairwells which went into a fake cave filled with statues of Hindu gods. The stairwells were made to look like those who entered were walking into, or out of a lions mouth.

Inside inside the dentured gate the walls of the stairs became a cave a-la Disney or Casa Bonita. Accompanied by the man and two small girls, one of which attempted to jump out and scare us, my friend Shae and I were forced to crawl at one point inside the cavern.

Still ringing bells the man paused before each idol bathing them in pungent incense smoke.

After finishing this ritual he and the children sat to sing and chant.

Overall an interesting experience.

Here’s a photo Tristan took today.

Visit his blog for more.

Nearly a tenement due to neglect, I plan to dust off the cobwebs of my blog and start writing again.

Since last I posted here, Tristan and I started on a story and my guts fell victim to another attack.

This time it seemed a whole troupe of trolls donning golf shoes decided to put on a season of “Stomp” in my stomach and intestines.

I’m recovering slowly and nearing the end of my 10-day course of amoebacide. After receiving rave reviews for their performances, the gaggle of trolls have moved on to a larger stage.

For our first story, we’re following Chris, a self-styled circus performer, as he trains children how to juggle, walk tightropes and all other things clown.

His pupils hail from a tent-city slum in Dharamsala. They have been taken out of the slum and given the opportunity to attend school and generally be children. Tong Len, the program with which Chris is allied, provides room and board for the children as long as they don’t make any money.

In the slum’s families the primary earners are often the children.

Today we watched the students perform for their families outside of their homes.

The slum is largely comprised of huts, tents and lean-tos with black tarp roofs and general detritus serving as walls. The entrance to community is a hole in the brick wall off of one of Dharmsala’s main drags, It is probably a square mile, has its own network of paths and even a small general store.

The first thing that sruck me as an American, is the sense that, yes, your pocket may be picked, but the threat of physical violence — perceived or otherwise —doesn’t exist.

Tristan caught a small child with its hand in his back pocket on his wallet. Otherwise the people were helpful and friendly.

The Tong Len children, despite being from the slum, were easy to pick out amongst their peers. Those that stayed to earn money or otherwise were caked with a layer of filth. Many didn’t have pants and some had hair which bordered on dreadlocks.

Despite their situation, the children played, laughed and were just as adorable as children anywhere else.

The biggest and most humbling surprise, however came from an adult and requires a bit of back-story.

About two weeks ago Tristan went to the hospital with amoebas of his very own. While we were waiting for a doctor, Tristan was waiting for a bathroom to empty so he could tend to his overwhelming nausea.

A genuinely caring and kind Indian man helped him up to the second floor bathroom. He wasn’t an employee of the place, and he had nothing to gain. Just a true and simple act of compassion.

He even asked how Tristan was twice, before saying goodbye on his way out.

Fast forward to today in the middle of the slum. The same man was helping set up the stage.

Despite crushing poverty, chief among his concerns for the day we spent in hospital, was making sure Tristan was okay.

Things are beginning to look up.

I’m not yet 100 percent, but I’m feeling well enough to explore McLeod, be generally personable and indulge in a bit of circus training.

We haven’t begun chasing any stories in earnest yet, but we have made some headway by laying groundwork.

Today, I tried my hand at tightrope walking and juggling.

Tristan and I met Chris, our patient and enthusiastic teacher of the arts circus, at a park in McLeod.

There, after having my shoes darned by Deepak, a local teen, we partook in a pre-performance stretch routine then learned the basics of juggling.

Along with a small group of others I also, with the help of Deepak, attempted a bit of tightrope acrobatics.

No, amazingly, I didn’t manage to hurt myself.

It was inspiring to see Deepak afforded the opportunity to act like a kid.

A resident of the nearby Dharamshala slum, Deepak told me that his mother pulled him out of school after his father died. The family needed additional income so, Deepak took to the streets with a mobile cobbling station.

Today however, he was afforded the opportunity to juggle, tightrope walk and generally play in the park.

Later in the afternoon, while purchasing a some soft-serve, a Tibetan nun grabbed my arm.

As an already jaded traveller, my first reaction was to say no to what I assumed was an entreaty for money.

But, as I turned around the elderly nun  pointed to a cone, asking me to buy one for her. I couldn’t find it in the deepest hollows of my heart to say no.

So here’s a picture:

Tristan took all the photos on my blog today. He also snapped this photo of me languishing in the hospital:

Check out his blog for more, even better pictures.

It’s been a second since I last blogged.

Since then, I’ve spent two days at a hospital, and a couple languishing in our hotel room.

Thursday, Tristan awoke under gastrointestinal duress. The kind of duress that sent us directly to the nearby Tibetan Delek Hospital. Saturday, I awoke under similar circumstances and the trip was made again.

The facility was built with Italian money to directly serve Tibetans in exile. It staffs at least one western doctor and resembles slightly, a miniature US hospital. It sits on a hill overlooking lower Dharamshala, across the street from the Tibetan Congress.

We took our places in what appeared to be a chaotic waiting room, after paying Rp.10 for a seemingly arbitrary number to be seen by the doctor.

In classic Indian fashion, appearances were deceiving, as the whole thing operated more efficiently than most U.S, emergency rooms.

Not to weigh the post down with details, the long and the short of our combined visits is, Tristan and I have Amoebas swimming around in our guts.

This not only makes it difficult to concentrate but magnifies homesickness and inflates the abject disdain I have for the Indian teenagers playing soccer just outside my window.

Their game follows three days of Indian girls chatting and screaming just outside our guesthouse door.

The universe alined, and Tristan and I fell ill just as an Indian tour group of children and teenagers descended upon Paul’s house in otherwise quiet Dharamkot.

In between ear-plugged naps, I’ve had the pleasure of trying to read while listening to Hindi screamed over English, yelled over some sort of mixture of the two.

All the while, I’ve tried to suck down hydration salts, which taste as if someone pissed in your Tang before bringing it to the moon.

As I finish this post, the children outside argue whether a goal was scored and I resign myself to quietly sipping stale-flavored salty citrus water and trying to ignore the tumult.

Monday, Tristan, Adam and I made the rickety rickshaw ride from Dharamkot down to McLeod to buy some warm clothes, and ended up catching a movie.

We each payed Rp.100 to watch a pirated version of the new “Star Trek” movie.

A quarter of the movie was cropped off and occasionally a Russian subtitle flashed across the bottom, linking to the bootleg online. The title screen read “tar tre”

The theater itself was a series of office chairs situated on metal crates. The walls were lined with blue fabric and the screen was illuminated by a projector which read “please replace bulb.”

Despite this, I nearly forgot we were in a theater in India. It wasn’t until the lights went on and I looked down to see a metal framework through a torn burlap sack that I remembered where I was.

This interlude was especially welcome because it came on the heals of my first serious bout with homesickness.

On my way to use the internet I found a child wrestling with his goat. The goat won and escaped up the street. The child, ran the opposite direction crying while the local men laughed.

What an odd place.

For you pleasure, here’s the last known picture of my umbrella alive. It succumbed to the pressures of being used as a walking stick for a week, falling to pieces.

Tristan took the photo, go to his blog for more.