Me no blog long time. Hope everyone at home had a fantastic 4th of July, full of watermelon and fireworks. I have no idea what I did, I didn't realize the date until the 5th. And, a happy belated birthday to my niece Nicole, whom I love and adore and miss so much. She turned 11 on July 1.

So, Chris, Paul and I stay in Manali for a 2-day/2-night outdoor Full Moon party thrown by a crew of party organizers and DJs from Goa. Though we wake up at 2 AM to arrive at the party before sunrise (dawn starts damn early around here, like 4:45) we are thwarted by a downpour that lasts three hours. We stay awake playing our friend Matt's invented card game Trip 'til the rain stops at 5. We then hop a taxi and hike an hour uphill through a small village to the party venue; a large grass clearing atop a mountain overlooking the Kullu Valley below. The morning sunlit Indian Himalayan peaks poke up behind the lower foothills as clouds and mist shift in and out.

We dance to wicked trance, sleep and talk all day until we can't take anymore (around 5 pm) and begin the descent back home. As we walk down, we pass several uniformed policemen walking up. "Where's the party?" they ask us. We point to a blue tarp-roofed chai stand above. After a few niceties they're off, we later learn, to close down the party. This party had supposedly been granted "approval" (in the form of baksheesh) by the Himachal Pradesh government. Turns out the organizers didn't buy enough time and everyone still there was searched on their way out; anyone found in possession of drugs was given the option to post immediate bond in the form of a few hundred rupees baksheesh. Oh, the corruption! It's everywhere.

After the hike down, we jump in a taxi van. We near a police checkpost. While some police have been up the hill shutting down the party, it seems their cohorts have been setting up road blocks below to catch anyone they might have missed. Our driver begins to slow and an officer makes a move toward the van. Then, in an unexpected and bold twist, the driver floors it! Speeding away at top speed leaving the police in his dust, off he goes and with no looking back. I look out the back window and see the officer who had approached our taxi flailing his arms haplessly. Chris, Paul and I snap out of our sleep-deprived slumber and bust into a fit of hysterics.

After a good night's sleep we leave Manali for the nearby Parvati Valley, a hotbed of Israelis with a particular herbal interest in the area. In the valleys of north India, marijuana plants grow like weeds in every yard, on every roadside, in every guesthouse garden. There's even a huge bush growing smack in front of the Manali police station. In the tourist hang-outs of the Parvati Valley, hordes of shawl-swathed Israelis wile away the days in an interminable circle of passed joints and chillums containing India's finest purchased at rock-bottom prices ($3-10 for 10g of hash depending on quality, so I'm told).

We quickly leave the lazy hazy town of Kasol on a 4-day trek to Kheerganga, a small village built around natural hot springs. The first day, we meet up with a fantastic crew of Israelis (shocking!), including wacky Izhar who insists on wearing his lucky red ripped t-shirt he'd been wearing during a motorcycle accident, and Shahar who lived in the States for two years as a child and speaks English with a perfect American accent.

While there seem to be a lot of hot springs in India, none of them have been remotely interesting to me. Either they're hot enough to boil rice, have a men-only policy, or are in some setting that doesn't quite befit what one thinks of when one pictures hot springs. These hot springs were perfection. The men's pool is outdoors, fed by a hot spring just above it and overlooking the steep Parvati Valley below and forested mountains all around. An occasional glimpse of 22,000 foot peaks is afforded when the clouds cooperate. The women's pool is enclosed in a wood structure with two giant skylights. While the view isn't quite the same, we girls decide we're the lucky ones because inside, we could more loosely interpret the bulleted list of rules posted above the pool.

Yesterday I parted ways with Chris and Paul in Kasol to return to Manali for the third time, this time more for business than for pleasure. I recently applied for a tour guiding position with Intrepid and my lovely wonderful English buddy Mary connected me with her friend Burger, an Australian guy who works for Intrepid and lives here in Manali with his American wife Tracey and their cherubic tow-headed son Kailash. They've been wonderful to me and are letting me use their spare room while I ply them with questions about the job. A referral from him could mean a lot, so fingers crossed!

I'm leaving tonight to return to the village of Bhagsu near Dharamsala where I was a few weeks ago. I'm planning to spend my remaining few weeks here actually doing some of the things I talked about before; yoga and cooking to start. Until then.