The monsoon has hit Dharamsala with full force. Due to its location in the southernmost range of the Indian Himalaya foothills, stormclouds gather and thicken, trapped between the mountains until they reach saturation point. It's currently hailing buckets outside.

This morning, Paul (who arrived four days ago from Parvati Valley) and I took advantage of a rare and incredible opportunity and saw His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, live and in the flesh! A few times a year when he's in town (rare in and of itself), he opens his temple and teaches on various topics pertaining to Buddhism.  While my current understanding of Buddhism limited my comprehension of the already-fuzzy weakly-signaled radio English translation of his spoken Tibetan, it was a thrill just feel the energy in a templeful of Buddhist monks, Tibetan refugees and Westerners like me, jostling for space just to catch a glimpse of this wonderful man's radiant and warm smile. How this guy can remain so jolly despite living in exile with ongoing tensions between his people and China is a mystery to me, but I assume it has something to do with his supreme enlightenment.

Yoga with Zoli is coming along well. He is a patient, attentive teacher and every day I see a little more progress in my flexibility and strength. I've even started practicing some asanas on my own. To my 2 1/2 hours of daily yoga, add the 1/2 hour hike to and from class, plus all the walking I do around the village and this place is really whipping me into shape.

I ditched cooking class. I just couldn't take the chaos, unmeasured spices and mystery ingredients in Mrs. Kapoor's kitchen. Time to invest in a good Indian cook book.

I'm staying at the same guesthouse where I stayed last time I was here, in the hillside village of Bhagsu. (Bhagsu is 2 km from McLeod Ganj, where the Dalai Lama lives. This is a few kilometers from the town of Dharamsala. Though few travelers stay in Dharamsala, the name is often applied to the entire area.) It's a family place and I love it.  (Meet Parsi, his lovely wife Guddi, their charming children Ravi, Ramesh, Madu and Allison.) They even have two 10-day old twin goats boinging and bahhhing all over the place. They are too cute for words. Living at their place makes me feel like part of the family and reminds me I am in India. Sometimes it's easy to forget in a place full of Tibetans and Israelis.

The morning I left for Manali, the family discovered their 8-year old mama cow had slipped in the night, separating her back right hip rendering her an immobile lump on the ground. When I returned, I was sad to see she was still there sitting in a pile of her own excrement, engorged from being unable to be milked, looking about as forlorn and miserable as a creature of a cow's intelligence can look. A few mornings after I came back this time, she died. Parsi called the insurance man and I watched with the entire family as the insurance man snapped away with his camera, collecting proof to file a claim. My feelings wavered between sadness for the family, shock at seeing my first dead cow, and amusement about the fact that only in India would a cow have a life insurance policy.

Off to yoga... the hail stopped.