The Oracle

We're still waiting for everyone to recover before we can leave for our trek. People really need to be in peak condition, it's a ten day trek with two passes at about 17,000 feet. I'm siked. We've been going around the surrounding areas and have seen a lot of crazy stuff. A couple days back we went to go see this oracle. The Dalai Lama has visited her twice, so she's pretty respected. We got to see her remove an evil spirit from this Islamic woman. That was ridiculous. She was grabbing her head and wacking it and yelling. She brought out this whip and just started hitting her. Apparently it worked, though, and the spirit was made to leave for one year's time. We've seen a lot of really cool monasteries. The picture is of the group at the Shanti Stupa that we hiked up to. It's not a long walk from where we are in Leh. We just got back from a town called Dah. The Dahrds have been there since about 200 B.C. The place looked straight out of the middle ages. Everything was made of stone, there are no roads, we had to walk up there. The religion they practice is a strange mix of paganism (spiral dances, rock worship etc.) and Tibetan Buddhism. It was a little lower than Leh, maybe 9,000 feet, so it was a little bit warmer and there were grape vines. The people there make they're own wine, unique in India. Seems like all the UW and Western kids should have started school by now so I hope you all are having a great time. Peace.