Im in Mussouri India right now at the Woodstock boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was established as a lodge for government officials to stay at while hunting in the mountains. Getting here was quite the journey. We departed from the Sariska National Tiger Preserve after a somewhat brief safari at around one in the afternoon. We jammed all twenty of us and our luggage into a small city bus and drove for over an hour to the city of Alwar where we took a two hour train ride to Nizamuddin. Once in Nizamuddin we rushed to find taxis to a different train station in absolutely pouring rain. My cab had no wipers so the driver threw a package of beetle nut, chewing tobacco and some kind of nut mixed with lyme, onto the windshield as a replacement. It actually worked, sort of. Upon our arrival at the train station we got onto a sleeper train and rode nine hours to Dehradun where we got into cabs and drove for about and hour up into the Himalayas. In India in the 40s or so there used to be only two classes of cars, upper and lower. The upper, called Ambassadors were what my cab was. Extremely svelte. We wound up and up and up the mountains into fog so thick you could chew it. Eventually the roads were covered in ice. All of a sudden my cab starts to slide and goes into the side of the mountain, thankfully not off the cliff face. We pushed it to the other side of the road to let the cars behind us go but a giant truck was trying to come down. He skidded to a halt beside us because a car had turned sideways and blocked the road in an attempt to go around my cab. We left the whole mess when a van capable of handling the ice came from the school and whisked us away to fried eggs, chapati bread, toast, cornflakes, tea, and coffee. Definitely a pleasant surprise.
This place was important to our studies because the Himalayan plateau is the source of a vast amount of the worlds weather. The sun beats down on the plateau, heating the air quickly and generating lots of wind as well as moving moisture out of surrounding areas and up into the mountains. This moisture falls around the mountains and this action is responsible for the existence of some deserts. As a result of this concentration of moisture places like Darjeeling near Bhutan can get up to sixty feet of rain in a year. The problem is that the glaciers in the Himalayas, like the majority of the worlds glaciers, are receding and are also responsible for the year round flow of the major rivers in Northern India. Once they are gone there will be no water and thusly very quickly no food for about a billion people. Can anything be done? I dont know. The state of water here is depressing. India's rain cycle is that of dry season and monsoon and there hasn't been a normal monsoon in five years. All of the water the people here are using is coming from underground wells of trapped mineral water which is non-renewable aside from being filthy. There are no sewage treatment plants here and attempts at westernizing the treatment of water have failed due to spotty electricity availability. This actually led to worse problems as the plants erected concentrated the waste to treat it and promptly failed. The mountains are beautiful though and the micro-towns scattered around the area are a wonderful break from the style of life in the big cities in India. I much prefer the people here to those in any other area of India we have been thus far as well. Today our group gave presentations on different biomes to a fifth grade class and spent several hours talking with AP students about climate change, their futures, and our experiences with higher education. I thoroughly enjoyed all of it. I like best that they stop for tea twice a day no matter what here.
Tomorrow morning Ill rise at 2:30, get in a taxi and drive to a train station. The train will take me to Delhi where Ill see some interesting things, get on a plane and fly to Sri Lanka. Once Im there Ill get on another plane and fly to Male in the Maldives. The next morning, good luck waking me up, Ill get on a boat and go to an Atoll a ways off the coast where Ill be scuba diving. Long story short Ill have another post and more pictures after I get back to Mumbai in a slightly less than a week. Goodnight all.
The Taj Mahal at sunrise.
The Red Fort in Agra.
The view across the river from our lodgings during our jungle walk portion of the trip.
Just over this is a several hundred foot drop. Idve climbed the rest of the way down, but my group was leaving.
The best way to appreciate a tropical forest is to really get your toes down into the juices.
Waterfall that the above water fall picture was taken atop.
Our guide. He spoke not a word of english but pantomimed that he would find it funny if I fell off of this one cliff near the picture with the sign in it. Everyone agreed.
Mmmmmmm....fried pig face.
Part of downtown Bangkok. Yarawat street specifically.
Buddha maxin relaxin at the temple of the reclining Buddha.
Wat Arun temple in Bangkok. Constructed around the same time as Hiram College was being built. I climbed to the middle part of this.
All manner of street vendors have many different types of stands or mini shops set up everywhere.
Gold leaf is used extensively in many of the temples in Thailand.
Spicy fishball soup. Horrible to look at, worse to smell, and absolutely wonderful to eat.
This is the Iao Needle. It was used by natives as a lookout point and as a place to retreat to should a battle go wrong. It was believed to be the phallus of their ocean god. 
Whale watching off of Maui.
The coast of Maui. The things up top are wind turbines.
These are from the beaches at the end of a lava field, where we tried to snorkel but were prevented from even getting in by how many sea urchins were present.
