Waggie's October India Visit; Post #1

Woodstock School, 2 October 2010

5:30 a.m. here, woke up with the call to prayer from the mosque across the valley at 5. I just heard the Himalayan whistling thrush for the second  time this morning; it called twice yesterday morning too, about this time. An amazing, joyful tweetling as you've never heard. It is something I hoped we would hear.

We were given a tour of the school yesterday morning. Imagine my surprise when I saw this picture hanging on the wall in the new gymnasium. The guy on the lower left is me! I was on that swimming team (backstroke) but had forgotten that we had won a meet or two and had this photo taken. Next to me is Doug Ensminger (?spelling), then Will Manton and Paul Chaffee. Top is (? can't place), the younger Downs, and John Liu. I thought you would get a kick out of it.

The picture won't get much better. What's hanging in the gym is a scan from the high school year book and is exactly this fuzzy. I just PhotoShopped it a bit and will attach the result. When we get home, we can try scanning directly from the 1962 year book, which I think I have. Original negatives are probably long since lost.

Steve Alter is giving us a ride early this morning to the top of the hill to see "the snows."  Although the highest right in our area are only up to 23,000 feet they are very pretty. Off in the far right we should be able to see Nanda Devi, the highest peak in India at just over 25,000 feet. None of the 14 highest peaks, those above 8,000 meters, are in India. We will see the 3rd highest when we get to Darjeeling later in this trip.

This should be a good experience as the snows are at their prettiest

now: deepest snow after the monsoons and the clearest and brightest skies.

I think I'll make some tea. and listen to that glorious whistling thrush.

David