So!

Rumtek, the town and monastery, are really nice and peaceful. You can generally walk down to the cafe and see a couple of Buddhist monks or locals playing caramboc, a sort of shuffleboard/pool thing. Some of them were really good at it- I remember one who, if he got to break, could sink two simultaneously into opposite corners. It doesn't really feel like you're in India, partly because of the cold and partly because nobody looks Indian, but rather Tibetan or Nepali.

Buddhist monks, at least the ones we met, are really not the serious solemn type they're made out to be. We ended up playing soccer with them on a plateau on the side of a mountain, which was fun but not as smooth as it sounds, because the thing about being on top of a mountain is that everywhere you go is down. They tried as best they could to make it sort of like a skateboard park, with a quarter-pipe all around, but two of the corners open onto a downwards slope that goes quite a ways down and can stop the game for a couple of minutes if someone kicks the ball down there by mistake.

Apart from that the game was great. Apparently they keep playing all day because all week they study and meditate, and that was the day their exams ended.

Now we're back in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, and about to head off to Kathmandu in Nepal. It's going to be cold, which is a nice change from the rest of India.

-Bashu

P.S. For some reason most of the girls here are realtors.