My Little Golden Book of Phobias

I did not sleep at all last night, not at all. Jet lag is so weird. You lie there and tell yourself to go to sleep but your brain in buzzing and sparking, like a bad generator. Speaking of generators, Nepal and India have generators to pump water into the rice fields and for power. It stinks. And all the cars, jeeps, trucks, three wheeled taxis all run on diesel. In all the hotels we stayed in, fancy or plain, the power went off, for a minute, for five minutes, whatever.

Jean was in the bathroom and I heard her gagging and spitting. Apparently, she was brushing her teeth with bug repellent. It doesn't taste very good but those mosquitoes didn't bite her teeth that night!

In India, the heat sticks. My hair stayed in a tie because it was never really clean. Plus add some bug spray and sun screen and voila! the glued to the head look. The first night we were there, we stayed in a guest house. Jean crashed, eye shade, tylenol PM, the works. I desperately wanted a shower after the plane, about a zillion hours. I turned on the water and waited...and waited...and waited...no hot water. So I toughed it out under the cold. It was to be prescient. Cold showers are refreshing, actually. The only place we had a real shower was the Hyatt, obscenely opulent. The shower was so strong and hot, I almost fell down. And my hair was shiny and loose when it dried. I'd almost forgotten what that was like. In the countryside, everyone washes under the pump, head, pits, face.

The next day we sent into a thanka shop and spent a lot of money. We weren't sorry. The thankas are gorgeous. If I can figure out how to get a picture here, I will post it.