My new home in Mussoorie

Here she is, Mussoorie, the 'Queen of hill stations'

My new house in the town of Landour "the Crown of the Queen",

it's a 5 km hike up from the main drag in Mussoorie

Dan and I are getting situated in our mountain paradise, Mussoorie, a 6-hour train ride northeast from Delhi. Well, almost paradise. We are lacking hammocks and monkeys to peel our bananas. But it's a pretty grand setup nonetheless. The only drawback is that anywhere we want to go is a VERY steep climb down the mountain. Or maybe a bonus, I for one have done entirely too much sitting around and trying not to sweat too much the past month or so.

We've been here for less than a week and Dan has already started his language classes. I am still figuring out what I want to do, if anything, and working on getting well. It seems maybe I'm not completely immune to all illness. I fell sick the instant I left Delhi and have self-diagnosed, thinking myself to be infected with giardia, a rather unpleasant parasite. Luckily, drugs in India are extremely inexpensive, so I've got some medication that should get me back up to snuff at less than 1% of the cost in the States. I was impressed, anyway.

In the pines, in the pines..... The pine-scented, cool mountain air cannot be matched.

Note especially the Tibetan prayer flags. I'm pretty sure there are Tibetans around this area as well as plenty of hippies to account for the prayer flags we've seen flying everywhere.

If it hasn't quite come across yet, I'm pretty excited about my new location. Dan and I have been taking some time to explore some areas near our hilltop home, but we have yet to go all the way down through Mussoorie. Mussoorie is known as a vacation spot for both tourists and Indians as well as a for it's good schools. Landour Language School, where Dan goes, gives some of the best Hindi instruction in the country, and Woodstock, is a premier international K-12 school in this region of the world. There's a lot of culture here-- Indian, Asian, international-- which translates into a lot of neat shops and restaurants that I'm pretty pumped to try out. Oh, and the guest house where we are staying has a full kitchen, which means I get to cook again! And to buy delectable fresh produce from down the mountain.

As if it weren't enough, May is the start of mango season. Between fresh mangoes and banana lasse's (banana yogurt shakes), I'm pretty much in heaven.

The view from Landour. The round building is part of Woodstock School.

Sick of hilltop views yet? I'm obviously not!