Round and Round it goes when we get off WE DON'T KNOW!!!!!:)

HOLY SCHNIKEE WAS SATURDAY EVER AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:) So earlier this week our plan for Saturday was to hike to Nag Tibba and be back Sunday by 1pm!! Well we found out in the middle of the week we couldn't leave for Nag Tibba until 1pm, which would give us basically 6 hours or so from Thatyur to reach Nag Tibba's peak!!! Instead of trying to rush the hike, we came up with another plan: HAPPY VALLEY!!!!:) Half of the crew has NEVER been to Happy Valley yet, and the other half hasn't been in a while!! Then there's me who's been there 4 times this year already!!! BUT I love it there and always something new to discover each time!!!!:) We head out from Woodstock around 1:20 with a 2 hour walk in front of us!! Heading all the way through the bazaar and past Picture Palace we come to the place where they offer bicycle rickshaw rides for tourists/lazy people!!;) If you don't know what a bicycle rickshaw is, picture a bicycle with a carriage attached to the back of it to pull people around!!! Well we haven't been on the bicycle rickshaw's before so we thought it'd be a fun experience to take them to Happy Valley!! Dave and I had ambitions to take that one step further!! We wanted to PEDDLE the gang around!!! In our fluent Hindi that we know, somehow Dave and I talked to our rickshaw drivers and let us PEDDLE THE RICKSHAW!!! It was awesome!! Well not the first minute of it, mostly because I started to peddle mine and totally took out this guy's shoe polish stand!! I mean honestly who sets up their stand right in front of my wheels!!!;) So that made the owner of the rickshaw so much more at ease!!! There were 4 rickshaws in total!! Dave was peddling Cookie and his owner around, Laura/Jennie were in another, Kate/Nicole in another, and I was going solo with my driver!! Won't lie Dave and I had this HUGE smile on the entire time, especially since the bicycles had little bells on it to tell people when you're behind them!! So we had fun with those!!! However, let me tell you how different those rickshaws are to what we thought they'd be!! When you sit down in them its exactly like sitting down on a bike, YET, the front wheels on these are freakin slanted towards the slant of the road!! So immediately when I started to peddle I thought I was going to tip the freakin thing!! After running over the guys shoe polish stand and peddling for a bit Dave and I got the hang of it and OFF we went!! Not gonna lie, unlike the usual stares we get for being white in India, these got us 4 times the stares, AND a lot of smiles!!!!:) Especially since the owners of the rickshaws were riding in back and they were talking to their friends as we biked by making jokes!!! We get to this one part where it's uphill and my owner starts yelling something that doesn't compute in my head, so I start slowing down like he wanted me to get off or something, then I realize he's yelling the Hindi translation of GO FASTER!!!! So I freakin put the peddle to the metal and start peddling up hill, which made him very pleased!! Along with the constant use of the bell!!! Well we arrive in Happy Valley in no time, I think around 15 minutes from Picture Palace!!;) First we visit the Tibetan Home School's art museum which was REALLY freakin sweet!! They had these oil paintings that were absolutely amazing!! And sure enough the ONE time I didn't bring my camera there were opportunities like this!!! But the REALLY cool thing about it is we can actually bring in pictures that we want turned in to an oil painting, and it only costs around 2000-4000Rs ($50-100)!!! And these are professionally done, or at least they appear to be professionally done!!!:) After the museum we head to the Temple and look around there for a bit!! Then we headed up to FlagHill and searched for this cave that Casey said was at the edge of the ridge!! Well after 20 minutes of walking, Kate and Nicole head back, so I turn around too while Jennie, Laura and Dave keep looking!! Kate, Nicole and I head to the Mess Hall where we said we'd all meet!! Cookie took a little path that she thought would take her right to the Mess Hall, 10 minutes later she shows up, while Laura, Dave and Jennie finally show up 20 minutes later!!! We order 49 mo-mo's, egg fried rice, 2 tingmos, and of course butter tea!!! Now Kate, Laura and Nicole have never had it, and again the expression on their face when tasting it for the first time was EXACTLY like everyone else's' I've seen!!! Like they just drank pure lemon juice!!! It was hilarious!! Needless to say when I offered them more they refused!!! After lunch/early dinner we decided it was time to head back to the top of the hill where our rickshaw's said they would be at 5:30 to take us back to Library bazaar!! MORE TO COME..........