Little Adventure

The past few days haven't held a lot to share about. We've been having team meetings every night. Our mornings and afternoons have been free for whatever else we want to do. Today Kristin, Melissa, Todd, and I went for a bit of a hike. We caught a share-jeep (crowded jeep with a fixed route at a reasonable price) to the beginning of the trail. We hiked up to the top where there is a wonderful view of the Himalayas... at least there supposedly would have been if we hadn't been stuck in the middle of a cloud.

Right as we were about to head back down, it started raining pretty heavily. Between the four of us we only had two umbrellas, and that just doesn't work well for long distances. We hid under an overhang for a while, then had four Indian men invite us into their home. They maintain a cell phone tower at the top of the hill, and live in an apartment up there. After talking with them for about fifteen minutes, the rain let up, so we started back down. It wasn't long before the rain started back up, so we shared umbrellas as much as we could, and rushed to a little shack we had seen on the way up. The rain wasn't light, but it started coming down even heavier within thirty seconds of entering the stand. We waited and waited but the rain didn't seem like it was letting up. A jeep came along (it was a wide vehicle accessible path), and we hoped that they could give us a ride down. Unfortunately they were already packed with people.

We waited longer, and eventually the rain let up to only a light drizzle. We decided to take our chances with this, knowing that it was probably an hour or so to the next shelter. After walking for about ten minutes, a small van came up behind us with an unoccupied bench seat in the back! We motioned them to stop and were able to get a ride from them. The seat was only side enough for three, so Melissa laid down across the other three of us. It reminded me a bit of trips to 21 Choices back at Mudd... It wasn't the most comfortable drive, especially on a bumpy road, but we were grateful for it. After about fifteen minutes we reached the bottom and caught another share-jeep back into town.