falling water

Well I'm happy to say that the big software release that I've been working on at work has happened and so far not so bad. Hopefully now I will have more time in my day...the past few weeks, as you can probably tell from my sporadic blogging, have been quite busy.

So before the last bit of training I'll try to squeeze in a post of my wonderful final day in Dharmsala. We had tried to visit the waterfall, which is actually in McLeod Ganj, on our first day there but it was raining a little so we decided to put it off until our last day. We didn't know what this waterfall would be like, we could see something from the road but that was pretty far away. So we followed the signs for "waterfall" and came around this corner to see a very very long cascade of water - much bigger than we ever expected. It was probably a mile long and there was mist hanging very low over it which gave it an extra cool look.

You could hire a guide to walk up through the falls or take the nice paved route. We opted for the nice paved route as we had neither a guide nor very good walking shoes.

So we slowly walked up stopping every few minutes to take in the view. As we got close to the top I saw the actual waterfall at the tippy top and I saw people right there so we kept following the path and then it kind of stopped. I was very confused, I saw people there but how did they get there? Well, this very nice man suddenly came over and told us we needed to climb over the slippery rocks and that it was just fine and totally safe. I was a tad bit skeptical but he gave us a helping hand and after 15 very nervous seconds I was over and it was well worth the fear. We hung out at the top for a bit, I contemplated jumping in the pool of water at the base of the actual falls but I wasn't that hot (I would have been very scandalous as the Indian men were jumping in while all the women sat on the side, almost worth it just to shock people but it really wasn't that hot and the water was quite cold).

There was a tea shop at the top but it was pretty crowded so we decided to walk back down over the (not at all scary going the other way) slippery rocks to a little tea shop half way down the falls. It was so nice and relaxing and while we were sitting about 5 goats came about 10 feet away from us and started munching on the grass.

Drinking a cup of tea next to a waterfall with a bunch of goats, quite a nice way to spend a morning...oh, and it was my birthday...definitely a birthday memory for the ages.

Two pictures again today (I'm so addicted to uploading pictures), one of the top of the waterfall, and one of the cascading water bit taken from where we stopped for tea.