I think fog rolling over the crest of a mountain is perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. It slowly envelops the hillside, unthreatening but unstoppable, a cottonlike blanket to warm the jutting rocks and green hillside.

Well, the fog approached me faster than I thought it would. Soon I found myself huddled under one of the sparce trees my newfound veranda offered. The only comorting thought I had as I was caught in this torrential downpour was that I am incredibly grateful I haven't seen a single bolt of lightning in India. Looking out on the rain, I wondered what I was afraid of. These hills have held the largest raindrops I have ever seen, and the rain comes and goes like the drop of a curtain. Yet I realized I was missing an opportunity. I came to this outlook in the middle of two dividing green mountain ridges to drink a bottle of beer and watch the sunset.

So I stepped out (leaving the secondhand book I bought under the tree) into the rain. It seemed that almost immediately a rainbow burst out over the left ridge. It semed like the arc was a magical rasta flag with its read yellow and green lines painting the sky. Ank I watched as this extended all the way into a full bow, with each colorul end tucked behind a steep and precipitous green line that cut the skyline distinctly.

Out of the edge of my vision I saw red. The fog and haze was slowly turning into gorgeous cumulous clouds being painted in red sunshine. As the sun set over the right ridge, I turned to watch the shapely clouds illuminated. Turning back on the rainbow was tough, but it was fading anyway. Simply amazing. Directly in front of my vision, the two ridges met with flat ground to show the underlying lowlands, the eye drawn to it by a meandering brown stram which seemed to weave its own particular path. I could see layers upon layers of clouds; those above me , those I was envelped in, and lower-lying horozontal stretches. As I turned to my right as the scene was shifting again, I was shocked.

You know, today was a bad day. I meandered around town, contemplating my self doubt and with no real purpose but to wait and see what fate holds for mee in the next few days (moving on, being inspired to do something radical, or to continue wandering in this small mountain town). And this was seemingly unreal, like something larger than myself was reassuring me. Crystal white and erie-ly large and up close was the moon, peering down among the clouds and the remaining half rainbow. Try as I might, no words deserve this moment. And at some point the rain had stopped.

I have to say I am firmly attatched to material objects. Not that I expected not to be, but it is still hard to face when one realizes how much worthless objects can mean. Two nights ago, on a wild saturday night drinking adventure with Israelis, I lost my camera, scarf, and travel book; all three extremely important to me for extremely different reasons. Im afraid to leave Dharamsala, as I know nothing about where I would go. And I dont know what to do about my camera, I have retraced all my steps, along with convincing myself since it was a serious camera, it would be the last I bought for a long time.

As a sidenote, there is an excellent dread-mullet sitting next to me right now in the Haifa cafe.

More on this in the future, but the Tibetan population is seriously oppressed here. Over 1.2 million tibetans have been killed or tortured by the chinese government, and the population has a 2000 year independent history of china, which has been retaken in the last 60 years by the People's Republic of China. Additionally,the second in command to the dalai laman the Panchen Lama (born in 1989=under 20 yrs old) was abducted by the chinese government in 1995 and has not been heard from since. You think about it.