This is my last entry from Dharmsala. Tomorrow I go to Delhi and Sunday I return to Stockholm and Tuesday, San Francisco. Lots of travel ahead. Lots of general life upheaval too.
This has to be quick, I need to pack so I’m going to ramble about events of the past week and not necessarily in order...
I got so so sick last night. It hit me very quickly and at the worst I was hallucinating with chills, massive tingling in my hands and feet and a very unhappy digestive tract. Once I broke the fever I was OK but for about an hour I was really in a bad way. I’m thinking its either from one of the dogs or from something I ate. For a while I thought it may be mushroom poisoning because I looked up my symptoms when they weren’t so bad and they matched mushroom poisoning and I had a mushroom pizza for lunch but Deb did too and she’s fine so its not that. Anyway I’m mostly over it now, my body is wiped out though after last night. I missed my last day, today, in bed and it looked to be a great day. Oh well.
Yesterday, we arrived at the clinic to see a dog that had been hit by a taxi. His front leg was broken in two places. It was brought in the previous night and Arvind and a vet stabilized the dog. When we arrived they were preparing to put a splint on him. Arvind isn’t sure if the splint will work and if it doesn’t the leg will have to be amputated. So far the dog hasn’t tried to remove the splint which is a good sign. He’s going to be at the clinic for at least a month recovering. This is going to be an expensive recovery because they have to feed the dog lots of chicken to make sure its getting enough protein to heal the bone. A month’s supply of chicken isn’t cheap.
Earlier in the week someone dropped off three puppies. They’re about a month old and perfectly healthy. They’ll stay at the clinic for at least a month then Arvind will release them in a relatively safe area if he can’t find anyone to adopt them.
On Tuesday I visited the daycare I was at last year. Three of my kids from last year were there. There was a holiday so the others were not in school that day. I was a little disappointed but I was happy to see the ones that were there. The kids had no toys to play with. We had to bring toys with us last year. The school has toys but the teacher hordes them and they are locked up. I mentioned this a post from last year and don’t need to go into more detail now.
Saturday was Tibetan New Year, Losar. There were no celebrations this year as a protest. I don’t know exactly how that’s a protest but so be it. There was a march into lower Dharmsala and a talk and film at the temple in the evening. The talk was in Tibetan so I have no idea what it was about but the film was from last year’s protests in Lhasa where demonstrators were viciously beaten by Chinese police.
We did end up seeing the donkey. We had to take an hour long trek up to a remote farm village to see it. Arvind has been going up there almost every day for the past week. It takes him about three hours to take the bus up the McLeod Ganj, make the trek up and return. The donkey needs daily treatment. It started out with some minor infection about a year ago and got much worse. The donkey actually has owners. We initially thought it was stray. The owners tried some holistic medicine that didn’t do a damn thing. After that they gave up and basically waited for it to die which evidently would be five or more years.
There’s pictures of a guy getting a haircut in this week’s pictures. That guy is Michael, Heidi’s cameraman. Don’t ask why I felt compelled to photo document it.
Click here for pictures
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