Namaste India!!

Hello India! Yes, we made it to Delhi in the middle of the night and woke up to the sights and sounds of this exciting and absolutely crazy city: cars, rickshaws, bicycles all fly past pedestrians, tooting horns and bells non-stop (so you'll jump out of their way), cows wander through all this commotion and leave traces of their passage as they go, all this mixed with the smell of deep-fried snacks, curry and incense, with an occasional whiff of public urinal. Namaste India!!
Shortly after, we headed up to the mountains, to a small town called Srinagar. We took a one hour flight which afforded us an absolutely spectacular view onto the Himalayas and the terrassed fields surrounding the foothills. It made me think of those pictures by Yann Arthus Bertrand, the guy who takes those amazing arial photographs. The colours and textures were breathtaking: white mountain tops, gray-brown crinkly mountain ranges, and beautiful semi-circular fields in various shades of green and yellow. I discovered a few days later that these fields are in fact rice fields: I had no idea rice grew in northern India, I thought it got way too darn cold there in the winter. Well, apparently there is sufficient water after the monsoon (rainy season), and the summer is hot enough to grow rice. I'm learning... We were there just as they were harvesting, which involves cutting the stalks (which kind of look like wheat from far away), then beating them to extract the grains which they collect on large pieces of cloth, pouring the grains into sacks, and tying the stalks into little bundles which they dry and then feed to animals. All of this work is done by hand, of course, and after you see people doing all of this back-breaking work in the scorching heat, you sure appreciate that bowl of basmati rice!
Here we stayed on a houseboat and got paddled around the lake on a "shikara" by an eighty year old man. Sure made us feel like a bunch of lazy tourists, we should have been paddling him around! One day we went for a hike up to a glacier but didn't get to touch the ice: it always looks much closer than it is. We did however have some tea with goat's milk made for us by a gypsy woman, which we sipped while enjoying the incredible view onto the glacier. We also visited some beautiful Mughal gardens, built in the 16th century (sort of like French gardens, everything very symmetrical, no square shrubs though) and the old town with its many mosques. This town is predominantly muslim, and we just happened to arrive towards the end of Ramadan. So we got to hear the prayers, broadcast over loudspeakers ,which seemed to resonate across the lake right into our houseboat, all through the day, and all night!! Quite an ear-opener, you might say.
(As you may have noticed, I am attempting to keep my entries in chronological order, and fill you in on our itinerary. Jean-Francois and I are not in sync, but I'm sure you'll figure it all out!!)