Dress like a Tibetan

Since I arrived in Dharamsala, I've mostly been wearing Tibetan dress, which is a long chuba gown with a colored apron. The apron actually signals that I'm married, which as you know is not true, but then again I've also seen 4-year-olds wearing them. They make them in kiddie sizes. So cultural traditions are breaking down a little.

The dress serves three purposes:

(1) It sends a signal to shopkeepers that I am here for more than a few days, and they shouldn't be so aggressive in hawking their tourist items to me in the street - this definitely cut down after I bought my gown.

(2) It tells Tibetan and Nepalese men not to bother hitting on me. Some unmarried Tibetan women wear the apron for this reason, if they don't like casual flirting. Yes, it could send the wrong signals to some nice Jewish guy who's also religious AND knows what the outfit means, but I wouldn't put money into running into one of those in McLeod-Ganj.

(3) It seems to make old Tibetan ladies thrilled. Yeah, it looks ridiculous to a lot of people, but it looks respectful to way MORE people, and I get compliments on how nice my apron looks and these old women are so excited to see me wearing it, it just makes their day, if they can even say that in English, but it's usually in some kind of pantomime.

In other news:

- Don't get between a monkey and her baby. I know this seems obvious, but it took me a minute to realize what I was doing when I stepped onto my porch, because the baby monkey was on the awning on the left side and the mom was on the next porch over on my right side. So, monkeys: better seen through windows.

This monkey does not care for me.

- I finally figured out why it's so cold here: The weather report for Dharamsala reports for Lower Dharamsala, which is much lower in the valley, while I live in Upper Dharamsala, in the mountains, where the wind chill can make it ten degrees lower. Also that's why it'll be hailing here and Accuweather will say "cloudy."

- Next week I will probably finish the project. I have 8 interviews now and I'm shooting for 10. My tentative plan is to go to Nepal for 6 days at the end of my trip, which is why I planned it for 5 weeks instead of 4. I can't get into Tibet; the border is closed to foreigners because of that whole "Tibetans setting themselves on fire" thing, which is bad for tourism. They didn't say that, they just said they weren't issuing visas.

- Yes, the roads are really steep for the most part, because this is a mountain, so it takes a long time to get anywhere in the valley because the road is one lane and it winds its way down. When walking, a lot of people use shortcuts through the brush like this one:

It looks nice, but you don't always want to do it to get to breakfast.

- Shabbos is at 6:15 PM IST. I am looking forward to it. The first Shabbos was pretty stressful, because I was still jetlagged and had been on the go for an entire week so my body and mind weren't interested in just laying around, which can make Shabbos hard when you're traveling alone. Last week was much better, me being tired and stocked up on books and sick of running around anyway. This week I've got a bunch of comic books about the life of the Buddha to read. Good Shabbos everyone!