Good excuse ...

Always wondering what kinds of excuses to use if you want to stay one day longer on your vacation? Try this one:

I was asked to join a filming crew on their quest for monkeys (rhesus macaque) in the Shimla area with my still camera. The goal of the documentary, by All Time Productions, was to show how monkeys and humans influence each other's life, after deforestation has lead the monkeys to migrate into the cities and onto the fields.

The last day, we were filming in some fields in a village about four hours from Shimla, connected to the city by an unpaved road on the edge of the mountains. We went down to the crops, talked to some children who are put to work on the fields to scare away the monkeys and then did an interview with the school teacher. By that time, big dark clouds were gathering around the mountains and soon it began to rain really hard. After tons of water, the rain became less strong and we went on with an interview with a farmer's family.

When we finished, we were supposed to return to Delhi. The locals explained us that the road was closed from the left due to a landslide, so we had to do some detour and take the road from the right. We thanked the locals, said good bye and left for Delhi. After a couple of kilometers there was a jeep standing still, in the middle of the road. We took a good look and it appeared there was another landslide, blocking the road. So yes, it happened: we were stuck between two landslides on a five kilometer stretch. It took about three hours of work by the locals and our crew (of course the ladies didn't do anything). Trees, shovel, stones, rocks ... everything was used to prepare the landslide to be surmountable. The jeep succeeded quite early but our Toyota Innova took a bit longer.

With high hopes of reaching Delhi early morning after a full night of driving, we continued our journey.
- And no, the story ain't finished yet. As you can see there is more text following, so you can expect something else to happen. - And it is ...... bam bam bam bam ....... Tension tension......... Yes .... thank you Murphy ....... A BIG ROCK on the road. It was a couple of huge rocks that fell on the road, a couple kilometers further, making it only possible for a motorcycle (Indian English translation = bike) to cross. Stuck between three landslides. And superman just didn't want to pick up his phone. Bloody Lois.

Luckily we knew where the guy with the jeep was staying, so we drove back to the village between the second and the third landslide and could enjoy his lovely hospitality. It was a gaon with about 7-10 houses and many fields. The family served us dinner and breakfast (last food we had was breakfast), offered a bed and a good laugh!

The next day, the landslide was supposed to be cleared by 11 am. After breakfast we left as we were told it was cleared up. We arrived ... surprise surprise ... it was still there.... But some landslide removers were there, trying to hammer the rock in order to make it smaller. It became very obvious that this would take a long time. So they decided to extend the road instead. Now this road extension plan is the most marvelous thing I have ever seen. You have to imagine the edge of the mountain next to the road which is really steep... so there was not really anything that could serve as a support for the road extension. But these men were the best engineers I have ever seen. They started gathering huge rocks from everywhere and they managed to make this steady extra one meter of road supported by nothing in two hours! No education, no nothing ... but Master Engineers! So we passed and drove to Delhi and arrived at 3-4 in the morning!

I hope Murphy left us somewhere in Himachal ...

ps: and all this with me suffering from the dhaba food and no toilet paper ... gotta do it the Indian way, which allegedly reduces the risk of colon cancer (the squatting position, not the water part)