Photo - The path from the house to the village

These steps go from the garden of the house to the country path that leads to the top end of the village. Normally its quiet but, as you can see, it sometimes gets a bit 'busy'. Add in a few dogs, shepherds and people carrying large loads of hay etc on their backs and it can become a tad too narrow.

 

Coos walking and munching on the path.

The first day we arrived in Vashisht, after catching up with everyone at the house and getting unpacked, we headed along the path into the village. Colin was in front and, as we rounded a bend, there was 2 cows on the path. Although Colin is a big brave lad he is definately city born and bred and isn't too comfortable around the cows. Normally the women tending the cows are really good when you meet them and they will manouver the cows so that you can squeeze pass the cows on the inside of the path - on the outside of the path is a drop that you really don't want to fall down. But the girl tending the cows was young and a bit unsure of herself. To make matters worse it was actually a cow and her young calf so she was a bit frisky, jumping around and protecting the calf. Colin kind of stood motionless. The cow wasn't frightened and started coming towards him with horns at the ready. Luckily I had the walking stick with me and we were able to eventually prod at it, get around it and get on our way without any major mishap. Disaster averted we got to the village. When we got there it was really busy with Indian tourists. Also someone in their wisdom had decided that, even though it is the busiest time of the year for tourists, it was a good idea to fully dig up the main road  for it to be re-laid - probably taking a few months. There is only the one road through the village and it was like a building site. Never mind, having narrowly missed being gored to death, and happy to be back in the mountains we were in great spirits. We were walking over a large pile of rubble when a loud roar happened. Next thing we knew a dumper truck was reversing towards us, right in our path at full speed. Colin grabbed me and pulled me into a gutter. Luckily another disaster was averted.