Walking in the hills

Continuing my journey in the hills means that one must gets ones exercise so when the sun rises as a pale shadow I don my walking shoes and set off downhill on the winding road. The birds are twittering in the trees and a wide variety of them seem to be around. I for once can't recognise anyone except the raven and the crow,but listening to their birdsong is enough for me to realise that I have some serious bird watching to do....who knows ,my life in the hills may educate me yet. A little further on there are a family of monkeys playing catch. Now I am a bit of a coward when it comes to animals I am unfamiliar with but there is something rather cute about baby monkeys as they swing from branches and sometimes from their siblings tails. I figure that if I don't pay too much attention or invade their privacy they may not bother me so I continue this time uphill and as I huff and puff my way up,I make a mental note to tell all exercise equipment companies that an incline on a treadmill is no training ground for high altitude walking. My breath comes in spurts,my heart beats faster and I need to stop and catch my breath though I tell myself I am taking in blue skies and green grass. By the time I climb my weary wat back to the house I realise another funny thing about the hills. After an hour of walking up and down hill I am yet to work up an appetite . I tell myself I am on my way to becoming slim....oh how one lives in hope.

In the afternoon I set off again on my explorations and this time it's to the local village that has a temple festival. Now these are big social events with the entire village turning out in good numbers to have some fun. Soon I realise that in this part of the woods my companions and I are an oddity. One of us is asked if he is English,pretty obvious that none of the villagers has seen an English man in recent times. My other companion and I are mistaken for Hindi speakers and we quickly tell them that we are as clueless about Hindi as they are and once we have lapsed into the native tongue we quickly loose our novelty status. Soon we are ignored and after another stop at the local tea shop for a cuppa and some chinwag with the locals we are on the way to becoming local ourselves . One more lesson in the hills ....be nice leave city aggression behind and merge....