So I've finally forced myself to sit down and write about my most recent trip, India and Nepal. The above pictures are from my first few days in India. We started in Delhi and used it as our home base, flying in and out of the city several times. I wish we had chosen a different place because Delhi was quite horrible actually. I've been to many countries and dealt with many people, but nothing could come close to how mean and disgusting the people were in Delhi. For every one person that was nice to us, there was at least 200 that were screaming, pushing, trying to rip us off, and doing just ridiculous things that I won't waste my time writing about. Anyway, after just one day in Delhi, we took a train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Since we wanted to see the Taj at sunset, so we started with the fort. It was a huge area with various builings, mosques, etc. That evening we went to the Taj Mahal and I am happy to say that it didn't disappoint. It is even more beautiful in person. Just standing there staring at it, I was overwhelmed with thoughts of how lucky I am to have this experience. As always, I wish that I could have shared the experience with you all back home. Although the Taj is made entirely of white marble, at sunset, the colors change and it takes on a pink hue. We stayed until it was too dark to see it any longer.
These are pictures from Nepal.
So as we were boarding the plane for Nepal, we realized that we were pretty much the only people not in hiking boots. Everyone goes to Nepal to trek. We decided to try to make time for a short trek. We spent our first two days exploring Kathmandu. We went to numerous stupas, including one in an area where Tibetan refugees live. Every night at sunset they meet and walk around the stupa both to pray and to socialize. It was amazing to see all of the Tibetan people, particularly because of everything that is going on right now with China. We also climbed to the top of Monkey Temple and had amazing views of the city. One night we went to a dinner show with traditional Nepalese dancing. We ended up getting seated at the table beside the owner who was their entertaining business associates. He ended up buying all of our drinks and after the show took us back stage to try on the dancers costumes and then took our picture. Erica has those pictures though, so I'll have to post them later. We had a great time that night and it was definitely a unique experience!
We found a short, 2 day trek to go on for our last 2 days in Nepal. Our guide Nara was amazing. The first 3 hours of the first day was straight up an extremely steep mountain in the Himalayas. It was absolutely exhausting. I was so amazed as we came across tiny villages that were located in the mountains, hours away from anyone else. We stayed in a trekkers lodge overnight and got to meet lots of people from all over the world. Our second day we came across a small town that had been spray painted and covered with flags from the Maoist party. We saw lots of kids wearing Maoist shirts. For those who don't know, Nepal recently held its first democratic elections and no longer has a king. They had lots of pre-election violence which many felt would continue if the Maoist didn't win the elections, but they did. I talked to many Nepalese people about what was going on and more than one seemed to have faith that the Maoist party could really help the poverty situation. Unfortunately for them, I know what usually happens when Maoist are in power. I'm curious as to what the future holds for Nepal and I definitely want to travel there again.
Ok, I can't do it. I can't finish everything right now. After Nepal I spent another week and a half back in India. I'll write about it next time.
I love and miss you all!
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