Flying, Flying

Today began as a relaxing day - we ate a nice breakfast and drank a lot of tea, went shopping, bought more tea to bring home, and finished our packing. We even got to the Kathmandu airport with plenty of time to go before our flight. We did, though, lose Labiba - our airport navigator extraordinaire. Labiba, if you read this, you're going to shake your head at us.

Even though we were early to the airport in Kathmandu, our flight did not follow suite. We didn't even start boarding the plane until about 15 minutes before we supposed to take off. 20 minutes after we were supposed to take off, we were apparently ready to go, but there was an announcement that the entire airport would be shutting down for the next 40 minutes because there would be "VIP movement". Under normal circumstances this would not have been a big deal, but we had a two hour layover in Dehli in which we were supposed to collect our checked bags (which had only been checked to Delhi for some reason), go through customs and immigration, check into our next flight, and then go through security again. No easy task there for one hour of time in an airport.

Once we got to Delhi, one hour from our next flight departure, we were frantically running through the confusing Delhi airport and probably looking pretty ridiculous. A nice man who worked for Air India found us and decided to lead us through the rest of our airport adventure so that we actually did things in the correct order and without getting lost. This little man in an orange shirt led us around the airport and got us to the front of some lines. We even went through these weird back hallways to get around going through the duty free shops in the airport. We made our flight just in time, and all the thanks is due to this little man in the orange shirt. Labiba, if you were here he would not have found us running through the airport with looks of panic on our faces, but I'm sure you're glad you just get to hear about this airport adventure.

Our flights after that were far less exciting. We had a new leg of the trip to start - we checked in at the Mumbai International terminal (a lovely shuttle ride from the domestic terminal, which we had discovered last time we were at the Mumbai airports), flew to Paris, then back to Detroit. We lost Andrea on this part too, she went straight from Mumbai to Athens to have more adventures in Europe. Outside of some brief moments of delirium in the Paris airport everything went as scheduled. We flew to Paris, were judged for our plane clothes by the Parisians (who all wear heels and dresses to the airport. I'm not doing that for 40 hours of travel, thank you), then flew to Detroit and went home.

Home means laundry, the dentist (my wisdom teeth are coming out this summer...), and more visa applications!

The last bus day & Kathmandu

Yesterday was our last bus day...which is probably a good thing because my bus pants need to be washed. We went from Chitwan back to Kathmandu on a nice air conditioned bus, and even got to stop for a lovely buffet lunch. After arriving back in Kathmandu, we went straight back to our hostel - Sanu's House. It was good to be back and we were so excited about eating the food here after our experience with food in Chitwan. Before our dinner, we went for a walk and to do some shopping, though, which meant we were all very dusty and grimy once we arrived back for dinner. Dinner was not a let down; it was delicious and the tea was also just as delicious as we had all remembered it to be.

Today we explored a little more of Kathmandu. We had a nice breakfast, complete with tea, then went to the Bauddha Stupa. This Stupa is one of the largest in the world and one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Kathmandu. According to our hostel mother, you are supposed to walk around it 108 times in a clockwise direction. We walked around it once, which was enough for me, and I am pretty sure 108 times would take all day and make for some sore muscles.

After visiting the Stupa, we walked around in search of some of the nearby monasteries. We found a couple before we decided to eat lunch instead. We had lunch at a rooftop cafe overlooking the Stupa, a view in Kathmandu that's hard to beat.

After lunch we took a taxi to Pashupanith Temple. We made a friend at the hostel, Eric, who came with us today. He's a 6 foot something guy, so getting all 5 of us into a tiny Suzuki car from the mid-80's was interesting. Pashupanith is one of the most significant Hindu temples of Lord Shiva in the world, and since none of us were Hindu we didn't have access to many of the really cool parts of the complex.

We hadn't done much research on Pashupanith before we went, so we went in the back entrance (like our hostel mom told us to do) walked around for a bit, then were surprised to find cremation ghats right next to the front entrance. There were a couple cremations taking place, which startled us a little, so we didn't stay too long.

We also learned today about the festival of the living goddess and all about the living goddess from our hostel mother. There are apparently 9 goddesses around Kathmandu area. These are real girls that are chosen to be "goddess" when they are between 4 and 7 and then are no longer the goddess once they hit puberty. They are considered to be an actual goddess and some of these 9 goddesses are not even allowed to touch their feet to the ground outside of the monastery they live in. If this is the case, they are carried everywhere by monks. Right now, something called "the pulling" is about to happen in Patan and Kathmandu. This is related to the harvest season; the living goddess will be out during the entire day. We also learned that once the living goddess has aged out of being a goddess, she will still be called by "goddess" and her name, and that she is thought to have special powers if people make her angry. Men don't want to marry a former living goddess, since whenever they mess up they will be cursed.

After all of this learning about history and sightseeing, we ended our day with shopping. Since tomorrow is our last day in Nepal, we had a lot of Nepalese Rupees to get rid of. I can't think of any better way to do that than by shopping.

On our agenda for tomorrow is packing, more shopping, and our first two flights (out of four, eh). For now it's our last night in Nepal and we're enjoying the tea and company at Sanu's House.

An elephant of a day

This morning we woke up early to go on an elephant back safari. While we didn't see very many animals on our 1.5 hour safari, it was still an enjoyable experience to ride on the back of an elephant through a jungle. The only animals we saw were deer, wild boars, and chickens, and a fish-eating crocodile (different than a normal crocodile). Our elephant also had some problems going up and down hills and through water - usually we stopped at some crazy angle and at least two of us felt like we were going to fall out of the basket on the hills. Our guide got some nice pictures of us on our elephant - she was definitely the prettiest one in the bunch of them.

Labiba really enjoyed the elephant ride, and this was about the only type of picture we could take while actually on the elephants.

After the elephant-back safari, we went to bathe with elephants. The elephants basically sprayed us with water a few times then dumped us in the water. The water was about a foot and a half deep, so being dropped from any height was not the most pleasant experience ever, but the first part of the elephant bath made up for the drop into the water.

Here are some of the pictures from that event - there's also a video so you can get the full experience.

After bathing with the elephants we ate some lunch. We have discovered that our hostel loves to cook with tomatoes or carrots, even if a dish does not generally include any tomatoes or carrots. For example, this morning we ate egg and carrot omelets for breakfast. The sandwiches we ate for lunch had tomatoes and carrots on them, as well as coleslaw - on a cheese sandwich. 

After lunch we were scheduled to go on a jungle safari by jeep. Our new friend followed us about 1km to the national park. This should be a lesson to anyone - do not feed the stray dogs unless you want them to follow you EVERYWHERE. 

To get to our jeep for the safari, we had to climb down a rock wall that had been reinforced with some metal   chicken wire stuff. This made the rock wall much more difficult to climb down than it would have been otherwise. After we climbed down the rock wall, we crossed a river via canoe. We were also told by our guide about the crocodiles in the river that "like to eat people, especially white people". Very comforting. After crossing the river, we got to our jeep. We drove around for a few hours without much success in finding many animals. We saw more deer and wild boars, and were searching for a rhino when we took our mid-way break at a crocodile breeding center. There were a whole lot of crocodiles. The only relatively cute ones were in the "nursery pool" where the baby crocodiles live. 

After the crocodile breeding center, we finally found our rhinos. They're one horned rhinos and we found a group of three of them. They were very nice and ate a lot of grass. Rhinos also kind of remind me of dinosaurs. I think I'll have to read the wikipedia article about them once I have good internet.

After finding the rhinos we drove around for about another hour and did not see any more animals besides two peacocks flying around in trees. The long safari did not provide the most comfortable seat in the world, so we have been resting for the rest of the night. Tomorrow we leave to go back to Kathmandu where we'll be staying at the same hostel we stayed at upon arriving in Nepal. I'm so excited to get back there for the delicious food and the wonderful tea at every meal.

Another day on a bus

Today was another day spent on a bus. We went from Pokhara to Chitwan, this time on a nice AC bus. It was much much better than our bus trip a few days ago, and we even got a free lunch with our bus tickets that was a surprise to us! Much better than paying $3 for a bag of chips on the side of the road (consider that normally the same chips cost about $0.50.

Once we got to Chitwan, we set about scheduling our next day. Our plan is to have a full day of elephants and jungle safaris...and we're hoping it doesn't rain.

Tonight we went to a cultural program of the Tharu people - the people who live in Chitwan National Park and are apparently more resistant to malaria than normal people. The cultural show was a combination of singing and dancing, and there were a whole lot of bamboo sticks. After seeing what these people can do with bamboo sticks I would be slightly more keen on going out into the jungle on a "tiger walk" with just a guide with a bamboo stick...as we were told you could do while in Chitwan at a different hostel in Nepal.

Someone also fed this dog at our hostel, and now he follows us everywhere and sleeps outside our door. 

Hopefully tomorrow will be an exciting day - and there will be many many elephants!

One day in Pokhara

Today I got up early to go paragliding. It was amazing! I'm actually really surprised I wasn't more terrified to by running off a cliff with nothing but some guy from the Czech Republic and a parachute to keep me safe. There were beautiful views of the Annapurna Mountains, and we could actually see the peaks when we went out early in the morning. Apparently this was the only good day they've had for paragliding in the last month, so I guess our only day in Pokhara turned out to be well chosen! I got some pictures, but most of my trip was videoed, so I'll have to wait to get a better computer that can deal with a large video file.

After paragliding, we went to go boating on Fewa Lake in Pokhara. The lake water wasn't very clean, but it was still fun. When four girls asked for our own boat without a guide, the Nepali men selling us tickets looked at us like we were insane. We had no problems, though, and we made it almost across the lake and back in just under an hour (which is the minimum time you're allowed to rent the boats). This former summer camp waterfront director knows how to paddle a canoe, thank you very much.

After the boating, we were starving since none of us had eaten breakfast in preparations for paragliding first thing in the morning. We found this small place and ate lunch with a view of the lake. We also picked up bus tickets for the bus line with AC. This was a pretty big thing item on our agenda for the day since it's supposed to be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit where we're going tomorrow, Chitwan National Park. I am not willing to have a repeat of yesterday with a 7 hour bus ride that is basically a sauna.

We also went to the World Peace Pagoda this afternoon. We didn't stay very long because there was a storm rolling in and we were at the top of a mountain or hill or somewhere high up, so we ran up to see it, ran back down to our taxi and tried to make it back down the dirt road on the mountain before it started raining. We didn't actually get rained on at all, but there are some pretty dark looking clouds over a monument to world peace.

After seeing the pagoda, we went back for our afternoon rest time. On the agenda tonight: A German bakery (in Nepal?) and more tea (or beer). One thing I've learned here and in India - you can never have too much tea. Tomorrow we journey to the jungle to find some elephants! 

Famous Last Words

Today we took a bus from Kathmandu to Pokhara, another city in Nepal. The distance between the two cities is not far - only about a 25 minute trip by plane - OR a 7 hour bus ride.

We chose the bus.

We made another choice that was not very smart relating to this bus ride. We had reserved tickets on the bus with air conditioning, but since they were 17 USD and the non-AC bus was only about 5 USD, we went with the non-AC bus. The people at our hostel told us it would be fine...the whole trip was through the mountains so it would be cool...we didn't need the AC...

They were very wrong.

An hour after starting our journey, we weren't even out of Kathmandu yet. Two hours after that we emerged from the bus for our first break. It was kind of a mess and there wasn't much talking before we agreed that next time we're getting the AC bus. After we finally pried the windows on the bus open a little for a breeze, the ride wasn't too bad anymore. The windows introduced a whole new problem, though. Since the roads in Nepal aren't really paved, whoever was sitting by the window (me) ended up covered in a film of dust and with some nice rocks in their teeth.

There were some nice moments on the bus, too. The views were amazing - it was kind of surreal to think that we were on a bus driving through the Himalayas. Given the typical traffic in Southeast Asia and the road conditions, I was also pleasantly surprised that I didn't feel like I was going to fall off every cliff while on the bus. The first picture below shows what one of the equivalents to a guard rail looked like - it was only about 6 inches tall and I don't think it would have stopped a bus full of people from falling down a mountain.

After our very warm and dusty bus ride, we finally arrived in Pokhara. We were trying to determine if our hostel was close enough to walk to or if we should take a taxi, when a man came around asking if we were staying in the North Face Inn. We were, but given all the crazy men around here who will say anything to get your to take their taxi or their business card, we were not really sure what was going on. It turns out, our hostel was waiting there to pick us up. That was a nice surprise. Then, we found out our hostel was actually under construction and we would be staying in one next door but paying the people from our original hostel...

We went for a walk and to find food, since it was almost 4pm and we had not had much to eat or drink all day. Since none of us brought our rain coats with us even though we knew it was going to rain (sorry parents...I know you prepared us better than this), we had a long long lunch while we waited out a storm. Somehow we ended up at this place that served mostly Mexican food. I'm still not sure how I feel about my meal. We also signed up for paragliding tomorrow, so I guess I'll be jumping off a cliff and trying to fly. Hopefully these won't be my last words...

After our meal we did some food shopping and took another short break at our hostel. After we got cleaned up a bit, we went back out for some tea. There was also this beer (here's a picture for you, Will):

Once we had finished our team and also finished reminiscing about fluid dynamics and thermodynamics (as engineers are apt to do), we headed back to the hostel. This was our first time out in a few weeks after dark, so it was a new adventure for us. There was also another new adventure waiting for us at the hostel - cockroaches.

Since I've already seen mice, rats, geckos, mosquitoes, and other insects in my various rooms, I was hoping I could avoid this particular meeting with a member of the animal kingdom. I guess we'll see which of us is still alive in the morning. If it's me I promise there will be better pictures tomorrow :)

The dream of the 70's is alive in Kathmandu

Last summer I lived in Portland, Oregon. If anyone has seen the show Portlandia, you'll know that the show has this saying that "the dream of the 90's is alive in Portland". After walking through more of Kathmandu today, I'm pretty sure the this is where the dream of the 70's came to live. Granted, I wasn't alive then, but the guidebook I've been stealing from a friend says this is where the hippie expats came in the 70's from the US.

This morning we went to a place called Swayambhu, or the monkey temple, by city bus. This was an experience in itself; it was pretty loud and lots of people stared at us, but there was also a nice breeze and it was only about 25 Nepalese Rupees, or about 30 cents, to go halfway around the city. After being in India, the staring isn't even very noticable or bad here - at least people don't mob us anymore to take pictures with them or try to touch my hair anymore.

The monkey temple was indeed full of monkeys. This time though, there were no close calls with monkey attacks (if you read the SWE blog I posted in my first post, there was a pretty close call when we visited the Elephanta Caves). The monkey temple was beautiful and we finally found a few more foreigners there. Here's a picture from the temple, please note that we all wore matching Michigan shirts today because we are attempted to take a picture we can submit to the annual photo contest of the International Programs in Engineering Office, not because we think matching helps us blend in.

There was also this sassy monkey who insisted on sitting on the large Buddha statue with a sign that specifically said not to sit on it.

After seeing the monkey temple, we took a taxi to the main tourist area, Thamel. It would only have been about a 30 minute walk to get there, but one thing I neglected to mention yesterday was the fact that there aren't really road names or addresses, and none of the roads go straight. In fact, the roads are more like alleys than roads, unless you're on Ring Road, which makes a loop around the city. Long story short, we took a taxi to get there.

This place is where I am pretty sure the dream of the 70's is still alive. After eating lunch, something we were forced into before we were hungry because there was a short downpour and I had decided I didn't need a raincoat, we walked through an area called "Freak Street". This is where the hippies had once been and probably still are. It was much more touristy than Patan had been yesterday, and most of the clothes being sold were items a local would never be caught dead wearing. There were all kinds of crazy colors and patterns that were not very appealing. We did a lot of walking to find some elephant pants - Rachel and I now own some matching pants with elephants on them. We bought them for about 5 dollars for the bus tomorrow, so I now own bus pants a la Sheldon Cooper.

After doing some walking and being confused about the mix of Northface gear, wool mittens, pants and skirts belonging to the 70's, and trinkets in Thamel, we decided to go to the Garden of Dreams. We had to pay 200 Rupees (2 USD) to get into what we found out was basically a place to go on a date. We also got some stares here since we were a group of 4 girls (most of us also being very pale) in a place Nepalese people go on dates. This was fairly awkward, so we decided to lay on the ground and take naps. Here are a pictures of the nice park and the nice mats we took naps on:

After our afternoon naps, we went back to the hostel in another taxi. People here wear masks to protect themselves from the pollution and dust in the city; after that taxi ride I think I might need one, too. Luckily they are quite stylish and I could get a pink leopard print mask if I really wanted to.

One more weird thing about Nepal - the country is in its own time zone and is 9 hours and 45 minutes ahead of EST. I though India was weird for having a time zone on a half hour, but this 45 minute deal really throws off my ability to tell what time it's going to be in Michigan.

Tomorrow we're off to Pokhara to do some adventure sports. Hopefully that means paragliding, but we're not sure that any of the companies stay open in the off season. While looking up paragliding, we also learned that parahawking is a real thing. It's a combination of paragliding and hawking and is kind of ridiculous and insane. Look it up for a laugh.

Off to Kathmandu...

After a long journey from Mumbai we finally made it to Kathmandu today. I'm traveling with three other SWE people from my trip to India, and we got off to a little bit of a rocky start. First, we had ordered a couple vans to take our SWE group to the airport. There were 11 of us with lots of bags, so we definitely needed two vans, and we also had two different flight times. The group going to Nepal needed to be on a plane that left at 11pm, while everyone else left India at 1am. One of the buses showed up on time, but when we asked about the other one we kept getting the answer of "5 minutes" or "20 minutes". The Nepal group eventually had to leave for the airport to make the flight, and we left the other group of 5 at the YWCA to wait for the second van, which showed up an hour later than it was supposed to.

The second adventure was in finding out where our flight was. The people driving the vans told us we would be flying out of the international terminal, since we were flying internationally, but when we got there the guards checking tickets told us we needed to go to the domestic terminal, which was about 6 km away. Since our van had already left, we had to call and be picked up again to be taken to the other airport terminal. Once we got there, one of the four of us had booked a flight leaving the day after the rest of us. That was a whole other adventure we got to sort out.

Eventually, all of us got on our flight to New Dehli. Once there, we navigated the airport (a more impressive feat than it seems) at 1am, found a place to sleep, and took naps until our next flight at 7am. We flew Air India, and on each 2-3 hour trip we were served a meal. That definitely interfered with my sleeping. After our airport naps, we flew to Kathmandu, got a taxi, and went to our hostel. We're staying at a place called Sanu's House; the women who runs the hostel is kind of like a long lost Nepalese aunt who is trying to take care of us and wants to make sure we are safe all the time. She made us lunch, and we sat on mats on her kitchen floor and ate lunch and drank tea. Her niece then took us out on a walking tour of the area we're staying in - Patan - which makes up the southern portion of the city of Kathmandu. Here are some pictures from the day:

After we got back from a little sightseeing, we took another nap, then ate dinner. Dinner was followed by more delicious tea...I could really get used to this. I was also enjoying the weather here - only mid 80's instead of the 100+ degree temperatures with major humidity we were getting around Mumbai.

There will be more exploring of Kathmandu tomorrow, but for now I'm going to prepare my mosquito net for the night.

-Beth

SWE Overseas in India

The last two weeks I have been leading a trip for the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at the University of Michigan to India. Eleven of us traveled to India to work on an outreach project. We ran a four day science and engineering summer camp for students at Bharat Children's Academy, a school sponsored by Walchandnagar Industries and located in Walchandnagar. We also did some traveling on our own - to the Taj Mahal, around Mumbai, to the Elephanta Caves, and to a few other UNESCO World Heritage Sites near the Taj Mahal. I have some pictures of my own from the trip, but here's the link to the actual blog for our group. Our blog explains in much more detail what we were actually doing with the school and how we spent our time in India. Each day was written by a different person on the trip - luckily we had 11 people and there were 11 non-travel days to write about! We were reposted to the umich.edu homepage and a few other places, so our blog had a lot of views, which is really exciting!

Here are some pictures from India:

Fatehpur Sikri in heat of about 120 degrees F

Labiba and I near a monument

 Me at the Taj Mahal

The Bahrat Children's Academy in Walchandnagar

Me at the Elephanta Caves

Next, I'm off to Nepal to explore some mountains and find a yeti!