Dan's sisters Kathleen and Jennifer are visiting. Kathleen is visiting from London and Jennifer is visiting from California. On Saturday we visited the Lotus Temple, Jantar Mantar, Lakshmi Narayan Temple, Delhi Sikh Temple, and Gandhi's place of cremation. Here are more details. Medical tests have confirmed that the entire family is missing the chromosome that governs "reasonable behavior." This family roams about the planet exhibiting unusual and socially suspect behavior. Lotus Temple, "According to Bahá'í teachings, religious history has unfolded through a series of God's messenger [View Full Entry]

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Our friend Genevieve (Gen) is visiting from Portland, Oregon, USA, for Christmas and the New Year. On Saturday the three of us headed south about 120 miles for our first visit to the Taj Mahal. We hired a driver from a travel agent since our driver Sonu is in Punjab for his cousin's wedding this weekend. It took 5 hours to travel 120 miles, because the roads are crazy! Well the roads are actually okay, but the drivers are crazy. As I have mentioned before, nobody drives inside their lane, so I am not sure why they paint lines in the [View Full Entry]

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In case you are curious, we have been in India for 10 months as of today (December 24, 2007), and it looks like we will be able to go the distance (2 years) and possibly longer, if that opportunity comes our way. I am not sure that we would want to stay if it wasn't for all the traveling we have done. Call us spoiled if you like, but living in India has many challenges that we never had while living in the USA. The challenges are charming for the first 4-6 months, but after that you start missing the easy [View Full Entry]

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Kim was visiting her family in Texas for a few weeks and flew back to Delhi just in time to catch our flight to Hong Kong and she received a one year extension on her India Visa only 2 hours before she boarded her flight back to India! So after 40 hours on airplanes and a 16 hour time difference, I had to drag her around the first few days in Hong Kong. I had to beat her a few times for talking back, but she responded quickly, and we were off and running. Hong Kong as you may imagine, or [View Full Entry]

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We had nine days to spend in the Hong Kong area, so we went looking for day trips to China and found this 2 day cruize to Haikou. Haikou is the largest city on an Island in the Hainan region of China. It was a cheezy cruize but we did get to see this little city in China. There were some very modern buildings in Haikou but we were amazed at how many were vacant. From the ground they appeared to have condos that would sell for a million in the USA, but you could clearly see that although they were [View Full Entry]

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Seeing Phi Phi Island in person made it no less unbelievable. Sometimes in life you find yourself speechless. [View Full Entry]

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Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 AD through 1868 AD. The capital then moved to Edo (now known as Tokyo). Kyoto was an amazing mixture of old and new as can be seen in our pictures. Kyoto was also the site for the 1997 international protocol on green house gas emissions which bears its name. We spent two days in Kyoto and visited many of the shrines and temples in the area, such as the Golden Pavilion, the Ryoanji Temple, the Nijo Castle, the Heian Jingu Shrine, and the Kiyomizudera Temple. We also found ourselves in the Gion Corner [View Full Entry]

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Hakone is a town near Mt. Fuji. There is a system of gondolas that carry you from Hakone to Lake Ashi. Once at Lake Ashi, there is a ferry that will take you across the lake. The view in this area is spectacular. We will let the pictures speak for themselves. We also stayed at the Hyatt in Hakone, which had incredible accomodations. It was also a spa, so we both had 90 minute full body fruit oil massages. Heaven can wait. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakone http://www.kiwicollection.com/property/hyatt-regency-hakone-resort-spa [View Full Entry]

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As you may know, the US carpet bombed Tokyo in World World II and spent the next 30 years after the war financing the rebuilding of Tokyo. That is why much of Tokyo is modern and there is very little of ancient Tokyo that still exists to visit. So while in Japan we visited other destinations such as Kyoto and Nara to see Ancient Temples and Shrines. You can get to Nara by train in about 30 minutes from Kyoto. We were told to treat it like a day trip, so we arrived in the morning and took the train back [View Full Entry]

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The contrast between Tokyo and New Delhi is complete. You are aware of the differences from the moment you arrive, and when you live in New Delhi and are just visiting Tokyo, as were we, this awareness never leaves you during a 9 day visit. Everything is clean in Tokyo. The buildings, the cars, the glass, the bathrooms, the subway; even the sidewalks are mostly clean. The taxi drivers wear white gloves and their gloves stay white. There are no dead animals or beggars in the streets. There are no missing limbed homeless people tapping on your car window at intersections. [View Full Entry]

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