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Just hanging out, in a Tibetan settlement, like we usually do. Yes, its true. And we were definately interested. So we went to Bylakuppe, not so far from Mysore.
It's a bit of land that the Indian government gave to Tibetan exiles in 1959. Its an incredibly interesting place to visit and unfortunately we coudn't stay for very long. The village requires any tourist wishing to stay longer than 24 hours to have a permit. That we didn't have.
So we arrived in the afternoon, a bit pooped from the trip there, and we relaxed oh-so much in the afternoon (wasn't it relaxing to have me do some henna on you, Jasmine?) and watched some movies on Jasmines laptop in our hotel room.
It's such a quiet place and very relaxing, just full of monks and other people trying to be quite for the monks. It was really wonderful.
Again we had that feeling of not being in India while we were in India.
We ate Tibetan Thugpa (like a vegetable noodle soup) at the restaurant in the hotel.
In the evening, the hilarious chef had decided to get a bit drunk, invited us over to his table to hang out and we tried our hardest to understand him. It was good,
It's henna time!
Ha...I think that Jasmine regretted ever letting me try out my 'fabulous'henna skills on her feet. good fun. He liked us alot and laughed and smiled everytime we so much as LOOKED in his direction.
The hotel we were staying in looked great from the outside, very clean, very new, very quiet...we were SO SURE that all the elements were there to have a really great nights sleep.
Sigh. We were wrong...again.
It started out fine. A bit hot in the room but we had a fan and could deal with it.
Then the electricity cut out (like it usually does), so the fan went out. Then we started to sweat. It was definately going to be impossible to sleep like that.
So we needed to open the windows to get some sort of fresh air in, though there was no screen on the windows (and with Guillaume not taking malaria pills that would be bad to let the mossies in) so we had to put up the mosquito net. That was quite a task in itself. Usually there is some sort of nail, hook, pole, SOMETHING that we could attach the string to. Not happening. I had to, ingeniously, invent a way to get it up there over our bed. I stacked a bunch of
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After visiting the magnificent temple. chairs up in the corner of the room, tied the string to them and figured out a way to tied up the other end. GOOD, done. A lot of effort at that time of night, but it was done.
Tried to sleep again. Couldn't do it.
It was waaaay too hot. So we decided to go for a walk, it was very cool outside but none of the coolness was coming in our room!
It was very enjoyable to be outside, taking in the fresh cool air. Guillaume wanted to try to sleep again, so he went ahead, back to the room.
All of a sudden (like usual) there were MANY sounds coming from our room.
Guillaume had gone to war, not with bedbugs this time but with COCKROACHES!!
Our room was being invaded by dozens of large cockroaches!! It was DISGUSTING!!!
Guillaume was not holding back, in a large buddhist settlement, he should have had a bit more consideration, but he had had enough at that point!
I got back to the room to just see the remains.
Bits of cockroach legs and heads scattered about the floor of the room. And the look of exasperation on Guillaumes face
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You cannot walk into a spectacularly colorful buddhist temple without passing through a colorful doorway. (it was priceless, but dont tell him I think so).
Therefore, another sleepless night for the both of us. That puts the count waaaaay up there to "uncountable".
Even though we were exhausted, yet again, we knew that we would have to take advantage of the next day since we really didn't have much time to look around in Bylakuppe.
At breakfast we had met a Canadian photographer who was spending quite some time on the settlement documenting the monks and the life there. He graciously showed us around the village and the temples, giving us loads of information and to some (Jasmine) loads of film and a spare camera!
He was a great guy to meet and we were so pleased to spend the morning with him.
Thanks again, Foto Andy!!
SO, after we checked out the place, the gorgeous temples, giant prayer wheels, prayer session...it was time to go.
A magical, lush, dreamland was awaiting us..and we didn't even know it yet!
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jassiepoo
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Ben non... your henna.. was... interesting... :P