Chillin on the Beach

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I started this entry about a week ago, but never finished it. We're in Darjeeling now, eating Momos (tibetan dumplings) and staring at Mt. Kanchendzanga (8560m - 3rd highest in the world). Not a bad place to be. A little cold by indian standards (5 degrees), but i'm sure I won't get any sympathy from any of you back home. So here we go...

My Sis and I spent 3 days on the beach at Puri, an Indian tourist destination on the east coast. It's gorgeous there. Not much there, but the food was unreal. The fish was unbelievable.

From there, we went on a tour of Konark and Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar was the highlight of my trip so far. We went to Udaygiri caves, which has a bunch of monkeys running around. They act as de facto security guards. Well, 2 of them jumped on my sister's head. She was freaking out. I was trying to be sympathetic, but I had to take a picture first!

The Sun Temple in Konark is quite the sight. It's a huge stone temple with intricate carvings built in the 12th century. The carvings tell all sorts of different stories, but a lot of them involved orgies with several women... I guess they knew how to get freaky back in the day. Made the whole thing sound more like a Snoop Dogg video than a religious site. Our (Bengali) tour guide just kept pointing to stuff and saying "Lesbian."

After that, we went on a 2 day tiger safari at the Sunderbans Park south of Kolkata. And we even saw two baby tigers! Or maybe they were monkeys... Who knows. But I maintain that they were tigers. All I know is that everyone working on the boat made it a point of making sure I was well fed :-) All in all, a great time, and a nice break from the bedlam that is Kolkata.

Ok. Off to eat more momos. Pictures next week. I promise!

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