The pictures in this entry are actually from Day 1 to Tikhedhunga. Got my days mixed up. Pictures from Day 2 are in the last entry titled Day 1 Ghorepani Poon Hill Trek. Woke up at 6AM again and had our usual - muesli and hard boiled eggs. But once we saw what Nabin and Madhur were having, we decided to have that tomorrow! It was spicy curried potatoes and beans with this gorgeous bread. Will definitely have that tomorrow! We started walking at 7:30. We'd already been warned about the steep uphill for the first 2 hours or so of our trek today. What we didn't realize is that we would actually be going uphill all day! Just not as steep as the beginning. Lucky for us it was perfect trekking weather again and the ... read more

Morning flight over the Himalayas today. Woke up at 5:30, completely oblivious that we were supposed to meet Ravi in the lobby at 5:45. He told us. More than once. But we apparently had a major brain fart and totally forgot what Ravi had said even though I heard him clearly and repeated it. At 5:55 when Ravi called our room to tell us it was getting late, I realized that Nabin's English was not as good as we thought. The night before when he dropped us at the hotel he said six fifteen, but what he meant was fifteen to six. Big difference. So after Ravi called we rushed downstairs not realizing that we didn't need to bring all our stuff because we'd be returning after the mountain flight. So we threw everything in the ... read more

Truth be told, I was dreading today. We weren't leaving for the airport until 10:30PM, and in my mind, we had a lot of time to kill. We had a fabulous breakfast of omelets, paranthas, toast and jam and coffee and ended up staying at the B&B until noon because we had so much time to kill. Afterwards we took a rickshaw to the metro and took the metro into Delhi. It was clean and efficient and not the least bit crowded. I was impressed. Our first stop was Jantar Mantar, the observatory built in the 1700's. It has a huge sundial other huge, nifty gadgets used to tell time and the location of objects in the sky. Annette ran into a little old man who worked there for 40 years and now he offered tours ... read more

Unfortunately, I don't mean the title of this entry in a good way. But I am glad Annette and I made the effort to go to Varanasi and see the ghats (stairs) and a bit of the city. A bit was enough though. We stayed two nights here. One is probably enough if you arrive early enough in the day for a walk along the ghats. There's really not another reason to come to Varanas(t)i unless you're shopping for silk. It is supposedly silk central of India, but I don't know if I believe that. This morning in Agra Annette and I got a coffee at Cafe Coffee Day, which was quite a challenge even though we were the only two people in there, and then we were on the road with Hersh by 7:20AM. We ... read more

Okay, I have run out of clever adjectives to use to describe India while mocking their 'Incredible India' campaign, so I'm just going to use regular titles now. You can tell by the title of this one what's going to happen today. Hardev called this morning to say that the car had a big problem, which doesn't surprise me given how many speed bumps he'd hit at full speed or how many times we'd gone off-roading to pass a traffic jam, which I was fine with. But that car had taken a beating and I was surprised it got us this far. So the company was sending a replacement from Delhi that would pick us up in the morning. In the meantime, we would use an Ambassador (older model British car) taxi and driver today, and ... read more