The Joys of Traveling: Delhi Edition

Once again, sorry for the long lull in posts.... it's a good thing I kept a journal on my trip otherwise, I would be having a hard time remembering everything that happened....
When we got to New Delhi, we were met by more soldiers with guns. We walked out a very nice terminal and searched for someone with Beth's name who would drive us to the hostel.  We didn't see anyone, so we stood and waited and took turns walking through the line of people holding signs to see if our guy had come while we were standing somewhere else.  We waited for about an hour and a half, and on one of my walk-throughs, a man stopped me and asked me who I was looking for. I explained to him our situation and that we had no phone to call the hostel and he pointed me back inside where I could use a phone.  Beth came with since she had the number, but first we had to explain to the guard with a gun at the door our situation and show him our passports proving that we just arrived.
Beth called the hostel, and they said the driver should be there already, but he would call again.  We headed back outside and did another walk through of people holding signs, and lo and behold there at the end was our driver.
It was a long drive back to the hostel.  Once we finally got to the hostel and got settled in, we decided to explore down the street and see what kind of shops there were.  The street was crazy busy and loud and dirty, so after about 15 minutes we decided to go back to our room and just eat the rest of the snacks we had brought.  Beth and I played Monopoly Deal (thanks Jess for letting us use that!) for awhile and then we discovered that we had HBO and that every night there was a movie at 9, which quickly became a night time ritual :) That night was Red Eye.

Sikh Temple

The next day, our breakfast was delivered to our room, so we ate while getting ready for the day.  We used the map we got at the airport to plan out our day. The map was our money saver because we could tell all the rickshaw drivers that we didn't need there "free" help. First stop...what we thought was a famous temple.  It turns out it wasn't even on the map. It was a Sikh temple. We stood outside for awhile wondering if we could go in without "worshiping" or offending them, when a man came up to us and pointed us to a sign for foreign visitors.  We followed the signs and had a tour guide introduce us to Sikhism and then showed us around the temple. Before we could go in, we had to take off our shoes and socks and cover our heads (we put on bandanas). Inside the temple there were three priests playing instruments and singing from their holy book, and two priests sitting near and keeping watch over their holy book. They do this every day and at night, put the book into a different room.

the ground was all marble and very cold

Next stop was a Hindu temple. However, we got a little lost trying to find it (surprise, surprise). Many rickshaw drivers tried to "help" us but finally, a group of university-aged students stopped to help us and pointed us in the right direction.  When we finally got to the Hindu temple, we walked around for maybe 20 minutes then moved on.   

Hindu temple

We wanted to see the President’s Estate and some other government buildings, and find some place to eat since we hadn’t eaten since breakfast.  Long story short….we did a LOT of walking; didn’t get to see the President’s Estate; did get to see some government buildings but got shoo-ed away at one of them; didn’t get dinner; did get a bag of chips with approximately 20 chips in. We walked back towards the hostel, ate dinner at a restaurant nearby, then finished off the night with Inception on HBO.

goverment building

we got shoo-ed away from this place

The next day, we slept in a bit, ordered our train tickets from the travel agent associated with the hostel (we thought it would be safe to do it that way, turns out we got scammed anyways….). The plan for the day was to find a Muslim temple, go to the Red Fort, go to the tallest brick structure in the world, and go to the Lotus Temple (a Baha’I temple). We walked to the Muslim temple and the Red Fort, which once again resulted in getting a little lost, but eventually we found it.  On the way, we saw India in it’s full craziness.  The streets were jam packed with carts, cars, bikes, rickshaws, people, dogs, cows, and whatever else you could imagine.  

super crowded streets

 

The Muslim temple and Red Fort were nice to look at from the outside, but we didn’t go into either of them.  We still had more things to see and we looked at the postcard pictures of the Red Fort and decided it wasn’t worth paying to go in.  

Muslim temple

back side of the temple

A bunch of boys were playing cricket on the side of the temple

The Red Fort

 

To get to the brick structure and Lotus temple we took the subway and a rickshaw since it was on the other side of the city.  The brick structure part of an old Islamic mosque which Is now in ruins, but the structure and ruins were beautiful. 

 

We got to the Lotus temple at the perfect time because we got to see it in daylight and at night when they light it up.  Basically, the temple itself is a big prayer hall, where people of any religion can come and pray.  We went in and sat for about a minute, then walked out. 

 

We ate dinner at a rooftop restaurant near our hostel, then headed back to the hostel.  We picked up our train tickets, realized we were scammed and couldn’t do anything about it since the ticket guy was gone for the day *fist shake*, then headed to our room to pack up.

rooftop restaurant

Can you find the cow?

We left our hostel at 5:30 the next morning because we were supposed to be getting on a train to Agra at  7:10 and the guy said it’d take awhile to get there. It didn’t, so we overpaid for the taxi, and we got there really early and it was cold, AND when we looked at the sign showing departure times, we saw that our train no longer left at 7:10, but at 2:20.  Well….what to do now.  We had all our stuff so we didn’t want to go exploring. We didn’t want to go back to the hostel because we were made at them for ripping us off with the train ticket and taxi fare.  Vans at the train station offered to drive us to Agra for 4 times the amount of the ticket so we didn’t want to do that.  It was cold outside and there were no waiting areas, so we went to the 24 hour food court. We set up camp at a table and strategically ordered our food so at least one person was “eating” at all times in case they tried to kick us out.  While we sat there, our ears and eyes were graced with Bollywood music videos, first from the 80s, then with the new hits.  After awhile, these became repetitious, so I used the many hours to catch up on The Hunger Games.  Very addicting books! 

Our first taste of Bollywood

About 40 minutes before departure, we headed through “security” (they don’t check tickets or check pockets or even really check bags) and then boarded the train.  Next stop: Agra, home of the Taj Mahal!  Until next time.....His will be done.

Thankfully it was not summer so there was no need for the fans

These were set up randomly around the city for car bomb checks

public bathroom. very public.

common storefront

Just for kicks and giggles :)

The Joys of Traveling: Nepal Edition

So, our plane was suppose to leave at 9:55 am. We get up early, get to the airport about 1 1/2 hours before take-off (no need to get there super early, even for an international flight....security/customs=super easy to get through. although other customers at the check-in counter kept trying to get us to take their medical books and other stuff in our bags or on our tickets....we said no... ).  We sit by our gate and wait to board.  We read and wait.  And wait. And wait.  Our plane was delayed for 5 hours.  Shortly before our plane was scheduled to take off, AND several times after an announcement came over the intercom: flight MU 757 to Kathmandu cannot leave on schedule. Please do not leave the waiting area."  We didn't realize it would be 5 hours before we took off, but they did feed us twice so we couldn't complain too much.

Eventually we made it to Nepal. When we got off the plane, there were soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders scattered along the way to baggage claim.  Before we could get to baggage claim we had to apply for a 15 day visa, which just required us to fill out a form and pay some money.  The whole time we were getting our visas, baggage,and money exchanged we were wondering how we would get to our hostel.  I had emailed them asking for an airport pick up, but they never replied and we had an address in English, but we weren't sure if it would be easy for taxi drivers to find.  On our way out of the airport, we were hounded by many taxi drivers offering us rides.  We had no idea how much was acceptable to take us and Beth and I really needed to use the bathroom so we said we'd be right back we need to use the bathroom. One of the taxi drivers offered to show us the way to the bathroom, which is outside.  We walk outside and a soldier is hurrying us along and Jonathan says, "Nicole, I think there's a sign with your name on it."  Eh? For real? We all stop and look across the lane and sure enough, there is a guy waving at us holding a piece of paper with NICOLE LEHMAN written on it. Oh glorious day!! We said, forget the bathroom, let's go!  The guy had been waiting there for 5 hours because he didn't know how long our plane would be delayed.  What a guy!

Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal.  Driving though the city, you never would have guessed. Nepal is such a poor country, that their capital looks nothing like you would expect a capital to look like.  Granted, we didn't see the whole city, but the parts we did see were so poor. The streets were crowded with people and carts and bikes.  The buildings were small and cramped together.  The place we stayed at was the touristy part of town, so it was a little nicer and full of shops to buy clothes, souvenirs , bags, and hiking gear (many people use Kathmandu as a starting point for hiking Mt. Everest).
Our first and only full day (we really only used Nepal as a cheaper way to get into India) we went to do some sight seeing within walking distance of our hostel. Before we went, we wanted to buy bus tickets from Nepal to Delhi, India. We asked the people at our hostel, and they said we should ask them again that night, and we'd have no problems getting the tickets for the next day. More on that later.....
(side note: not all these pictures are mine....some are Beth's or Jonathan's)

A Town Square

The center of the square

 Our first stop was to a town square. We wanted to just walk around it, not go into any of the buildings, but they were going to make us pay 750 rupees each. The exchange rate is 1 USD = 80 NPR ; 1 RMB= 12.1 NPR, so really it wasn't that much, but it didn't seem worth it, so we just decided to head to the monkey temple.  We walked through the back streets to get there and saw quite a few interesting things.

apartment complex

small snack shop. most shops were this size

Beth is not the tallest person......

the women, especially the older women, were almost always fully covered

some cows just waiting for the school bus to go

 

Just keeping watch over the shop.

the monkey temple "mountain"

When we got to the base of the monkey mountain, we witnessed a monkey steal a bag of bananas from a man just walking down the street.  The little bugger was fast! We saw many more monkeys on the way up. We took a couple of breaks on the way up because Beth wasn't feeling very good. When she saw all the stairs we would have to climb up to get to the actual temple, she decided to just sit and wait for us.  There weren't many people along the way up, besides beggars, but when we got to the top there were so many people! There were people worshiping, people sight-seeing, people selling stuff, people playing ping pong.  It was nuts! Jonathan and I walked around for a bit, and then decided we left Beth all alone long enough and we went back to join her.

halfway up the "mountain"

taking a break

look closely to figure out what they're doing

 We walked back to the hostel, and since Beth was sick, we decided to take over the map.  Bad move.  We got very lost and somehow ended up waaay past our hostel and Beth had to take over anyways.  When we finally made it back to the hostel, Beth went to the room to rest and Jonathan and I went to find lunch. After lunch, we all relaxed for a couple hours before going back out for shopping! Beth and I had our eye on some Ali Babba pants Jonathan had his eye on some new cargo pants. We had gone out the night before to look and get prices so we knew the general area and price range for what we wanted.  We all found what we wanted. I bought two pairs of pants.  One pair was pretty self explanatory how to wear. The other pair I thought I knew how to wear them, but when i tried them on, it turns out I had no idea how to tie them without exposing my entire leg.  I really liked them though, and after closer examination of another pair, the three of us decided we could figure out to make them work. Later that night I put on a pair of shorts, and the three of us successfully got my pants to work :)  Seems ridiculous, but it's hard to explain without showing.  Someday I'll show you what I mean.

the uncomplicated pants...this was actually taken in India

 After our successful shopping spree, we went back to our hostel in hopes that we would have our bus tickets to India for the next day.  We go ask the guy about the tickets, he calls the lady, hangs up and tells us, all the tickets are sold out, but we can leave the following day if we want, no problem.  Pardon?? I thought you said we could get the tickets for tomorrow no problem!! We were quite disappointed. We had already decided that we were done in Nepal and were looking forward to getting away from crowded streets, beggars, and shady guys asking Jonathan if he wants to buy some hash.   This dejected feeling only lasted for a few minutes before we bucked up and decided to look into plane tickets and see just how expensive those were. Turns out they really weren't too expensive and they'd get us to India 2 days earlier since we'd have to leave a day later for the bus and the bus ride was 24 hours long. We booked the tickets, went back to tell the hostel guy that we'd like to arrange for a ride to the airport, then headed out to find supper. Jonathan and I were in the mood for burgers (Beth still wasn't feeling well) and we had seen a burger place the day before so we decided to try and find it. However, the streets have no rhyme or reason and we couldn't remember exactly where it was, so we ended up walking quite a bit to find it.  We were about to give up because we had circled the same place about 3 times but then Beth saw a road we hadn't ventured down yet. We were a bit skeptical, but we tried anyways and lo and behold there it was! Jonathan and I got our burgers and Beth got some chicken nuggets.  After filling our bellies, we headed back to the hostel. 
The next day was airport day, so after we got up and packed, we headed out for one more Nepalise breakfast. We got to the airport super early because we didn't know how traffic would be. 
At the airport, we had to go through 3 different security checks, and the men and women had to go into separate lines (a cultural thing). We made it through no problem and not soon enough, we were headed to India. 1st stop: New Delhi, the capital city. Stay tuned for more fun and exciting adventures.
Until next time....His will be done.

our hostel is the red sign on the left