Cheryl and Mike’s Adventure

Well, we’re here in Jaipur (pronounced ya-Pour), we got in yesterday afternoon via train from Sawai Madhopur (more on that in a minute), and we’re here for one more day. Jaipur is a pretty big/major city (about 3 million people), visited pretty frequently by tourists. It’s the capital of Rajasthan, which is the Province/state/region of India which we are traveling around currently (and have been the last week or so). Today, we took in a guided tour of the city, which was pretty nice…we saw several old forts, palaces, and part of the old city, which is known as “The Pink City” due to the coloring of most of the buildings. The big excitement from yesterday was twofold, first we took in a “Bollywood” movie in the afternoon called “Aaja Nachle” (english: Come Let’s Dance, http://www.yashrajfilms.com/microsites/an/aaja_nachle.html). It was, uh, interesting to say the least. Actually, it was pretty entertaining, slightly bizarre, but in a good/amusing way. For those of you who don’t know what Bollywood is, it’s the India film- making industry, which is HUUUUUUUUUGE over here, and actually in a large part of the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Real quick post today, actually yesterday we wrote a long, drawn out and wildly funny and intelligent post, which got lost in the Blogging Universe Matrix as we were trying to post it…it must have been the computer/connection here (we’re of course not blaming it on user error)…so real quick: We are in Sawhdi Madahpor, and had a full day of (unsuccessful yet enjoyable) Tigar Safariing today…the Bird Safari the previous two days in Bharatupor (sp?)was interesting as well. The computer at the hotel we’re staying at (incidentally called the Hotel Tigar Safari, wonderful place), isn’t all that great, so we just wanted to send a quick hello. Tomorrow we head out to Jaipur, via train, in the AM, and hopefully we’ll be able to get up a longer post then. Hope everyone’s weekend was great! Until then…

Cheryl & Mike

Well, we’re here in Agra for a few more hours, so I figured we had time for a quick update. First a couple of things to clarify (as per requested by Cheryl):

-First, we want to be very clear that we are very much enjoying the food here in India (very true). We didn’t want people to be under the impression that we weren’t, due to my comment about the Pizza Hut on the last post. Actually, the food here in India has been a pleasant surprise. A good mix of curries, with vegetables, all sorts of rice, PAN (sort of a cooked bread) w/cheese and garlic…very tasty/flavorful, seemingly healthy, and actually rather spicy (mostly in a good way) at times. Anyway, the food’s been good, and to everyone out there who knows Cheryls’, um, uh, selective eating habits, she’s doing a great job of branching out and trying new things, you’d all be proud.

-Cheryl also wanted to thank everyone who sent in a “Happy Birthday” comment as well, she appreciated all of them. We had a nice late lunch in Varanasi at a pretty decent restaurant (for India) and we even had a candle and cake as well. She says she couldn’t have wished for a better 22nd birthday. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, alot has happened since our last post, so let’s get everyone up to speed:

When we last left you, we were heading out of Pokhara, heading to the Royal Chitwan National Park! The trip there went well, it was kind of a mixed bag. We stayed at a place called the Gorkha Hamlet Resort, for 3 days/2nights (got there via bus)which was just outside the actual Park. We discovered that there are sort of two Park experiences, staying ‘inside’ and staying ‘outside’. The main difference, cost, plays a big part of how much you are going to do actually inside the park. We went, naturally, the less expensive route, and not that it wasn’t entirely bad, but we did alot of things kind of on the “outskirts” of the park, so to speak (For you Jackson-savvy people out there, compare it too doing activities in the Bridger-Teton National Forest vs. the GTNP). We did have some great experiences, we had a nice AM canoe ride along the border of the park, where we saw several alligators up close, and also had a nice visit to the Elephant training center (where, a loose baby elephant ran amok in the crowd, causing quite a scene and was actually very funny. Read the rest of this entry »

Couple of quick thoughts for this evening (this morning for you all back in the States) as Cheryl and I are about to head out to dinner on our last night in Pokhara…

-Well, today was much slower and kind of nice, we basically spent the entire day shopping up and down the main ‘strip’ here in Lakeside (which is the section of Pokhara we’re staying in), and just overall lounging around (we’re both feel better, our respective colds seem to be dying down a bit, thank God). It was very nice, and we both banged out alot of shopping for ourselves and for others (*Note to family members: Christmas this year will have a decidedly, uh, Nepali-feel to it). We have to shop light, which can be unfortunate at times, because we have to travel light, obviously. There’s some really cool stuff over hear, as you might think, but the thing is we have to haul it around for another month. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, as you may have all noticed, Cheryl and Mike have been barely registering a pulse on our fledgeling blog, but there’s a perfectly legitimate reason for our collective flatlining. We’ve been busy, as well as the fact that both of us have come down with some sort of Nepali guk, and so we’ve been under the weather and have been trying to take it easy (not sick in a, uh, bad way, but more like your normal common cold stuff, which still sucks, perhaps more so when you’re overseas). Anyway, let’s recap: Read the rest of this entry »

Hello everyone! Well we made it back safely and soundly from our incredible Trek. We got back bright and early this AM from Lukla (terrifying runway) to KTM, on our wonderful (and terrifying) little airplane from Gorkha Airlines. What can we say about the Trek…it was certainly something that we will never forget or probably experience again. 13 days of traveling from village to village, staying in (actually surprisingly not bad) guest house, each of which had a restaurant(where Mike had plenty of dal bhaat)…yup, that’s the local dish, rice, lentil soup, some veggies and maybe, if you’re lucky, some potatoes. (Cheryl’s favorite hot orange tea (tang) and popcorn!) Read the rest of this entry »

Namaste everyone! We’re coming to you liiiiiiive from Namche Bazaar, on the 3rd day of our Trek. Incredibly, they have internet cafes up here, and we had to drop a line to our public and let them know we are doing well, the trek is going great (we start doing some real hiking tomorrow) and we’re both healthy (knock on wood). If you get a minute, check the comments from the last post, Cheryl’s Dad put up an excellent explaination of our trek, and you can follow his directions on the map and really get a sense of what we’re doing. Had our first glimpse of Everest today, it was INCREDIBLE, got a bunch of pics and it seems the views keep getting better and better. That’s it for now, we’ll perhaps catch another internet cafe on the way down, but if we don’t we’ll give full blog updates once we are back in KTM!

Cheryl & Mike

Hello Everyone, this is cheryl writing! We have had a couple of busy days touring around Kathmandu. We are staying in Thamel, which is a touristy backpacking area with tons of great food options, shopping, etc…. We haven’t been hungry yet. Yesterday we went to the old part of the city, wandering around the busy streets, markets, shops and more shops of random things – about 10 shops per item all in a row whether it be brass,
dentists, paper, flutes, or vegetables… after that we went to durbar square the heart of the old town where kings were once crowned. There are many wooden temples, pigeons, cows, and crazy drivers. Read the rest of this entry »

In the words of the immortal Bob Seegar, I think I’m going to Kathmandu! But first, a couple of quick admin. notes:

-We are aware of the tech. issues with having to ‘approve’ of each comment that all of you leave…we are working on it with our blog host. It seems we may need to manually approve each comment, which is fine, however it may take some time as we only get to the internet about once daily. I know our growing legions of fans and followers want to be heard, and we want to hear from everyone, but bear with us for right now. Management is working on the problem.
Read the rest of this entry »