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Study Abroad India

Mumbai–Molly & Steve

Tuesday 8/3: Our time in Kathmandu was AWESOME!!!!!!!!! The temples we visited, our mountain flight, the bungy adventure, seeing random animals in the street, eating food (lots of food!), and lounging around the hotel are all great memories 🙂 Leaving Hotel Ganesh Himal was really sad! The staff was so friendly and always helpful. One of the front desk girls gave each of us a scarf and wished us luck before heading for the airport 😀 The Kathmandu airport had the most security checks of any airport I’ve ever been through…we literally went through at least a dozen bags searches/metal detectors before boarding the plane for Mumbai. The 2.5 hour flight went smoothly and quickly (especially for Sara, who managed to snag a first class seat…not fair!). We got a pre-paid taxi at the airport…an OLD (like really really really OLD and RICKETY) taxi…pretty sure it was a 50-year old black and yellow Ford Ambassador that rumbled and bounced along the street….we looked super classy pulling into the JW Marriott (a VERY nice 5-star hotel)! After some “issues”, it was decided that Steve and I would stay at the JW for our two nights and Mumbai and Sara and Valerie were going to find a hotel downtown. Steve spent the night relaxing in the sauna and I pretty much just fell asleep watching Indian tv 🙂 We also had some very expensive sandwiches at the hotel….

Wednesday, 8/4: Steve and I woke up feeling refreshed (those beds were SO COMFY!!!) and headed out to find a cab. Our cab driver totally ripped us off and charged us double what it should have cost to get from our hotel to the Gateway of India. En route to downtown, we saw the 20-some story Tata house!!! We found Sara and Valerie’s hotel, but they had already left to do some sight-seeing, so Steve and I enjoyed lunch at McDonald’s (Maharaja Mac!) then walked to the Gateway of India/Taj Mahal Hotel. The inside of the Taj is GORGEOUS!!!! We spent a few minutes sitting in the lobby, then walked around the shopping area inside. A jewelry store owner saw us looking in his store windows and came over to talk to us (well, mostly Steve…grr)…he said that people never come in his store to look anymore because they’re afraid of getting conned into buying something and he just wants to talk to people! So we spent a good 30 minutes in their learning about India and how to avoid getting ripped off by cab drivers 🙂 After that, we found a ferry to take us to the Elephanta Island!!!! It wasn’t raining or anything, but the water was pretty choppy…we managed to keep our Mickey D’s down though 🙂 Steve and I spent a few hours exploring the caves, taking pictures of monkeys/puppies/caterpillars, and buying junk from vendors. It was a very relaxing afternoon and will definitely be remembered 🙂 The ride back was much much worse….I won’t go into detail, but I was SO happy to get off of that ferry!!!! Shortly after returning, we ran into Sara and Valerie on the street and showed each other our pictures and videos from the day. They had met a travel agent of some sort who was going to take them around the city and show them the not-so-touristy areas (aka the slums). Steve and I were starving and in dire need of a restroom, so we parted ways and agreed to meet up in the morning. We went into several stores trying to find a restroom, but didn’t have any luck (we did find a LeBron jersey in an Adidas store…nobody knew who he was though), so we resorted back to McDonald’s….that was by far the nastiest bathroom I have ever been in!!! We were too tired/lazy to search for food, so we just ate dinner at McDonald’s (eating fast food twice in one day was an awful idea) and then found a Western Union where we called home for the first time in 10 days 🙂 The cab ride back to the hotel was much better than the ride in (and it cost us less than half the price we paid in the morning!). Our driver was really really nice and told us how he learned English from driving tourists around for the last 30 or so years. Back at the JW, we found a complimentary lemon tart that had been left in our room (we thought it was pretty awesome and took a lot of pictures of it…yes, we’re weird). We spent the night watching more Indian tv (there was one show where a guy and girl were just staring into each others eyes, not saying anything and the background kept changing….that went on for at least 30 minutes!).

Thursday, 8/5: Again, we woke up feeling great and decided to swim in the hotel’s awesome pools and walk on the beach. I was kind of surprised by how dirty the beach was…people just throw their garbage wherever they feel like, so I had plastic bags and wrappers of all sorts floating around my feet. The water was way too rough (and gross-looking) for us to get in, but I’m happy to say I’ve been to the Arabian Sea! Not wanting to spend a fortune on lunch at the hotel, we walked a block or two down the street and found a SUBWAY!!!!!! It was so good! I thought it was interesting that they have two separate sandwich lines, one for vegetarian and the other for non-vegetarian. While we were eating, a group of cross-dressed tribal men walked up to the restaurant door and were motioning for me to come outside. Steve, nice guy that he is, thought the door was too heavy for the “women” to open, so he pulled it open for them and the Subway workers came running over to close it. I don’t know what those people were up to, but it was a very strange thing to see! I saw them walking into the slums on our way back to the hotel. Steve and I were chased by some beggar children when we walked down a street to the public beach…all of them do this motion where they point all of their fingers together and tap their lips, like they want us to give them money for food. It’s really sad to see so many children on the street, but at the same time, you almost become insensitive to them because there are so many. Before leaving the hotel, we talked to the concierge for a while and he gave us the names of places to check out in Goa. The flight we originally booked was supposed to leave at 1pm, but it then was pushed back to 2:40pm, and eventually 4:30pm. Valerie’s flight left Mumbai at 1pm, so she waited in the Goa airport for 4 or 5 hours before Sara, Steve, and I got there. We flew Kingfisher Airlines for only 45 minutes, but were still served an entire hot meal! You would never get that in the States! The van ride to the hotel in Goa (Victor Exotica) was pretty long, but gave us a chance to see the city (and the fact that Kingfisher pretty much owns Goa). We didn’t get to Victor Exotica until 7:30 or 8pm…we ate dinner there and pretty much just went to bed.

Overall, Mumbai was a great city to see–I just wish we had had more time there (and a hotel closer to all of the action)!

Categories
Study Abroad India

Preface to India Trip: Kathmandu, Nepal!!

(This took me a couple days to write since we’ve been so busy! but I started this on Monday 8/9)

Today is my 2nd official night of being in Bangalore! After arriving yesterday around 7 in the morning from Goa on a night train, I must say that these past two days have been exciting, busy, and fun!

Let me start from the beginning…Myself, Molly Cuenot, Steve Menyes, and Valerie Young were so excited for this trip that we decided to leave a couple weeks early to explore Kathmandu, Nepal and Mumbai and Goa. This was our Kathmandu experienceeee!! 🙂

GETTING THERE:
Our journey began on Saturday July 24th when we departed Cleveland International en route to Kathmandu. The original flight itinerary consisted of two layovers, one being in Chicago (1 hour) and the other in Delhi (10 hours!!). Unfortunate weather conditions (RAIN!) delayed our Cleveland flight so we ended up missing our flight from Chicago to Delhi. It was hectic trying to find other flights that would not set our schedule back a few days, but we finally ended up making it to Kathmandu after about 26 hours of travel with two more layovers in London and Doha! We arrived on Monday July 26th.

KATHMANDU:
We stayed for 10 days, and it was an AWESOME experience. The whole city is surrounded by huge mountains, not the typical scenery you’d see by looking outside of your window in Ohio! We stayed at Hotel Ganesh Himal, which I highly recommend! It was about $75 for the whole stay, the food from the restaurant in the hotel was great, it’s a prime location, there’s an outside sitting area/garden, a rooftop terrace that overlooks the city, and the employees were extremely kind and very helpful! The first couple of days were rough from adjusting to a different sleep schedule, but after it was fine! It was actually impossible to sleep-in. Once the sun rose at around 5 a.m.; the noises commenced! No, it’s not what you think you’d hear in a huge city like horns, cars, the garbage truck, people shouting, music, trains… Instead there were various types of birds (roosters, crows, & maybe monkeys? we couldn’t tell), dogs barking, people chanting in Nepalese, motorbikes roaring by.. and with the natural sunlight coming in our windows we didn’t need an alarm clock, we were ready to go!…. This is basically a summed up itinerary of everything we did!

Monday 7/26– Arrived/day of rest! I needed to catch up on some much needed rest after the long and crazy journey of getting there!

Tuesday 7/27– Took an early morning 30 minute walk to the Swayambhunath Stupa aka Monkey Temple. It’s known for being a Buddhist pilgrimage destination. It was a big climb!! Supposedly365 steps!  True to it’s nickname, there were  tons of little monkeys wondering around! That night we walked around the city and then had dinner at Kathmandu’s first and only revolving restaurant that overlooked the city. It was rather “jerky” and felt more like you were being rotated around on a clock. I’m pretty sure we all left feeling kind of woozy, but nonetheless it was a good timee!

Wednesday 7/28– We ventured out into the city and walked through Durbar Square, which is an outside  ‘complex’ that consists of old temples, statues, shrines, ect…. Immediately upon our arrival we were bombarded by locals that wanted to give us a tour or vendors that wanted to sell us handmade crafts like jewlery, or “singing bowls” (which I ended up purchasing later).  It was naturally unavoidable to not be approached by these people and it was expected being that we were in a tourist area and are…. well, tourists! But the people were extremely nice (yet persistent!)…

The only temple we went in was the Kumari temple. In Nepal, Kumari is a little girl that the Nepali Buddhists and some Hindus worship because they believe that she is a living goddess. The little girl must be pre-pubescent and must encompass certain physical attributes and pass a series of tests to be the Kumari. We saw her for maybe about 2 minutes from a small window about three stories high that overlooked the courtyard of the temple. She was probably about 5 years old and had very thick/dark eyeliner on and was dressed in a little gown. They are  extremely strict about not taking photographs and I was approached by a Nepalese police man because he thought i had taken a picture (maybe by the way I was holding my camera?) I don’t know! but I showed him my pictures and everything was okayy!

Later that night we found Thamel (the area where all the tourists go), with tons of shops, restaurants, bars, and bars with showers (confused by that at first, but were later told that they were strip clubs.. good thing we did not go in!!) We ended up at this little Mexican place for dinner, which had decently good knock off Mexican food. Later that night we went to the Namaste Cafe, which had live music that consisted of a drunken version of The Eagles-Hotel California. Nightlife usually died down around 11ish, and we were tired anyways so we headed back to the hotel, where I had an encounter with a cow that almost headbutted me! Note to self: DO NOT get to close to the cows! you might end up with a concussion!

Thursday 7/29: UP bright and early at 4:30 a.m. for our  Mt. Everest Flight! The goal in mind when coming to Nepal was to actually be on Mt. Everest or at least “climb” up it like 10 feet…. but considering that a short trek would be about 7-9 days and would require the proper equipment and funds… it was just unrealistic for this trip. So we did the other option, which was flyingg by it! We got on a passenger plane that fit about 15-20 people. It was rainy that morning and still cloudy, but the himalayan mountain range was still quite visible!! It would have been nice for it to have been a clear day, but having the mountains peak out from the clouds really gave me some perspective as to how giant they actually are!! The flight lasted about maybe an hourr.

Friday7/30: Around 10 a.m. we took a temple tour of the city and saw some pretty great ones! The first was a lying Buddha that was in the middle of this little carved out pool. The 2nd was the Boudhanath stupta. It is noted to be one of the most important place of pilgrimage for a Buddhist. It was massive with shops and restaurants surrounding it. The 3rd/last notable one to mention was the Pashupathinath Temple located by the Bagmati River, which is a pilgrimage site for Hindis. Although we weren’t permitted in the temple, we got to observe something rather interesting, which some might view as disturbing. A Hindi funeral was in process while we were there. Along the river were about 8 “beds” where the bodies are layed and cremated…At first, I felt very invasive and rude for watching, but was told it was okay for us to be there and take pictures. There were tons of people around watching so after taking a few photo’s I left.

Saturday 7/31: BUNGY JUMP!!!! Today was the day that we ventured to The Last Resort which lies on the Tibetan border to jump off of a bridge with nothing but a cord attached to our ankles. Getting there was about a 3 hour bus ride outside of Kathmandu, but the scenery was beautiful as we drove up, through, and around mountains to reach the resort. The jump took place 160 meters (525 feet) above the Bhote Kosi River, one of Nepals widest rivers. It was definately of of the craziest things I have ever done, and doing it was not easy! I almost chickened out! Just walking across the bridge was an extremely frightening task in itself as it swayed back and forth like it was going to topple with each footstep….But I managed to make it across while holding a tight grip on the railings! The only thing I could think of before I jumped while standing on the tiny platform was “DON’T LOOK DOWN! why am I doing thiss!!?” All I did was  look forward towards the mountains before I was instructed “3, 2,1.. jump!” And there you have it, I did just that.  It was definately a rush and what I can only describe as an “out of body” experience because after being tossed around I had no concept of which way was up/down/left/right haha…..I’m not sure if I would be able to do it again, but it was sooo worth it! On the way back to the hotel, Molly and I rode on top of the bus with some Nepalese and Canadian people we had met, which was also scary because of all the bumps in the road you had to hold on tight!

The remaining couple of days in Kathmandu, we took fairly easy being that we did not have enough time to do anything else outside of the city, and that we had pretty much done everything we had wanted to within the city. Although I’m sure there was probably tons more to do that we were just unaware of! We left on Tuesday 8/3 in the morning for Goa. For the next trip, given more time, I have added a few more things I would have liked to do:

1) Some adventure trekking to Mt. Everest ( or some kind of mountain trekking)

2) Trip to Chitwan National Park

3) Visit Lumbini (It’s said to be the birthplace of Buddha)

4) Do more activities at The Last Resort ( possibly bungy jump again! or canyon swing, canyoning, high ropes…..)

Overall, visiting Kathmandu was a great experiencee! I definately recommend that Dr. Vijay add this to the itinerary for next summer!!! just a suggestion!!

Part 1:  Mumbai and Goa coming sooooon!!!!

Part2: Bangalore at XIME also coming soooon!!!