Rickshawing to Holi Town

Saturday morning, we ate a light last breakfast on the patio overlooking the river in Chitwan, then hopped on our bus to Kathmandu. It was relatively empty - just us and a couple other people on the whole thing, so at first we thought it would be a quiet, quick ride. Nope. The thing about these buses, is that the driver is paid through the bus company to drive these routes, and each passenger buys a ticket, which includes transportation to their city, and lunch. However, if the bus has any room, the driver pulls a little side business and picks up his friends and what we're pretty sure is every person he's ever met, and charges them just a small amount to hitch a ride also. So not only did we stop every 5 minutes, but the bus got noisy and crowded fast. By the time we got to our lunch spot, we were pretty over the bus thing. It would have taken us hours less to drive ourselves…though that still would have been more dangerous than was worth it (and that's from us, who drive and scooter in every country we visit). After lunch, we spent FOREVER on the second leg of the journey to Kathmandu. The roads were horrible, traffic was bad, and it was just exhausting. When we arrived in Kathmandu, the taxi driver had a hard time finding our hotel, since the area of Thamel we were staying in is like a maze. 

Finally we checked in, and headed out for the evening for dinner and exploring. We found a dirty little Indian place (seriously, Nolan was craving Indian food again BAD) that was almost literally a hole in the wall. Super tasty. After more walking around, and some tasting of Nepali sweets (tasty, but unbearably sugary!), we plopped down on the sofa at our hotel, and just chatted with one of the hotel managers, who made us hot tea and talked about world politics and random other topics. He had a book collection in the sitting room with a bunch of good reads…and 50 Shades of Grey. Apparently he thought it was a criminal justice book because of the handcuffs on the cover. Hah. We told him what it really was and he was super embarrassed and ripped it off the shelf.. 

Sometimes, those connections and conversations with people that we meet on our trips can make a day or place so much more colourful and enjoyable.

Sunday morning, we woke up for breakfast, then hopped in our cab to the airport. On the way, we stopped at the Boudhanath, which is a Buddhist Stupa that is very famous in Kathmandu. That famous picture of the eyes is taken from this Stupa. Very interesting place - many, many worshippers there singing and spinning the bell-like things on the side for good luck. After some pictures, we continued on to the airport, where we caught our flight to Delhi, then hopped in a rickshaw for 45 minutes to the train station, then ate a surprisingly very tasty (considering it was railroad food!) biryani lunch, and boarded our first sketchy Indian train. We had decided to brave sleeper class since it was only a 2-3 hour trip, and it was...interesting. Not the lowest class, so it wasn't like we had people or animals on top of us, but it was definitely very crowded, hot, smelly and dirty. I felt a little confined, so I ended up sitting on the step to the train for a big chunk of the way - for as long as I felt safe, hanging out of the train door while hurtling along the tracks. It was exhilarating and helped me forget about feeling off-colour. Finally we arrived at our station in Mathura, and got into a rickshaw to our hotel, which was NOT near the train station as I thought - but in the next town over. Oh well. So after almost 13 hours of various travel that day, we made it to our hotel. We set off in search of food, I had someone "bless" my white sweater with bright red dye in a pre-Holi celebration (Nolan had to restrain me from flipping out there), and we wound our way through back alleys just to find our way to the entrance to what seemed to be the only restaurant in town. Generally we like to eat a lot of street food, but street food here is very different...and very scary in that everything is dipped in or washed in or contains tap water, which is highly non-potable. 

After dinner, we headed off to bed to sleep off our travels and prepare to celebrate Holi the next day!