the taj/ladakh/amritsar/now in nepal!

fuck i havent blogged in ages! ive been totally meaning to but weve been so busy and now there's just so much to catch up on. well last i left it at, we were in agra...doing the TAJ MAHAL. now the taj is a big deal cause when i first plopped down in india, i had read zero material on the country and whenever people asked what i wanted to see, i just said, "ummm....the taj mahal?" and so it was a very big deal.agra as a city is a total pit. but oh the taj! we went to see it twice, the first time was a little anti-climatic cause we went in the afternoon and it was so hot that i dont think ive ever sweated so much in my life. i say that all the time but definitely that was one of the top sweat days. as in sweatin into my poor eyes that were already being scorched out by the sun/sun reflecting off the oh so white marbly taaaaj. but the taj didnt disappoint and the next time we went, we went at 6 am and took the most brilliant pictures and we also had a guide who gave us the low down on the taj. and when i say brilliant pictures, they range from the ones with the taj and its reflection in the fountain pools, to ones of us doing retard jumping leaps into the air in front of the taj. oh it was so good! i love love love the taj mahal. oh and whats also kinda cool is that on the 2nd day that we went, the date was 7/7/07 which was the day the new 7 wonders of the world was announced...and well whaddya know, the taj is now a wonder!so other than the taj, we didnt do too much in agra. we also went to the agra fort which is where shah jahan (as if i know how to spell his name. but the dude who built the taj as, so they say, a "monument to love" for his deceased wife) lived. it was still cool but really now, it cant compete with the taaaaaaj! im gonna go ahead and say the 2nd best thing about agra is this super sweet MALL! i bought badly needed clothes and there was an arcade! seriously, that's cool. i got to play air hockey, chuck e. cheese/scandia-type games and virtual boxing! oh the good times.and so we moved on from agra to delhi where we got to spend the nite sleeping on benches in the airport and then first thing in the am, we were off to leh, ladakh! ok now there's some serious unresolved confusion here. i thought we were going to kashmir which is right under tibet i suppose. but then some people say no, ladakh is ladakh and then some people say ladakh is a region in kashmir.....so as far as im concerned, we were in fucking kashmir cause that sounds cool!leh was so nice, such a change from the rest of india. its at an elevation of 3500 m above sea level so we had to get all altitude acclimatized or whatever. so bed rest the first day and then taking it easy the next. its really wierd you cant breathe well, need to pee lots and some people get pukey. luckily i didnt barf however my lungs never got down with the altitude so even walking totally horizontal, id run out of breath after like 5 minutes. stupid gimpy lungs! oh but i love leh!!!it's definitely not as hot as the rest of india since were up in the mountains (ok here again, im not sure. we were either in the himalayas range, or the ladakh range. i wanna say himalayas....) and also its a total small town and the air is so crisp and clean! and we only had electricity about a third of the time but i have never seen so many stars in my entire life. the nite sky was amazing and the stars seemed so close and whereas back home you just see the big ones, here you could see them all. i even saw the milky way! (i was a total tool and tried to take pictures of the stars to share with you all. it sooo didnt work). oh and damn the people in ladakh are so good looking! a cross between indian and asians yet even hotter. i dont know if everyone feels this way but angelee and her friend joanna totally agree!oh and leh made for good shopping. they say its the closest to tibet that you can get without actually being in tibet so i made sure to buy some dalai lama scrolls and craploads of tibetan prayer/peace flags. and rolling with the whole tibetan thing, lots of gompas / buddhist monasteries.oh wait, before i forget! we found one awesome garden restaurant that we went to like 3 times a day and i got to eat good food for the first time in so long! they even had AVACADOES. that's major man! anyway...one day we hired a driver and off we went in a van to thiksey, hemis and shey. on the map it would appear that these places are like towns but there more like just...places...with a gompa or something in each. in thiksey they had the coolest gompa built up on a mountainside and we were there super early so we got to sit in with the monks as they were doing their morning prayer/breakfast session. that was really cool. they were just chanting and drinking tea and then there'd be drums and horns going off. at one point baby monks (not really babies but oh they were soooo cute!!!!) would go around giving scoopfuls of what looked just like flour to each monk and they'd mix it with the tea to make like a dough and then eat it. then later they also got bowls of some seriously yummy smelling soup and they ate in silence which is when we decided to leave. i wouldnt want ppl sitting there staring at me while eating! anyway that was really cool.the hemis gompa was also good but just couldnt compare with thiksey and then in shey there was an old palace that we went to. the next day was even better cause me and mini went off on a motorbike to see pretty much the same places cause he was sick the day before. but on a bike we could stop all over the place and spend more time in some places so that was good. so id stop at like a riverside where people were washing their clothes next to sheep and goats. we also stopped right next to what looked like giant sand dunes. another nice stop was we took pictures of ourselves in this giant empty dusty plain with just the mountains in the far background. it looked like we were literally in the middle of nowhere. oh and the mountains in ladakh! ladakh looks kinda like the okanagan cept more deserted. the mountains are beautiful and brown and dusty and further off in the distance you can see snow-capped mountains. its soooo pretty, everyone must go to ladakh! that day we also had a mini-picnic under a tree, next to a stream, in the middle of nowhere. the flowing water in ladakh is so nice cause there's practically no rain so i guess its all just glacial run-off so the water is so cold that its almost grey. (not that you can drink it or anything, for future reference!) our only company after a good long while were some cows. oh and the cows in ladakh are so cute!!!everywhere in india, cows are roaming. but they're all narsty looking. all scrawny and...pooey. oh but ladakh cows! theyre so small and theyre all furry! actually all the animals looked just smaller and furrier....like the cute lil donkeys! awwww....anyway, we spent like a week in leh and it was great. oh the last nite we went to a cultural dance show and our driver, tashi, was in it and it was great! they had different traditional costumes for each dance and it was really good. the dancers also sang and if they had a cd, i would totally have bought it! i miss leh already!and so next stop, amritsar! this is gonna sound dodgy in some racial way but tough lovin cause this is my blog. anyway, as everyone in vancouver knows, most indians in vancity are sikh. oh but not in india! and i never noticed that until i arrived in amritsar which is in punjab aka sikh central. (ok its not known as sikh central...but whatever.) anyway, there's no actual point to be made here, i just found it interesting. anyway, in amritsar is the famous golden temple which i guess is like the temple/religious site for sikhs. it's really quite beautiful. everyone has to have their head covered here and you walk inside and it's like a giant pool i guess (which interestingly, has koi fish in it) and at some points in the pool there are ghats, kinda varanasi but on a much smaller scale. all over the place there are holy dudes sitting behind glass reading their...holy book (i dont know what its called. i just asked mini and angelee. no one knows.) anyway in the middle of the pool is the golden temple which looks like....(let the anticipation build....)....a temple made of gooooooold! all over the joint people are walking around, lounging, praying, reading their little holy book.oh and then the temple itself. there is a massive fucking line up to get into the temple (between 1 and 2 hrs) and inside the temple there are a bunch of holy men with the main holy book (oh god this sounds so uninformed) and some of the men are playing these wierd looking instruments and singing. you can actually hear the music from all over inside the complex and actually it sounds very beautiful. again, id totally buy the cd. good sountrack to sleep to. people are just sitting around inside the temple, reading their books or whatever. the temple itself is quite small i think but with 3 floors and its very beautiful inside. i give it an A+!then as you leave they give you a handful of this wierdy sugary greasy shit that i guess youre supposed to eat? theyve got all sorts of rules and one is that you cant even drop a morsel of this stuff on the ground. by the way, i shouldnt call it shit but i dont know what it is so there you go. oh and i dont wanna bitch but damn, sikhs dont seem to know how to have fun the way hindus do! in varanasi it was such a fun and laidback vibe at the gahts but here i got sternly talked to a bunch of times. for stuff like, my headscarf fell off my head, my back was turned to the temple, i was talking, i sat with my legs stretched out, i sat with my knees propped up..... but overall, good times yet again! oh and one nite me and eug stayed up because there was sposed to be some ceremony at like 3:30am at the temple so we went but failed to see it. however we did find that people are at the temple literally 24/7. people are just wandering around, doing the usual, sleeping on the ground. craziness!and as of yesterday, we are now in kathmandu, nepal!!!! yet another country to add to the list. were staying i guess on the backpackers strip and it's crazy here! super cheap accomodation, awesome food (ive already had mexican food and a massive cheeseburger! yay to the return of beef once again! it was like half a damn cow between the buns. damn.), lots of shopping and an actual nite life. im so pumped to be here in nepal!!!oh and what's really cool (except we didnt know it at the time, booo!) is that we were in the presence of, as well as on the plane with, a LIVING GODDESS. there she was, mere meters away from us in delhi airport. just a little girl all decked out in fancy shmancy clothes and with cool looking makeup on. we thought maybe she was in a beauty pageant or something (so embarassing) and then when we arrived in nepal, at the terminal there were hordes of journalists or something with their flash cameras and we were like "oh thats interesting."and THEN! we were just walking by a newstand and there she was on the cover of the newspaper: the little girl was a living goddess! apparently the story goes she went to the US because a documentary was made about her but now they're stripping her of her goddess status because of it! that just aint right! i still say the kiddo's a goddess.and so that's that! i hope i havent bored you all to pieces but so much has happened since i last blogged! i hope to post pics real soon.