Pictures of My Posh Hotel Room

Pictures of Nepal

Pictures of Maymester Class in Indian Garments, Pictures of Nepal, & Pictures of My Posh Hotel, The Sheraton - Maury Hotel in New Delhi, India

Hello All,

I just wanted to finish up the blog with a few more pictures from the last 2 weeks. The first set will be of my fellow classmates in our Indian garments in Dehradun, India. It was our last night there.
The second group of photos will be of Constance, Hillary, Krys, Becky and myself during our week in fantastic Kathmandu, Nepal. I loved this country!!
Finally, the last set, are photos of my posh hotel room @ The Maurya Hotel in New Delhi, India (www.luxurycollection.com/itcmauyra)

I hope you enjoy...
Maymester Class in Indian Garments

Future plans – Nepal, posh hotel in Delhi, Race DVD, and ongoing travels

This blog is coming to a quick end. Our class ends on Saturday, June 7, 2008 and then we are all off to different directions. Krys, Hilary, Becky, and Sherry are headed to Nepal for a few days of new republic watching. (Nepal became the youngest republic in the world last week when the king was dethroned and power shifted to the legislature.) After that, Sherry has exciting plans to stay in the nicest hotel in Delhi to enjoy as many spas as possible. Krys, Hilary, and Becky are moving onward to Rajasthan, Mumbai, Pune, and hopefully Hassan. India has so much to see. There is no need to continue spending our precious time in class.

Missionaries of Charities Orphanage

Later on that day afternoon, Constance and Sherry went to the Bizarre to buy gifts for the orphans at Missionaries of Charity, which we had visited the day before to get an understanding of what their needs were and what we could do to help. Because there were older girls at the orphanage, we decided to purchase them some nail polish and for the younger girls we purchased Barbie dolls. We also bought towels and cookies for the orphanage. The girls were so sweet, they actually painted my nails instead of letting me paint theirs. The orphanage cares for disabled, blind children as well as women. The facility was very clean and the sisters were pretty nice except the head sister was rushing us out of the facility faster than we would have liked, but overall it was a good visit. The girls even sang to us before we left. It was so sweet, I almost cried.

Church @ Grace Fellowship @ Dehradun by Sherry

This past weekend while Becky, Krys, & Hilary were off to the Yamunotri Shrine, Constance and I needed our Jesus fix, so we went to St. Thomas Church down the street from the hotel and we were pleasantly surprised to find that there was a non-denominational church called Grace Fellowship worshiping there. The parishioners and Pastor Merlin Clarence were very friendly and seemed to love that we had joined them for worship. We were about 30 minutes early so Pastor Clarence sat and talked with us about his church. He told us that it was a “Happy Clappy Church” that used the word of God to encourage the members. When he and his wife found out I was from Houston, Texas, they enthusiastically asked if I had been to T. D. Jakes’and Joel Olsteen’s church. I said yes to both and they were very pleased. The service was GREAT, though a little long. Pastor Clarence’s daughter and son led us in praise and worship singing songs that we were very familiar with like, “Here I am to Worship”, as well as songs in Hindi. Many of the members of the church read scriptures and prayed for the service during praise and worship as well. Since last Sunday was the 1st Sunday, we were given communion, but instead of just praying together, Pastor Clarence said for us to go to another person and pray for them or have them pray for you. I prayed for a young woman who had beautiful young children and she was very receptive to my prayer. Afterwards, there was testimony period and I felt compelled to publicly, thank God for Grace Fellowship because I had been in India for a little over 2 weeks and this was the first time that I had been to a church or temple that worshipped Jesus and not idols. I felt like Elijah when he told God that he felt alone and God told him that there were people in the country that served Him. Constance and I were very disappointed because we will not be able to attend Grace Fellowship’s prayer meeting on this Saturday since we will be leaving Dehradun on Saturday. I am including Grace Fellowship's address for those who feel compelled to send them love offerings.

Grace Fellowship, Dehradun
Pastor Merlin Clarance
C/O St. Thomas Church
89 Rajpur Road
Dilaram Bazaar,
Dehradun, UL 248001
email: gracefellowshipdoon@gmail.com

More Yamunotri Shrine Pictures

Yamunotri Shrine

The voyage to Yamunotri Shrine was more of a journey than any of imaged. The trip began with the now familiar ride to Mussourie and then got more intense as we crossed the Himalayas. The bus shook constantly and several people lost their breakfasts. The power of “Vomi-stop” had not been widely available when the trip began. Luckily we stopped to visit the Kemant falls and take a few breaths of fresh air on solid ground. The break was brief and we quickly found ourselves traveling onwards towards Yamunotri. Another break occurred on the coast of the Yamuna River. Some village children joined us as some people swam in the fast moving, cold waters and the others rested on the banks. Lunch was served Raj style. There was an enormous spread of tasty vegetarian options that we shared with the villagers after we ate.

The last part of the trip found us on one way dirt roads that appeared to lead nowhere. After hours more on the bus, our bus encroached on an endless traffic jam of buses. We could not go any further on the bus and had to jump on a few SUVs to reach Jankichatti. Those drivers were ridiculous and driving very fast on the edge of the roads. We all feared for our lives. After 30 minutes or less ride on the jeeps, we made it to our destination. The town was full of local trekkers, pilgrims, and other randomness associated with pilgrimage sites. We wandered around the street leading to the pilgrimage trail, until we were totally freezing and huddled up in our cold hotel room to wait for dinner. The next morning we got up at 4 am to start the hike. The trail to the temple was about 5 kilometers long, and made up of a series of steep switchbacks up the side of a mountain, passing these beautiful valleys and peaks with tall waterfalls and the sacred Yamuna river flowing below. We made it to the top finally, where you could see the Yamuna coming out of a glacier on the opposite mountain. There was a small temple across the river, where we had to take off our shoes outside on the freezing cold, wet stairs. It was better once we got in the temple though, where there were hot spring baths for both men and women. On the women’s side, we went to the side of the tank and washed our faces with the hot water that the woman there kept handing us nonstop. Then we went up into the temple where some little boys boiled our rice offering in a hot spring while we did the puja ritual with the priest (and thank goodness Shama was there to translate!). The ritual was really beautiful, and we felt better about the ride back since the water was supposed to spare us “a tortuous death” and the string around our wrist would protect us. We walked around the shrine on the side of the temple and then went back outside to put our rice offering in the river (otherwise we would have to eat it, yikes..). We stopped for delicious chai and hot samosas on the way back, then had a quick breakfast before hitting the road. We got to stop at the same beautiful river spot on the way back as well – the cook staff was really amazing and so good to us, making us awesome Chinese food, literally on the side of the road! We got to watch a beautiful sunset over the Himalayas on the rest of the drive, which distracted us from just how close we were to the edge of the cliff. After a bunch of bickering about what to do for dinner, Becky became the group hero and took on ordering pizza for everybody to eat at the hotel and pass out. It was an exhausting trip, but a once in a lifetime opportunity. We were even more grateful for everyone’s prayers when we heard the awful news the next day that seven pilgrims died when their car rolled off the same road.

Doon Society

As the only one of our scheduled evening speakers to actually show up, the members of the Doon Society came and spoke about their work with protecting the environment of the Doon Valley around Dehra Dun, as well as the forest of the Rajaji National Park and the livelihoods of the people who were traditional forest dwellers in the area. They discussed the challenges in India of working to protect the sustainability of natural resources in India, while also trying to improve the situation of poor populations dependent on harvest and livestock grazing in the forests. The Doon Society talked about the strategies they’ve used, including establishing villages for the forest dwelling communities where they each receive two acres for grazing their animals as well as extra income from small crop plots. Hilary and Constance were both impressed and excited to talk to the members about their work, although Hilary wasn’t very encouraged by the woman’s recommendation that she marry an Indian man to justify working in the country…

Travis’s Birthday at the Opal Lounge

No trip is complete without an adventurous night out. For Travis’s birthday, we made reservations at a pub, Opal Lounge. We had no idea of what to expect. The place was really nice and could have been in any U.S. city. There were plenty of foreigners there to make you feel right at home. So all 25 of us ordered food and started drinking. Our budget was 15,000 rupees or $360 USD. We spend almost all of it. The pub was expensive but had a wonderful ambiance and music. You just couldn’t keep our group off the dance floor. A little 50 Cent and everyone was on the dance floor. That DJ must have had the CD, Dance Party from the 90s, because we heard music that night that has not been played in the U.S. since 1996. We ate it up. We danced so much that the DJ refused to play bangara for fear of the place getting too rowdy. When looking around the room, it was unsurprising that only our group was really dancing. Since we made up about a quarter of the restaurant population, it did not faze us at all. Everyone else there just starred at us aside from the few shady men who tried to dance with our women.

The DJ and owner are both Sikh. I guess those Sikhs knows how to party because everyone had an incredible time in spite of leaving by 10:30pm. Even our favorite tour guide, Ram got up and danced with us. It was a great night out and Travis really enjoyed his birthday in spite of being slightly ill.

Tibetan Buddhist Stupa

Much to our surprise, Dehradun is home to perhaps the largest Buddist Stupa and a thriving Tibetan Buddhist community. The Mindrolling Monastery hosts a large college for Buddhist monks and a five-storey Great Stupa. It is over 60 meters high and contains shine rooms displaying relics, paintings of every single Dalai Lama, and a huge tiny remake of an ancient Buddhist Temple that the Chinese government destroyed.

The Monastery and surrounding area was incredibly peaceful. We removed our shoes to enter the Stupa and walk around (clockwise only) to experience the exquisite artwork that covered all the internal walls. It was incredible. The bottom floor is dedicated to a Buddhist prophet and is monitored by a Buddhist monk who prays in the corner as observers leave and enter the room.

Outside of the Stupa are two enormous prayer wheels. Krys, Hilary, and Becky turned one of them in hopes of Buddha hearing theirr prayers for safe travels. After the wheel, we checked out the tiny food store and adjoining clothing stalls that were filled with women’s bras and underwear, seriously. When we ventured into town, we found a store with Tibetan artwork and prayer wheels where everyone found something to their liking. Our Tibetan experience ended with a little Hannah Montana watching at a small Tibetan restaurant where we snacked on some questionable momos. We hopped on a local bus and arrived safely at our hotel after countless stops along the way.

Sherry is sick.

Sherry and many others on our trip have been suffering from a mysterious stomach illness that causes endless trips to the bathroom and rather small appetites. Due to her fluctuating health, Sherry did not participate in our visit to the Stupa, Dune Society speakers, and Yamunotri Temple.

Mussourie & Jaypee Residency Manor

Mussourie is a pleasant town located in the lower portion of the Himalayas. It is only 20+ kilometers from Dehradun but takes a good hour and a half to reach due to the winding roads.

Our first stop was the Lal Bahadur Shastry National Academy of Administration where the most important civil servants in the Indian government come for training each year. The site was amazing with a very nice library and breathtaking views of the Himalayas. The gentleman showing us around, Dave-Soma, was not too bad looking either.

Next we were given some free time to walk around Mussourie. We walked from the Gandhi Chowk to the Kulri Bazaar on a lovely pedestrian only walkway. Along the way were tons of shops with clothing, sweets, and the opportunity to wear local clothing and take pictures. Becky couldn’t help herself and paid 40 rupees ($1) to try on some local attire and take some random pictures with this guy who insisted on being in her pictures. Along the way, we watched a little boy get briefly chased by a monkey as Sherry screamed and took off running. Hilary and Sherry also took a fabulous picture next to the larger than life picture of a lion. By the time we reached the group, we had enjoyed this very pleasant town and were ready for bed.

Bollywood

When in India, there is no shortage of Bollywood films to watch on the big screen. One evening Sherry, Hilary, Krys, Constance, Amanda, and Becky ventured to the Krishna Palace to watch Race. The feature song of the film, Touch me Touch me, is everyone’s caller tune thanks to Vodafone (the Indian cell phone company). We were curious to see what this song had to do with two brothers trying to kill each other for their family fortune. The movie was a cross between Matlock, MTV, and Days of Our Lives. It was rather ridiculous and entertaining. We were not disappointed with the rather inappropriate, confusing lyrics of Touch me, Touch me. The movie ticket cost 55 Rupees ($1.25) and included a sticky seat in the balcony that reclined. I guess the chatty family next to us was just part of the Indian Cinema experience.

Rishikesh & Haridwar Continued

We had no idea of what to expect in Haridwar. We were told that the night ceremony is amazing. So we reluctantly followed our guide to the Har-Ki-Pairi (The Footstep of God) Ghat. Unfortunately, no one told us that Haridwar is one of the most sacred cities in Hinduism where people come to wash away their sins in the Ganges River. Therefore, our first impressions were rather fierce and confusing. People were everywhere. This child was trying to sell you milk to pour into the river while another was trying to reach your forehead to put some paint on it. Another guy was trying to explain the ganga aarti (river worship ceremony) for a nice price. The sheer amount of people was indescribable. People were bathing, others were waiting for the ceremony to start, and others were trying to reach the Har-Ki-Pairi. This was the crowded India we had been expecting.

Several of us bought an organic basket of flowers to place in the river for the river ceremony. Every night people flock here to leave an offering to the Goddess Ganga. (Every river in India is considered a goddess).

As the sun set, the bells rang and the prayers began.. Then huge flames were lit and everyone lit their puja (offering- for us, it was the basket of flowers with a candle) and places them in the river. There must have been hundred of flowers in the river. It was mesmerizing. Several of us also poured a little milk in the Ganges River and washed our feet in the river in order to wash away our sins. Becky hopes it worked!

The final event of the night cannot be ignored. Before venturing back to Dehradun on the dark, rather dangerous roads of India, we stopped to use the bathroom. Just about every girl on the bus got out and lined up at the facility. Some kids behind the gas station kept yelling something at us. No one understood them. One child grabbed his older relative who told us that we were using the men’s bathroom. Our guide had misled us yet again… oh well… Only Krys had actually used the men’s bathroom. The rest of us ventured to the women’s toilets on the other side of the gas station.

Rishikesh & Haridwar

The day trip to Rishikesh and Haridwar was terribly exciting. It took a few hours to reach Rishikesh, a town known as the yoga capital of the world. In the 60s, the Beatles rocked out at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ashram and wrote many songs for their White Album. We didn’t see any rockers around, but we saw plenty of random foreigners.

To venture into the town, we walked down, down, down a pathway to reach the Lakshman Jhula hanging bridge. Of course it was raining most of the way, so we purchased 10 rupee (25 cent) ponchos to keep our items dry. By the time we reached the bridge, the rain increased and the wind picked up. We kept walking forward on the swaying bridge as people screamed and we all wondered if the bridge would flip over. Hilary later informed us that had we drowned in the Ganges River below we would have gone straight to heaven… not exactly a comforting thought.

When we reached the other side, we crammed into a small shop to escape the rain. Lucky for us, the shop was filled with delightful shawls and clothing. The prices were unbelievably low. So just about everyone bought something. We had to pull Sherry out of the shop in order to find the rest of the group and reach our lunchtime destination. Unfortunately for us, the day got a little worse when everyone realized that our guide had no idea where the restaurant was and everyone was still soaking wet. The guide decided that we better eat at the “little budd restaurant.” Well our group of 20 was beyond their capacity. So lunch was postponed and everyone was given about 2 hours to shop and make it back to the bus on the other side of the river (via the foot bridge).

Thankfully, the rain stopped. Krys, Becky, Hilary, and Sherry decided to visit the huge 13-storey wedding cake temples of Swarg Niwas and Shri Trayanbakshwar. To enter, we removed our shoes and walked barefoot through the muddy street which was simply GROSS. The temple was surprisingly clean. We walked around and around to see the various deities and shops housed in the temple. As time progressed, we rang a few bells, left offerings, and collected our shoes. Now it was time to walk across the bridge to our bus.

The walk back was not that bad. Our guide almost led us the wrong way (again) but we ignored him and followed our instincts to the correct path. Our bus was thankfully full of delicious Italian food that we consumed on our way to Haridwar.

Rajaji National Park

The next morning we all got up very early to travel to the nearby Rajaji National Park, hoping to spot some wild elephants and maybe even tigers! No such luck, but we still had a good time. We got to the park around 8 am after passing over the sacred Ganges River at Haridwar and past several “wildlife corridors” which the guide told us connect the different protected areas through strips of land, which allow wildlife to travel back and forth without being in too much danger. Once we got to the park, we hopped into different jeeps and one stuffy bus. Becky and Krys rode in the open air jeep back for a while, which was really exciting when it drove through the muddy river and nearly drenched everyone in mud! On the road we saw a few super big lizards running along the riverbanks, and a bunch of pretty wild peacocks. We also saw one elephant, but it was a domesticated one near the entrance that the Forest Service uses for tourists. The landscape was pretty, but fairly scrubby, and like many of our trips, the drive included scary driving along a dirt road on a cliff! We also had a little fun when our jeep got completely stuck in the mud… we were sitting tiger bait for a while until the fearless bus driver came back and got us out. We had a very late lunch back at the park entrance (where the cows were a little too friendly and tried to eat food right out of people’s laps) before heading back to the hotel in Dehra Dun, where we got ready for our exciting trip the next day to Rishikesh and Haridwar.

Forest Research Institute & Cricket

The Forest Research Institute is a vast institution housed in gorgeous brick buildings dating to the 1800s. As usual, we began our tour with introductions via personal microphones and then toured the numerous museums throughout the facility. After that, we jumped in our bus and toured the chemistry area, biology labs, and a very interesting medicinal garden that was everyone’s favorite. Just when we thought the trip was over, we ventured over to the botanists offices and saw a very old specimen dating back to the 1700s (?). The main botanist was super excited about their specimens and took us on a tour of a huge bamboo forest. Just when we thought we had seen and experienced all types of bamboo, he showed us something new like giant bats that are the size of medium sized birds. Images of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, the Birds, definitely crossed our minds.

Our guide was all about the bamboo. We toured the forest for over an hour and finally had to cut him off to return to the hotel. We were bambooed out!

That evening or perhaps it was another day, we returned to the Wildlife Institute to challenge their graduate students to a game of Cricket. Since we had no experience with this exotic game, we were mixed with the graduate students in order to create fair teams. Unsurprisingly, all of the Americans were just okay at this new game. Our hosts were incredible and took it easy on us. The game, which started off super slow, ended with an exciting finish. The final score was 69-70. Ask Sherry how to score a cricket game since she is the only one who figured it out. How you can score 40 runs in 30 minutes is beyond my imagination according to Becky.