Week 3 of Our Whistle-stop Tour

So it's been way too long since we told you what we've been up to here in India.  Our trip has been really fast moving but in doing so, in only 4 weeks we have seen many of the highlights of north, central, and southern India.  We have only stayed in each spot for 2 nights at most.  We are going to continue to let the pictures tell the stories, so here we go...


Khajuraho

This place is famous for these temples that different Maharajahs built throughout the history of India.  They are really old and were not destroyed during war times because they were hidden so deep in the forest.  They are ridiculously intricate. 

This is a close up on the temple.  There are millions of these intricate carvings covering every inch of the temple. If you've heard of Khajuraho, you've probably heard of the "suggestive" carvings some of the temples have. It's true, but to be honest, they weren't as prominent and distractive as we thought they might be. The temples were really beautiful and incredibly vast. 

Janine has made it a point to take the "self photos" everywhere we go, she's become an expert! (For you "Friends" lovers - Janine is totally Joey from the London episode - and David is actually kinder than Chandler, but still hates it.)

On Safari - Bandhavgarh and Khana National Parks

TIGERS!  Two adolescents male brothers.  They were the only ones we saw the whole time.  It was on our first game drive about an hour in.  We had 5 game drives total.

This is the countryside as we drove in between parks. We've had an opportunity to see a lot of the country side as we have driven and riden trains throughout India. Really lovely places. 

 A male Somber Deer after his mud bath.

The Monkey King's Throne.

Mumbai aka Bombay

This is us on New Year's Day in downtown Mumbai by Chowpatty beach.

 We took a 4 hr tour around the city with an 18 year old girl who works for the travel agency we booked our trip with. She was FANTASTIC and took us all around. One place we stopped outside was the Taj Palace hotel; this is where some terrorist attacks occurred in 2008.

This is Dhobi Ghat, the largest of this type of laundry system in Mumbai.  There are multiple areas like this in different sections of the city that the people of that neighborhood use for their laundry service. This one has been around for more than 150 years! The men who work there (men only) are incredibly savvy - a large majority are illiterate and use a symbol or tag system to help them keep the clothes together for each person or family. AMAZING! There are no clothes pins - there are 2 ropes twisted and the clothes are pinched between them. The clothes are handwashed in concrete stalls - beat against the walls - look right in front of all the white clothes hung together. Pretty Incredible stuff. 

We had laundry done through our hotel service, and when it came back every piece had a thread stitched through a tag or button or something with this tag on it. EVERY piece!

We walked thru a market in Mumbai... as we have in many many places. But we love the fruits and veggies everywhere. We love how families buy daily and eat these fresh everyday. Jealous really, and have thought sooo much about how in America we are so far away from our food. It's sad really. We are way to insulated. More about that another day. 

Coming up in our next Blog... Week 4: Cochin, Munnar, Alleppey and where we are now, Goa.