Boudhanath, Kathmandu

We are all set up in a nice guesthouse in Boudhnath, Kathmandu, on Heather's recommendation, as she lived here during her study abroad in 2000. (H, Can you believe that it has been that long? double wow.) We are staying at the Valley View Guesthouse which is on a mostly quiet, side street. We also switched rooms and now have AC (!) which keeps us cool and drowns out the occasional shouts from the city around us.

We have been hanging out around the Boudha Stupa, enjoying amazing Mediterranean-inspired food and excellent cappuccinos and cookies. We have taken a taxi into Thamel to get Mexican 3 times now. Ha! It seems we have mostly have food to report on so far. We have been laying low; Luke has been working a bunch and we have been tired from making the jump from small town Leh, to huge and impressing Kathmandu.

It has been hot here and humid too, but the nights are a little cooler, thankfully.
We asked around on our first day here for a place to fill our water bottles, but with no luck. One American student who I asked said we could get Sigg Bottles over at the way-modern, Gemini Market. We grabbed one for each us and a army knife too. Luke had brought a water purifying light saber with us, so we have been pulling water from the tap and purifying it ourselves. I wasn't completely convince of its efficacy, so I waited until Luke drank much of his bottle to see if he went running to bathroom screaming. When he didn't, I supposed that it was OK to have some too. Only small twitches and tremor to report so far; a small price for potable water. *wink*

I met with amazing Yoga teacher yesterday in Thamel and had a private course with him for 5 hours. It was supposed to be a 4-hour course, but he offered the extra time and I accepted his generosity. I also have a chance to go a tour the clinic of Dr. Sarita Shreshta, a Ayurvedic teacher of mine from RMIYA, back in Boulder. Dr. Shreshta is Nepali and has a clinic just 18km outside of Kathmandu. I was hoping for more of a volunteer situation with Luke working so much, but it might be that I needed make those arranged months ago. I need to wait to see how that will shape up.

We are going for little hike this evening and then tomorrow, we are heading out of town into the hills a bit. Our guesthouse is arranging a taxi for us as I am not getting back on a motorcycle while we are here---dear God, the traffic here is the craziest I have ever seen, in any country that I have ever been too. The motorbikes are the worst and are terrifying to walk with. While we were in our taxi, I told Luke that I realized that I have more faith that our driver does not want to harm his car than I do in him caring if kills someone, and with that, I could enjoy the ride some and not entirely brace for the impending carnage I had conjured up in my mind.

Luke is going to add some photos later today. He had to write a bunch of code in order to get the photos to display as they do, and I am not a code writer by any stretch of the term, so we'll share them when he has some time.

I got my ballot efax to me today, which means I can vote and I haven't purged from the system! I appreciate this very much.

We have been answering questions in comments sections too, so you can read up those in that section. Thanks for all the messages and love from home!

oxo

heading out of Leh, looking up the valley to Phyang

this is the road we took out to Alchi on our flat tire adventure

beautiful Himalayan views

raw geology and big peaks

real glaciers...none of that other puny stuff

near Nanda Devi - no doubt where the snow line is here

Boudha Stupa

Meze = happiness

moonset and...jupiter?

circumambulating the stupa

monkey(butt) for Max and Sam (and anyone else who likes that sort of thing)

Jerry, you need to build one of these

butter lamps