Kama Sutra in Khajuraho

Kharjuraho is a welcome break from busy Varanasi. This small town has an incredible number of hindu temples that are covered in the most ornate and intricate stone carvings. These carvings depict largely gods and various religious scenes, but there is also a large amount of Kama Sutra positions. Some are very simple others are acrobatic feats involving multiple people and sometimes horses or mythical creatures. One of the most famous as shown in the picture below involves a head stand and four people.
Us imitating the same positions and almost getting caught by the guards.

Amazing place, off to Agra to see the Taj Mahal today.

Colin and Patti

Arriving in India!!!!

We'll we've only been in India for 4 days now and lots has happened: I've had delhi belly; Colin has it in reverse; we've seen several street animals including, rats (1 ran right under our table while eating dinner), goats (a few are in human clothes), cows, chickens, buffaloes, and dogs; we've had cockroaches in our bedrooms and the list goes on and on.

Right now we are in Varansi. This is a very important pilgrimage city for the Hindu people and they all wish to be cremated on the ghats running alongside the holy river, Ganges. In two spots along the river, they cremate bodies 24 hours a day. It is a powerful sight. All around the holy sites there are touts trying to sell us all kinds of things. Some are just children. Tomorrow we head off to Khajuraho. This city is renowned for its kama sutra temple carvings. Can't wait! Some are life size!

The food has been great so far. We've tried lots of Indian dishes, our favourites include lots of paneer (unfermented cheese). When we are tired of the Indian, there are no shortage of Western options for all the tourists. We've also tried some Indian sweets. They are all sticky with lots of sugar but they are soooo good! Perhaps we will gain weight with all this food but we might not. Since Varansi is so holy, no menus have beers on them. A restaurant owner bought us some from a shop the other night and delivered them in a paper bag!! We've heard it may not be such a hassle in other towns. We hope not because Kingkisher is pretty tasty!!

Miss you all!!!

Patti & Colin

Big Mountains!

We just finished an 18 day trek around the Anipurna Range in the central Nepali Himalayas and it was incredible. The mountains are bigger than we could imagine. It's something when you are standing at 5400m and the mountains are still towering over you! Here are a couple of photos, we will create some albums on the Picasa page soon.

The view from our teahouse in Manang Village at night.

After a 5:00am departure from high camp we headed for Thorung La pass through the snow.

After 3 hrs hiking we reached the world's "Largest Mountain Pass" still not sure what that means but it was beautiful. In the photo is Colin, Patti, Nim (guide) and Rham (porter) we couldn't have made without either of those two.
Day 16 or so, another early morning walk to the top of Poon Hill to see the sunrise over the mountain range.