Namaste - Peace Be Upon You (from Nepal)

Well, we realize that it has been 5 days since we wrote last... but oh my goodness there has been lots happening! We haven't had a chance to write or call, as the internet has been unavaliable, or we have been too busy. Since we wrote last, we flew to Kathmandu, Nepal on February 22. It has been amazing! We stayed the night at The Mountain Inn in Kathmandu, and then headed out to Chitwan National Park. We stayed at the Tiger Resort there. That evening we went to a cultural program of different dances, and the meanings of the dances. It was SO interesting. They were quite amazing dancers! The only one that was hard to watch, was when they did a traditional dance of mourning, only they didn't have enough women dancers, so they used men dressed up... with nose rings and everything! It was pretty hard to watch... The next morning (at 6am) we all climbed up on elephants (in a box on the top) and we went into the jungle to rangle us up a Rhino! We found 2 rhinos and monkeys and deer and peacocks... and many other things... it was amazing, and it lasted for 3 hours! When we got back Sally & Shauna rode bareback on the elephants (both on the elephants that they rode on all day)down to the river where they bathed the elephants! It was SOOO cool! Shauna's elephant aimed well when given the command to spray water with his trunk, and found his mark - right in the middle of her face!She then scrubbed the elephant with a piece of cement and he LOVED it! He would stretch out his leg and almost kick it out like a dog (yes, he was laying in the river on his side). Jesse took lots of great pictures, and we will post them when we can. After the bath, we went for a 5 hour jeep safari through the jungle and saw even more animals! It was pretty amazing.

Today we left for Pokhara, Nepal. It was around 400kms, but it took us all day! We got stuck in a road block because there was a protest. The protest was as a result of a grade 9 boy who got hit on his bike by a bus. He was taken to the hospital, and the report was that he was fine, but the bus driver didn't stop. The law here is that the driver pay for the expences for injury incurred, and there was no driver, so it turned into a road block. It lasted for 4 hours! Let us just say that there isn't a whole lot on top of a mountain to do for 4 hours! As a result, we got here to Pokhara late.

Tomorrow we plan to meet at 7am to eat breakfast and head to a high point where we should have a good view of mountains and especially - Everest! It should be amazing. We hear that people come up here many times to see it, and don't get to because of the lack of visibility up here. It turns out that the sky cleared as we were pulling into town and there are stars and a moon right now, so hopefully it will be perfect! After the lookout, we are supposed to be on a boat for a couple of hours to see the range, it's where many famous pictures are taken of the mountain range and Everest. On our way back to Kathmandu, we are supposed to be taking a gondola ride up to a famous temple. It sounds like Tomorrow will be really busy but so fun! We will write more, and hope the weather holds for the 27th when we are supposed to fly around Everest on a specific chartered tour! Love and miss you guys! look for pictures soon (hopefully)!