Last week we headed into the beautiful mountain town near Nepal. While some of our friends went trekking in the real Himalayas with another family, we stayed in the “foothills” of the Himalayas at that family’s house and crammed in a 1-week intensive of Hindi courses at a local language school. After an overnight train and a hair-raising taxi ride up a narrow, winding road with two-way traffic and a lot of blind curves, we found ourselves above the smog layer of the plains, breathing clean, 70 degree air and marveling at the feeling of going nearly a whole day without sweating. ”Is this still India??” we kept thinking.
We spent a lot of time hiking to and from class, and exploring the surrounding area. The town is a hill station from British colonial times (makes sense that the British would build their fancy estates in the part of the country where the climate most closely approximated that of England), so there are lots of interesting old buildings around, but by far the most interesting element of the place was the wildlife. There were wild monkeys all over the walking paths and playing in the trees, and leopards are often sighted in the area… though we were spared the privilege of running into one of those.
Since the language course is actually designed as a 3 month intensive course, so our two hours of class each day were plenty to keep us busy around the clock with studying as we tried to cram as much grammar into our heads as possible. We only made it about 2/3 through the course, but at this point we’re just so overjoyed to possess the power of past, present, and future tense that we didn’t really mind. You don’t realize how much you love grammar until you start over from scratch without it. Knowing what we do now, we’ve realized how much entertainment we’ve probably been providing for our friends and neighbors up til now :)
After our friends and the rightful owners of the house returned from the mountains, we moved a little further down the mountain where there were rooms available—in a community hospital that simultaneously functions as a hotel, oddly enough. Right there next to the operating theatre, there was a big room with rolling furniture and 3 hospital gurneys which is apparently left open for overnight visitors. We found it pretty hilarious.
While I was sitting in the hospital room alone one day, checking email, I made the mistake of leaving the window open for too long. After a few minutes, I looked up just in time to see this kind of monkey (the more aggressive kind) slowly raise his head up into the window:
While I was sitting in the hospital room alone one day, checking email, I made the mistake of leaving the window open for too long. After a few minutes, I looked up just in time to see this kind of monkey (the more aggressive kind) slowly raise his head up into the window:
From what I had seen, these monkeys tend to behave somewhat like mentally disturbed humans with well-developed self preservation instincts and no social conscience. He stared at me with an unnerving expression of bold curiosity. I wasn’t sure quite what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to be alone in the room with that creature! “No, no, no, no…” I calmly repeated over and over again, slinking towards the open window with my hands outstretched in front of me. Finally I was about two feet away from the furry little face that had held eye contact with me the whole time. WHAM! I pulled the glass panes shut and locked them. Crisis averted! The monkey sat on the roof and continued to stare up at me for a couple of minutes before moseying away.
After the reprieve of the mountains, it was a bit of a shock to careen back down the mountain and into a sweaty traffic jam with nauseating fumes, but we’ve pretty well adjusted again now. And we made it home in time to celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary on the 26th! Looking back on everything that’s happened, it seems like it’s been far longer than two years… we’ve enjoyed the adventure so far and are excited for the journey ahead.
After the reprieve of the mountains, it was a bit of a shock to careen back down the mountain and into a sweaty traffic jam with nauseating fumes, but we’ve pretty well adjusted again now. And we made it home in time to celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary on the 26th! Looking back on everything that’s happened, it seems like it’s been far longer than two years… we’ve enjoyed the adventure so far and are excited for the journey ahead.