Anniversary

We had a nice dinner for our last night in Gili and for our 1 year wedding anniversary. Brandon surprised me by printing off some of our old e-mails from our first year of dating while I was in Australia and he was in Europe. They made me a little teary and really thankful that we get to be together now. It was such a great reminder of how falling in love with my best friend was the most wonderful time. Brandon also got me a cotton sarong. He looked up the traditional gifts for the 1 year anniversary (paper=the e-mails) and for 2 years (cotton=the sarong) since we signed for our marriage license two summers ago. He also bought me a dress on the way to dinner. What a nice guy.
We had an excellent dinner; Brandon enjoyed the seafood platter and I had the crab ravioli.
We left Gili the next day to head to Ubud in Bali. We took a horse cart into town and then took some pictures at the beach while we waited for our late boat.
We will miss the beautiful colours of the sea here in Gili. And I will miss the awesome yoga. I included a picture of the garden area in which I got to practice yoga. My final session included some meditation on the chakras. It was wonderful!

Bali

After what seemed like a really long time in Gili (9 nights!), we decided it was time for some culture. We headed to Ubud on the island of Bali, accidentally completing the Eat Pray Love trifecta (Italy, India, and Indonesia). I'm so glad that we stopped here. We got to see an excellent Balinese dance show. Their make up, costumes, very open eyes, and nearly constant bent leg position were all impressive. I also went to the cheapest spa ever. It was so lovely and next door to our hotel. I had one of the best massages ever and a hair treatment. Not sure if the hair treatment made a difference to my hair, but it felt nice to have the aloe vera cream rubbed into my scalp.
Our highlight was the monkey forest. The quickest way for us to walk into town was through the forest. The first time we walked through, it was night time. It was a little spooky and very fun. The jungle sounded so alive. When we went the next day, we both got jumped on by monkeys (at separate times). The monkey who jumped on me really wanted my sunglasses (I managed to pull them out of his hands though). The monkey who jumped on Brandon just wanted to hang out. He spat some of his food on Brandon's neck and then swept it under Brandon's shirt. He was also very interested in the baggage tag on Brandon's back pack. It was so fun to watch the monkeys from up close. I think they are so fascinating because they are so similar to us. I especially liked the mother monkeys with their tiny babies. We also saw one small monkey start crying, a large monkey just opened up his arms wide, and the little monkey climbed into a very big hug. We saw one lady put out her hand to a monkey that was sitting on a ledge. The monkey held her hand with his, then added his other hand, and then a foot. They seemed to like interacting with humans as much as we liked being with them!
Bali's weather was perfect: just warm and humid enough. It is also very lush and since I wear a lot of green, I blended in. There were offerings to the gods on every doorstep (and a picture below features a large collection of the offerings). Our hotel even made sure that we had a little offering on our doorstep!

Sunsets

We have been enjoying some spectacular sunsets here in Gili when we aren't at yoga. Brandon even joined me one evening. He says he now understands why I do yoga in the airport (as well as in general, I suppose). We've both been a bit sick. We think we picked up a bug in India. But Cipro has done the trick as well as the chicken noodle soup (with finely grated cabbage and lime on top!) and freshly squeezed apple juice for dinner. Yum! I don't have a picture of dinner as Brandon wanted to have a real reason to use the pen flashlight he brought with him; so no iPhones allowed. Today is also the anniversary of our wedding. What an awesome day that was! :)
When we were walking into town the other day, we encountered a man biking with four kids (about 3/4 years old) on a platform on the front of his bike, each kid on his/her own kid car, holding a cup of popcorn. I have never been so sad not to have my camera! To top it all off, the inevitable happened, one of the kids dropped their cup of popcorn and the man ran it over. He exclaimed, "oh shh.." as he leaned over to pick it up. The kids didn't seem phased.

Ahhhhh

After 3 flights, one car ride, one boat ride, and one horse drawn carriage ride, we have arrived in Gili Trawangan: no cars, no sight seeing, pasteurized milk. It is so relaxing! We are staying at a lovely hotel with its own beach. We have to stake our territory there a little early but that just means more time staring out at the most beautiful blue ocean. We had a delicious bbq fish dinner tonight. I have been to 2 yoga classes and intend to go every night. We walked around the entire island today in under 2 hours. There are cheap massages. We will go snorkeling and Brandon will go diving. In short, it is perfect and we are thinking about extending our stay. It is Ramadan right now and the majority of the local people are fasting during the day. They are pretty tired and I feel bad that they have to serve us food and drink while they aren't eating anything.

Goodbye India

On our last day in India we finally got to take the train. I have one picture of the very beginning ( at 5 am) as I proceeded to sleep for 95% of the ride. We were so happy with our experience! The train was very relaxing, they brought us tea, and it was a bargain.
We had a few hours to kill in Delhi so we went to the best restaurant in the city: Bukhara. Clinton and Obama have eaten here. The food was amazing! I think it was due to the fact that each dish was 50% butter. We had dal (lentil curry), deep fried cauliflower, cheese garlic chicken, butter naan, and gulab jamun! We also got to go into the kitchen for a tour.
On our way to the centre of town, our driver read our thumbs. His guru encourages hand reading, yoga, and meditation. According to my thumbs, Im inflexible and have difficulty making decisions, consulting many people to find out what the right thing is. Brandon is flexible and makes friends easily. Im sad and happy to admit that this is true. Our driver also gave us some advice: to chant his god's name if we were in trouble.

We spent the rest of the day trying to get the rest of the next part of our trip planned. We needed a flight from Bali to Lombok so that our hotel could pick us up and take us to Gili T ( a tiny island between Bali and Lombok). We couldn't find wifi anywhere! Finally we went to a travel agent who let us use his internet for free. He also gave us 2 tubes of toothpaste, some awesome postcards, beer, and vegetable momos claiming "It is better to give than to receive" and "karma" as his reasons for being so generous. We felt that India was balancing out the tricks it had played on us and we accepted his generosity and three of his business cards. He told us about his guru as well but thankfully didn't read our thumbs.
We still ended up needing to go to an internet cafe as the phone numbers for the airline we needed to contact weren't working. After many different tries (and much chanting of what we thought we remembered of the driver's god's name), Brandon finally booked our flight through expedia. We high fived a few times.
For dinner, we visited our favourite veg restaurant: Hotel saravana bhavan. They have one in Vacouver! We got the ever delicious coconut dosa masala = to die for!
Then, a tiny bit of shopping by the train station before we picked up our bags and went to the airport. Brandon bought a little god that hangs from the rearview mirror of the car as a gift. He is orange and looks like he is flying.
We were both pretty sad to leave India, but were also ready for some R & R. We will definitely be back!

Amritsar and the Sikhs

We added one antenna to our triangle because we weren't quite ready to say goodbye to India yet. We flew 1.5 hours north of Delhi to Amritsar: home of the golden temple, capital of the Sikh religion.
It was 40 degrees and very humid as you will notice by our sweaty photos. But our visit was one of the best, most unique experiences. The Sikh people were so lovely and friendly. Many wanted their photo with us. They were especially intrigued by Brandon's Arabian version of the turban. He had it arranged for him by a man on the street. There are some how to photos below.
We took some photos in front of the temple. Can you tell it was laundry day? Also the ground was so hot and we had to have bare feet so there were some painful moments.
We then went for free (by donation) lunch. The kitchen at the temple feeds 40,000-60,000 pilgrims everyday. It was an amazing operation. We picked up a metal plate and bowl downstairs, waited in line for a few minutes, then entered a huge room where everyone sat on the ground in rows. Men came up and down the rows, pouring food onto our plates or dropping roti into our hands. There was dal, potato curry, rice, and some sort of tapioca. I have never been stared at so much! It was a little overwhelming when we were standing in line to get in the room. We were the only non Indian people there. But I smiled and we chatted with some of the people. The Sikhs liked patting Brandon on the back. We were definitely feeling the love. To top it all off, our tummies felt totally settled after that meal.
We also discovered a restaurant called Crystals. It was confusing, though, because on that corner, there were about 4 Crystals restaurants. 2 were fast food/ ice cream stalls which were not what we were looking for. The original Crystals has split into two because of a family split: one upstairs and one downstairs. I became very confused because of the number of restaurants and the fact that one of them had two floors. We narrowed the search down to the sit down restaurants side by side. Both had security officers waving us into their respective restaurants. So I showed the two 'sit down' restaurants the entry in my guidebook asking, "Is this you?". During this time, Brandon was trying to explain that these two side by side restaurants were in fact what the book was talking about. The restaurant on the main floor got frustrated and waved us away. Our decision was made! We had some really great tandoori fish and the next night we went to the other Crystals (which had the exact same food!)

The Golden Triangle

Here are some of our highlights (in order of appearance) from sightseeing in Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra:
1. Chadni Chowk: directly translated mean 'moonlight on the water'; this place was the exact opposite of its translation. Completely chaotic, crowded, and exciting, this is where I found 4 men carrying an ATM using a stick and rope contraption. Pretty amazing!
2. Red Fort: had an awesome museum and lovely red colour. Highlight of the museum: life size dioramas! The best one depicted a fight between the. British and the Indians in which an Indian lady was on a horse, wielding a sword, with a BABY strapped to her back!
3. Lotus temple for Bahai faith. We went in and prayed. My prayer= thankfulness.
4. The Sufi singers. This was my favourite sight. We joined the masses of pilgrims and headed to a mosque through tiny streets lined with stalls selling flowers and prayer cards. We reached the mosque to find drummers and chant/singers sitting together making some amazing music. It was one of the most soul stirring events I've been to. (I have a video of this which I dont know how to upload via my phone)

Onto Jaipur. Unfortunately our driver, Ali, took us to Agra first. Luckily I noticed and we detoured to Jaipur along some pretty back roads (where we saw lots of cows!). This added 3 hours to our journey. We laughed about it...the next day.
5. The water palace. As you can see in the photo below where we are facing each other, our driver has a future in engagement photo shoots.
In Jaipur, we took our one and only yoga lesson. It was very different! Our yogi was exactly what you would picture: dressed all in white, tiny body, huge glasses. We began by thanking God. During our practice, we heard lots of: 'slowly slowly' and 'now rest and relax the body'. Our class ended with forced laughter which turned into real laughter.
Onto Agra...
6. The Taj Mahal. We saved the best for last. An Indian poet called it a teardrop on the cheek of time. We went at sunrise and it was beautiful.

I don't know if the photos will stay in order so hopefully you can figure out which is which. Also featured, Brandon eating a dosa (like an Indian taco) that took up two plates, Brandon snake charming, and the crab we ate for dinner one night.