Narti Part 4: The trip home

My girl Maya... just had to include this photo somewhere! (she and her sister are moving to Kathmandu to Papa's house, yay!)

We had a lovely send off on Sunday morning. All of the girls had spent the entire night awake because right now it is the Teej festival. On this festival, women fast for the good health of their husbands or luck in finding a future husband, so the night before is a little like Mardi Gras. The girls stayed up, had a huge meal at midnight, and then danced the night away in a frenzy. Unfortunately, I was dead tired and slept through this all, but I’m told it was a sight to see by Sarah and Sam. Vinod said some of the girls were the best dancers he’d ever seen. I wish I had pictures for you all. Some of the girls gave me a little mini-show of dancing before I went to bed though--they danced so fast it reminded me of some kind of seizure… I can’t imagine how exhausted they were by the end of Sunday. Anyways, all of the girls got up (or stayed up) at five in the morning to see us off. They all came out to the road, they put tikas on our foreheads, and they gave us bouquets of flowers and waved us away.

The girls dancing the night away for Teej (Thanks to Sarah Rhodes for the photo)

Krishna-sir, Vinod, and most of the girls

Sarah getting her tika applied

Me with my bouquet and tika, saying goodbye before getting on the bus

After a while, our bus (which was much nicer than the one on the trip out--more room for feet, and rather empty at first) filled up with people, and Vinod, Sarah and I decided to sit on top for a little more breathing room. Once again, putting myself in more danger than I ever have, but it was so awesome. Roller coasters will never be the same. We were riding on top of the bus around mountain curves and passing big trucks with other vehicles coming our way (I said a few choice words more than once), and a couple of times I swear that driver was going a little fast for having people on the roof of the bus, but the views were worth it. I didn’t bring my camera out of course, but the mountains in some parts of Chitwan (a region that we rode through) look like they come straight out of a fairy tale. The cliffs are sheer, the water slices through and leaves steep islands with temple tops sticking out through the forest canopy, there are more shades of green than I could possibly describe, and I fully expected the creatures of Narnia to start appearing out of the brush. The wind sculpted my hair into an indescribable up-do; my legs are sunburned; the backs of my knees are bruised from the metal luggage rack we were sitting on; but we whooped and hollered when we were going fast and I saw some absolutely incredible sights. Well worth it.

A view from the top of our bus (Thanks to Sarah Rhodes for the photo)