Monkeys, monkeys everywhere! We just returned from a 4 day holiday to Mussoorie (in the Himalayas). What a great adventure, monkeys were all over the place, along with the cows. We started our adventure early Friday (10/8) morning on a 6 hour train ride to Dehradun, Uttaranchal. At first I was skeptical of the train as we bought first class tickets and the car didn’t look much better than a car on the NJ transit but it was a wonderful and the 6 hours flew by. A taxi was waiting for us at the Dehradun train station to take us to the hotel in Mussoorie. The drive of the mountain was about 1 hr which was rough if you have a weak stomach. The Carpenter family held strong!
Our hotel, Carlton’s Hotel, was built as a chateau in the late 1800’s. It is a 10-room family run hotel set in 4 acres of orchard, hillside, and garden. The hotel was beautiful and a very relaxing atmosphere. Our room had a huge bed (which was great because Desmond slept with us every night) and lots of room for little Des to crawl around and explore.
We spent our day in the town exploring and walking. We believe we averaged about 9-10km a day carrying the kids on our backs – this left us extremely tired at the end of the day. There was a lot of fog the first day so we did not get great views but the other two were excellent. On the second day we hiked to Happy Valley and saw a Tibetan shrine, the pictures do not do justice to what we saw and experienced. On the third day we went to Kempty Falls, the website made the falls look beautiful but upon arriving we realized it was a tourist trap with a fair amount of trash. It was disappointing and sad to see how the environment has been ruined, we did not stay long. The last day we hiked to find the local clock tower. Marcus had read about it and we thought it would be worth seeing. The map made it look close, so we set out and walked and walked and walked…. Finally, we decided we needed to stop to eat breakfast. We knew were close because we had breakfast in Clock Tower, Mussoorie but we just couldn’t find it. Marcus asked the owner of the breakfast joint and he laughed and said ‘oh that tower is right over there (looking a empty space) but it has been torn down for a new clock tower.’ Lesson learned, maps are not to scale, India is India and set your expectations so you are not disappointed, and be thankful for morning exercise.
We ended our wonderful holiday by taking a taxi down the mountain and catching a plane back to Delhi. The plane cut about 4 hours of travel from our trip which was nice. The weather was amazing, warm during the day and chilly at night. Of course Desmond was on his best behavior and enjoyed being carried around and exploring.
Finally in other news, Desmond is all over the place crawling but mostly he stands (holding on to anything), he has 2 teeth in, and is getting solids in. We are still looking for a car, the good cars sell so quickly so we are on the hunt. Our stuff still has not arrived, hopefully next week. The weather is cooling, even though it is still hot you can feel a bit a fall in the air… well sort of.
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| Monkeys!!!! |
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| Big Lion! |
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| Hanging with Daddy |
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| We dressed Des up hoping for a good picture, but he didn't like it... |
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| Himalayas in the morning |
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| Tibetan prayer flags |
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| Family picture, mountains, and prayer flags |
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| Forgot to take his 29wk picture, oops. |
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| Tibetan prayers |
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| Kempty water falls, minus all the trash |
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| Our hotel |
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| Desmonds first train ride |
