Kathmandu to Delhi to Agra to Jaipur

 So the title of this post makes me think we've been lazy about updating but we've really just had a very busy couple days. Tuesday morning we woke up, checked out of our awesome hotel (seriously, probably my favorite place we've stayed this trip-- great people, great price, delicious restaurant) and took a taxi over to the outskirts of the city where Surabhi lives. We dropped our things off at her house, and decided to take a quick walking tour of the historical area Patan. We spent the morning wandering around the square, stopping in a couple shops to pick up some fabric for Surabhi and some local artwork for us. We went to her favorite thali restaurant for lunch and filled up before our flight. Nepal was incredible, we know that we definitely need to plan a longer trip next time!

All packed up, leaving our hotel

Patan

Thali-- rice and chicken for me, lamb and a buckwheat paste for Elliot (he described the texture as semi-dried cement, but seemed to like the flavor)

Buckwheat fritters and chili sauce 

Kathmandu airport (for Fred)

From the airplane window

We landed in Delhi and headed to my cousin Ahalya akka's house for the night. It's been so wonderful catching up with family during this time in India, it really has been one of the most fulfilling parts of this trip for me. In the morning, we left around 6am for a bus going to Agra. It was a fairly short ride, about 5 hours, and was nothing less than terrifying. How the bus driver didn't hit another car was beyond me.. another mystery of how traffic works here. We got to Agra only to find out that due to a festival for Republic day the entire town was packed. Although a normally fairly busy tourist town, the hotels were totally booked with very few options. We were somewhat stuck as to what to do and there was definitely not a shortage of people trying to convince to get into their overpriced taxi because they knew of a hotel or hotel owners trying to bring us to their other hotel locations far away from the city. It was expected but still very annoying and tiring. We got into a taxi and talked to the driver about our options. We decided to take him up on his offer to drive us to Jaipur the same day. We visited a couple sites in Agra, the Taj Mahal of course, and we took a quick peek at the Agra Fort (we didn't go in because apparently 75% of it is under renovations) and headed to Jaipur. 

The drive was beautiful in the sunset, and we ended up in Jaipur around 9pm. We decided to stay at a hotel that was owned by a friend of the driver-- although not entirely in love with the place or location (it was a pretty depressing hotel) it was really too late to go anywhere else. We had a quick bite to eat from room service (some chappatis, malai kofta, and chicken curry), and went to bed beat from the long day.