I had written a bit about our travels to Mussoorie but never posted it because we didn't have internet. So about Mussoorie...
After returning from our Jaipur/Agra trip, we had a couple of days to rest up before Shehrish's mom and brother (Uzir) came to Delhi. Uzir attends Woodstock School in Mussoorie and the only way to get there is by train. We woke up at 4:15 am the next day to get to the train station for a departure around 6 am. The train car was nice and they keep you distracted by constantly bringing you food and drinks, even more so than international flights do. I guess being incredibly full is the ideal way to travel as being in a lethargic, zombie-like state makes the time go by quicker. I've always enjoyed train rides as the routes take you through stretches of land that are otherwise abandoned by humanity. It was strange to see so much uninhabited land in one of the most populated countries in the world. After about a six hour train, we got to Dehradun, hired a cab and proceeded to wind our way up the hillside to reach Mussoorie at the top. Mussoorie is a quaint hill station town where it seemed like everything was uphill and monkeys were as common as pigeons in a normal city. The air was clean and I enjoyed the town despite the blistering cold. Our hotel was without heat which made for the coldest indoor night of my life. It was too cold for me to sleep initially and I watched Jurassic Park in Hindi to pass the time. I woke up early and tracked the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl on Shehrish's iPhone. It was either really suspenseful or my updates were brutally slow. Later that day we traversed further up the hillside to drop off Uzir at his boarding school, which was stunningly nice. We then repeated the entire journey in rewind and got back to Delhi around 12:00 pm, only to wake up at 6:00 am the next morning to drive to the airport and catch a plane back to Nepal. Gallivanting all over India was fun but exhausting. Note to international American travelers: you can only get USD at the airport if you are traveling back to the USA. I needed USD to get a fresh visa upon returning to Nepal and they wouldn't give it to me despite my passport. Things worked out in the end and we flew back to Nepal with no immigration issues.
Fast forward to this past Wednesday, which was Holi in Nepal. Having recovered from my blow to the forehead the day before (see previous blog), we set out to Nisha's house to 'play' Holi with friends. Playing Holi consists of soaking each other in water by means of balloons/guns/hoses/whatever and covering each other in multi-colored powders. We also engaged with various groups nearby that were also participating. After finishing, we headed out to Thamel, still soaking wet and with colors all over our clothes and faces. I didn't bring my camera to avoid it being ruined but somebody took a lot of pictures and I'll put them up when they're sent to me. Most of Thamel was closed as Holi is a national holiday but a couple of places were open and full of action. The atmosphere was almost like being at a rave and everybody was throwing colors and water all over each other. The day was incredibly fun but the red-colored powder left my skin with a tomatoey tinge for the next few days.
A couple of days later I was heading to a grocery store in Baluwatar to get something to snack on when I see a huge limousine pull up to one of the ministry buildings. Seeing motorcades of big cars roll into this area isn't too uncommon but I had never seen a limo in Nepal and stopped to see what was going on. A series of old guys got out of the car, one of whom looked strangely familiar to me. I was unable to place him and went about my business, thinking it was just some diplomat I had seen in the paper recently. I saw in the paper the next day that I had run into none other than Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA and one of the sleaziest sports figures in the world who somehow hasn't been ousted. Sepp was in town for the AFC (Asian Football Confederation) Challenge cup, and yesterday I went with a group to see Nepal play Maldives. I was excited for the match, not having seen a live sporting event since leaving America and was curious to see how the international play would be. We got to the stadium slightly before kickoff and I'm estimating that the crowd was something like 20,000-25,000. The atmosphere was electric and scary at the same time, as there were multiple police sitting in every section and all over the perimeter of the stadium, almost as if they were overly anticipating a riot. I was seated right next to the only group of Maldivian (that's a guess, look it up) fans whom were the target of perpetual ridiculing by the Nepali fans. The match started and I quickly realized why I had never heard anything positive about either team. The play was akin to a couple of 3-year olds playing FIFA and just pushing buttons at random. There may have been one or two successfully completed passes but I don't remember any. The match was nil at the break but the Maldivians came out strong in the second half and opened up the scoring due to pathetic 'defensive' lapse by Nepal. I put defensive in quotes because it really wasn't defense, just a clogging of the area. The Maldivian fans were quickly escorted out by a team of police officials for safety purposes as the Nepali fans were getting a bit too rambunctious for comfort. Nepal ended up losing 1-0 and we escaped the premises without incident. I had a lot of fun even though I have seen more compelling youth games before. I had been strongly considering not supporting Chelsea anymore for various reasons (team, style of play, ownership etc.) and making my favorite bad team, Fulham, just my favorite team but after seeing Nepal-Maldives I have a new appreciation for Chelsea's brutally horrible play as of late. Later in the evening I watched Chelsea eke out a 1-0 win over Stoke and despite looking horrible for EPL standards the level of play was 10000x better than what I had seen earlier in the day. Go Chelsea!
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