Category: India
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The Holy City of Varanasi
Our next stop was Varanasi, one of the holiest Hindu cities on earth, and also one of the oldest living cities in the world. It sits on the Ganges River, and according to the Hindu religion, anyone who dies here will attain instant moksha, or enlightmentment, so the city is said to be teeming with…
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Bodhgaya: Buddhist Disneyland
Still on a Buddhist kick, we made our way from Sikkim to Bodhgaya, a trip that took about 30 hours in total between Jeeps, trains, and rickshaws. Bodhgaya is the most important Buddhist pilgrimage destination and is the place where the Buddha himself apparently attained enlightenment under a pipal tree now known as the Bodhi…
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Yum: A Taste of Tibetan and Sikkimese Food
One of my favorite things about Darjeeling and Sikkim was — surprise, surprise– the food. We found the variety of Tibetan noodle soups to be delicious, healthy, and so comforting in the cold evenings. There are three main types of noodle soups: thenthuk (flat noodles), gyathuk (thin noodles), and bakthuk (gnocchi-type pasta) . A large bowl of…
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Sikkim: Walking Through the Himalayan Foothills
Sikkim is a tiny state just north of West Bengal. It is sandwiched between Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan, and very much feels like its own country, which it used to be up until 1975. In fact, tourists need official permits to visit Sikkim, and some parts near the borders with other countries are completely off…
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Darjeeling
Looking to escape the crazy and overwhelming cities of India, we headed north to Darjeeling, one of India’s most famous hill stations and world-renowned for its tea production. Despite an incredibly stressful and frightening three-hour Jeep ride up and down curvy, potholed roads damaged by recent earthquakes and landslides, we’re glad we made the effort…
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Kolkata: Two Sides to Every Story
Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta, as the British named it), our first stop in India, was something of a tale of two cities for us: we had fairly different experiences, so we thought we’d split its post in two so we could each present our experience. Claudia Kolkata was an interesting choice for our first…