Happy Birthday Rick!!!
We got to Abu Road around 6 in the morning. We were expecting to be there at 4 am to Mount Abu. Luckily the bus took us instead of having to take another bus. We reached Mount Abu at around 7:30 and needed to find a hotel. We searched and asked for hotel rates. Vittoria had a great idea: to be near the lake so that we can do the other things quickly. We went to Nakki Lake and found a room: 2 beds, 5 people 1000 Rs. Sold! We put our stuff in the room and food in our backpacks and left. We weren’t hungry so we didn’t eat. We started walking to one of the further temples, 17 kms = 3 hours. We got lost and took pictures at that rock. Couple of minutes afterwards, we found a taxi that would take us everywhere for 800 Rs. Good deal, I would say since the original price was 1000 Rs. If we had continued walking, we would have seen maybe one or two temples. The first temple was a lot of stairs and when we got there, it felt very spiritual. It would have been more appreciated by someone who believes in the different gods. I don;t have the card of all the names but several places didn’t allow us to take pictures. One places where I took a jumping picture took about 15 minutes since many people wanted to take pictures with us foreigners. The famous temple in Mount Abu didn’t open until about 12pm and when we got there we spent a good hour there. The while marble and the history and design took my breathe away. It’s not something that you can see everyday in the USA. The temple was built in about 1000 AD and it was jaw dropping. It was a nice break from our feet because it wasn’t wet. It was cool and dry for our feet compared to the gravel pavement that was wet. Honeymoon Point would have looked great if it wasn’t cloudy. We finished around 4pm and slept til about 6 or 6:30 pm. We were starving. We had dinner but didn’t like the food. Thankfully we didn’t get sick. We visited the Tibetan market where there were fix prices but persistent Emily tried to bargain. She would only get 10 Rs. off but she still won, tehehe! I bought two thing and tried to find the shot glass and tablecloth but nada. We stayed out to drink some juices as well as tea. We got to the hotel at 10 and stayed on the balcony just talking til midnight. Our conversations are so interesting.
The temples were Jain and the ride was curvy that reminded me of the trip to visit my great uncle in Chantal, Guatemala.