So I've been a tad MIA for a while. I know, I suck.
I'd better have a damn good reason for my unannounced absence, right? I do. TRUST ME, I do! (I have the scar on my back to prove it!)
Well, it all started with my sister coming to visit me in India, a trip which we dubbed the 'Ring of Fire Tour 2012' (for obvious reasons, I think?). We did some sightseeing around Chennai, Mahabalipuram, and then took our tour up north and hung out in Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. Only one of our days was spent in Delhi, but honestly, that was enough. In our short time there, we were in an auto-rickshaw that was slammed into by a city bus and subsequently mobbed by people who saw it happen. We saw a dead man on the side of the road, and we missed getting to see the Red Fort by 1 minute. ONE. Needless to say, we were ready to move on to Agra. Delhi's one redeeming trait was the rooftop restaurant of our hotel, which was a relaxing place to escape from the bustle below in the market of Pahar Ganj.
Agra was great, our hotel was CHEAP and a mere 800 meters from the Taj Mahal, but the air was so hazy that we couldn't see it from the roof. We got to the Taj Mahal, and it's very impressive, and was insanely beautiful, but there were so many people that you couldn't really even enjoy it. :/ Next up was Agra Fort, which was SUPER awesome. We were there for hours and barely saw half of it.
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| Image courtesy of Stacey Osburn of Her On Wheels. |
Finally, our travels took us to Jaipur, where we spent our first day at an elephant preserve, interacting with and feeding the elephants. Did you know that elephants make a vibrating sound in their head when they want to communicate? One of the elephants we shared, Shakuntala (princess) LOVED it when you pet/stroked her trunk, she would press into your whole body and vibrate her head. She was super sweet. We also enjoyed an incredibly delicious meal cooked for us by the mother of the owner of the preserve. It was probably my favorite food that I ate in India- we had rajma (kidney beans in a tomato based sauce), aloo gobi (cauliflower and potatoes in spices), okra (with seasonings, not sure what it was called), some coriander chutney (my favorite!), and chapati (flatbread). The next day was spent in the garden of our hotel relaxing and chatting with our new Belgian friend Kurt, a truly hilarious guy who kept us laughing. On our third day in Jaipur, we did some shopping and visited a handloom place that also did wood block prints. It was really cool to see how they dyed large pieces of fabric and did the block printing that Jaipur is known for. After the shopping, we did some sightseeing…
AND...
You're never going to believe this, but I was bitten by a wild monkey. Yes…you read that right, a MONKEY. A monkey just like this one:
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| Image courtesy of Stacey Osburn of Her On Wheels. |
A Rhesus Macaque, to be exact. It jumped out of a tree onto my back, bit me, jumped off and ran away. While it was a super fun experience, the accompanying rabies shots over the following month kinda knocked me on my ass. When I combined that with the stress of moving back to the U.S., I was out of nail art commission. In fact, I pretty much slept whenever I got the chance.
WARNING: GROSS PICTURE AHEAD!!
Now I'm back in the States, and I'm getting to a point where my life has some sort of organization, even though all my polish is still awaiting shipment from India.
However, in honor of my monkey experience, I did something a little more 'a-peel-ing' than my monkey bite picture!
I used:
Yellow: American Apparel Manila
Black: American Apparel Hassid
Brown: China Glaze Call of the Wild
Basecoat: Cult Nails Get it On
Topcoat: Seche Vite
And a couple more monkey pictures. The first shot cracks me up, the look on his face makes me laugh.
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