Birds, birds and more birds

Although very geared up for an adventure today the weather was against us for the next two days and decided to rain in the mornings. So today we spent the morning at our aloo paratha stall chatting, eating and enjoying chai and then in our cafe reading our books, doing a bit more planning and just enjoying us time. By the late afternoon it cleared up so we went for a wander along the Ganges. It was really good fun. We walked a bit, sat for a while, bird watched a lot and repeated until we got to the next town along. We spotted the following birds White capped water red start, Plumbous water red start, Indian cormorant, Indian treepie, Indian grey hornbill, Pied kingfisher, Great white pelican, White throated kingfisher, Black kite, Oriental Pied Hornbill! What a fab day of bird watching.

In the the evening we watched the fire ceremony for sunset at Parmart Niketan and then went for an open meditation. It was amazing. I've tried to do some mindfulness and meditation through headspace myself but nothing has ever been as powerful as this joint meditation. The feeling of togetherness, and the power of silence was just beautiful. It would be amazing to do some more of it. In the evening we walked all the way back and went for dinner. I had mushroom palak paneer and Will had thee biggest thali I'd ever seen! The temperature has now dropped to 7 degrees and its getting seriously cold so we have been on the hunt for a hat. I finally found one and I'm not usually one for bright colours but I love it!

The next day was a lot worse weather wise so we basically spent the whole day in the cafe reading our books. Honestly I feel so honoured to have this time to sit and read. In the evening we went for chowmein, sat chatting with a few other travellers and whilst distracted a huge cow came and licked my entire plate off the table! It was actually pretty hilarious I couldn't stop laughing haha He deservedly won the battle haha After dinner we found Will a hat and I bought some funky trousers.

Over the last few days we'd heard that Shanti Shanti is a cute little place to go in the evenings as they have a fire and live music, so we decided to give it a go! There was a fire and we decided to plonk ourselves right in front of it haha we were sooo cold!!! We sat reading our books in front of the fire and it was a perfect end to the day 😊🔥Read more