Backpackers. But Not on Purpose.

Summer and I both started our trip like fancy ladies in Europe, what with the wheeled suitcases and cute outfits. And then India happened. You can't really wheel a suitcase through India. Sometimes you can, but mostly you can't. So the backpacks happened. (I bought mine in Istanbul and sent my wheeled suitcase home with cousin Ross and she bought hers in Mumbai and threw her nasty wheeled suitcase in the garbage can.) Wearing every last piece of warm clothing layered five and six times on our bodies happened. Freezing train rides happened and the subsequent necessary buying of blankets and then wearing those blankets as clothes happened.

I'm embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me that it would ever be cold in India. Well. We froze in the hill town of Ooty and the bus rides that took us to and from, we froze in Bangalore, and we froze somewhere between Mumbai and Jodhpur and every day after that. So basically half the time we were in India it was not "India hot", but rather "wet cold". As a result of this ignorance, I sent home most of my cold weather gear inside of the wheeled suitcase I sent home with Ross. I figured I'd be in Nepal for just a week and would only need a couple of things and I could always buy stuff there.

Oh, Nepal. Freezing, freezing Nepal. It's not like you can escape the cold by going in your heated hotel room and taking a warm shower. There is no heat. There is no warm water. And it's not like you have warm pajamas for 30 degree nights (0 Celsius) with no heat in your room. So there is no changing your clothes for bed. I wore all of my clothes at one time all day long and slept in them too -- 24/7. The outfit you see in the photo below did not leave my body for the last four weeks of my trip. I changed my underwear every once in a while and that's about it.