Maldives

Since visiting one new country didn't seem like enough, we stopped in the Maldives on the way back from Sri Lanka.  It was a wise decision.

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It seems logical that getting to paradise involves riding in a sea plane. 

Exploring the island didn't take long since it only took 15 minutes to walk around the perimeter, but we kept busy exploring the world under the crystal clear water.

 

Night time snorkeling:

Now we are back in Qatar reality.  Go Royals and happy Halloween yall! 

Central Sri Lanka

The second half of our Sri Lanka journey was spent near the center of the island.  Our next stop was in the mountains near Nuwaraeliya (and our favorite part of the trip).

Tea Plantation:

Can you spot the tea plantation workers picking leaves?

 

 

The scenery really changed as we approached Kandy.

We put on some new attire to blend in and enjoyed the city.

Cultural Dance Show:

Kandy Botanical Gardens:

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple:

Happy birthday Kaleigh.  I am so excited for this next year.

Sri Lankan Coastline

This past week was the holiday Eid al-Adna and we celebrated our favorite way by traveling.

We hopped over to Sri Lanka.

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Our adventure started in Colombo with stops at all the highlighted locations:

The first part of our journey followed the coastline resulting in sand between our toes and interesting stops.

Then we veered from the coastline and headed to Yala National park for a safari.

 

More pictures of Sri Lanka to follow but this seems like an overload for now.

Happy birthday to our Dads.  We are celebrating in your honor.  Hope you have great birthdays.

Wobbly Legs and Lederhosen

We had an eventful weekend which started by testing our balance.

Since last week was our anniversary and apparently the traditional third year anniversary gift is leather, we celebrated in our favorite leather attire. (and only leather attire)

We reenacted how we celebrated our anniversary last year by heading to Doha Oktoberfest.  Thankfully, we have friends just as crazy ready to sport their lederhosen and dirndl.

We did take a short break from dancing to the oomph band to quench our thirst.

  

Three years strong.  I think we started a new anniversary tradition.

This Saturday starts the Eid holiday so we are watching for the moon.

Snake Gorge, Oman

Welcome Jackson!!!  Auntie Kelsy and Uncle Jonathon are SO excited to spoil you.

More great news, the weather forecast shows that we might see a cloud this week AND it might stay below 100 degrees one day!  Happy beginning of fall.

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To celebrate so much greatness, we met some friends in Oman for a little hiking adventure in the mountains.


We headed into Wadi Awf to hike Snake Gorge.  See red star below.

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This wasn't your typical hike.  We trekked through a giant canyon, but it included some major obstacles.  

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Fearless group before the hike:

We started at a higher elevation and then just hiked down.  Easy right?

 Did I forget to mention the part about swimming through caves?

Big smiles because there were no broken bones:

The next morning when we woke up nice and sore, we visited the grand mosque.

It was excellent to see friends and we are glad that we survived to display our Snake Gorge photos.  Happy fall yall.