McKhandwala

The Scottish highlands are where you'll get a true taste of local culture. Pubs abound, occasional kilt sigthings, bagpipe buskers, stories of revered and hated clans like the McDonalds and MacDowalls, lush green rolling hills, and grazing lambs and sheep. I unpacked in Inverness, the perfect base for exploring the surrouding highlands. The city's really picturesque with the Inverness castle overlooking the river Ness that flows through. Everyone is extremely friendly and it wasn't long before I was engaging in craig (Gaelic for chat) with the locals at a nearby pub.

My first day started early as I wanted a full day to explore Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. Bused it to Drumnadrochit and walked the 5 km's to Urquhart castle. The country side was so remarkably quiet and peaceful. It happens almost imperceptibly, you're just walking along uphill, turn a corner and come across the spectacular ruins of Urquhart castle overlooking river Ness. The beauty was so incredible that I was frozen for almost 30 minutes and took a million pictures. After absorbing the moment into every ounce of me, I wandered around the grounds learning about the history of the castle and immersing myself into a lifestyle that existed over 300 hundred years ago.

As I watched the sun set over the river Ness a strange thing happened. This large dragon like monster immerged from the water, grabbed the sandwich I was eating and disapeared again. Unfortunately, I had filled my camera's memory card with pictures of the castle and so I don't have any photographic evidence. Was it the famous Loch Ness monster?