That said, our first impression of La Paz was incredible. We arrived as the sun was rising over the many terraces of the city. La Paz lies entirely in a valley so makes a for a spectacular view, particularly as the sun rises. Unfortunately once we got off the bus we couldn’t get a room at the hostel we wanted to and the one we ended up staying at was a bit weird. To get to our room we had to walk through one of the dorms and the walls to our room were glass with curtains that didn’t fully cover them. Also, we could hear everything from the dorm. Still…. it was a bed and there was a shower and given the ordeal of the past few days we were relatively happy.

After settling into the hostel we headed out to book ourselves onto ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Road‘ bike ride. We were thwarted at every turn. Because it was a Saturday most of the shops had closed before lunch so we wandered around, ate some food, checked out the modern art gallery and went back to the hostel. That evening we located the ‘best’ restaurant in La Paz and headed out to celebrate John and Annika’s wedding!! We were disappointed not to be in England celebrating with them, but we had a lovely meal in honour of them anyway.

Sunday morning we tried the bike shops again. Closed. We’d heard from some Spanish speakers in our hostel that the newspapers were predicting the strikes would get worse, hitting La Paz and the rest of the country. We thought that it was best not to hang around any longer, so decided that we would leave the following day for Copacabana. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city getting into any galleries that were open. We wandered up the beautiful Calle Jaén only to be disappointed by its museums.
There were colourful markets set up on El Prado and marching bands around the Plaza Pedro D Morillo, so we found plenty of things to entertain us. Outside the Iglesia San Francisco (closed!) we saw a couple of men who looked as though they’d tried to model themselves on childrens’ storybook pictures of Jesus and God performing blessings. Very odd. We had a surprisingly excellent curry at a British-Indian curry house and had an early night.

Monday morning we were up early, checked out of the hostel and headed for the bus station. We’s missed the morning tourist bus to Copacabana and didn’t want to hang around for 4 hrs until the next one, so we made our way to the cemetary and the local mini buses that also make the journey. It was relatively uneventful and even though we were sad to be on our way out of Bolivia it was a relief to finally get to beautiful, calm, quiet Copacabana!

We didn’t have anywhere to stay when we arrived, so we walked into town, looked at a few places and eventually decided upon Residencial Elena. It’s in a neocolonial building just a couple of blocks south of the plaza and is run by a really lovely Spanish family. Once we were settled in we headed up to the impressive Plaza 9 de Julio to locate the Museo de Arquelogía de Alta Montaña (MAAM) which houses the truly amazing mummified bodies of the Incan children found on Llullaillaco in 1999 (although only one is on display at any given time). Even though we had been told how incredible the mummies are (thanks Janna), nothing could have really prepared us for just how life-like they are. We also popped into the Catedral to try and take some photos, but it was filled with children, I’ve never actually seen a full church before, let alone a massive cathedral, it was quite an impressive sight! Back at the B&B that evening we met Laliv and Yossi in front of the fire who are travelling in the opposite direction to us. We ended up spending hours talking about travel, films and even a little bit of biology and ended up skipping dinner and going to bed late.

The next morning we met Laliv and Yossi for breakfast and spent another couple of hours chatting! Then we headed to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, but unfortunately it was closed for assembly of a new exhibition. That evening we went up to Pajcha – Museo de Arte Étnico Americano, a privately owned gallery north of the centre of town. We were greeted like long lost friends by the Deputy Director, Diego, who proceeded to give us a really fascinating guided tour. He is amazingly enthusiastic and very dramatic in his descriptions, especially when moving from one piece to the next… ‘Prepare your attention!! Especially you, Anthony!’ he would say as we moved from one to the other. ‘Alexandra! Try to see! Try to see the feather! Always the feather!’. At first we were trying to hide our mirth, but soon we realised that it made the whole experience so much more alive and interesting than usual. The gallery was founded by an anthropologist who has been collecting for practically her whole life and it really shows in the quality and quantity of the pieces. It is one of the best presented galleries that we’ve been to here which is pretty amazing considering it has no government funding. After our tour we sat in a café for an hour or so until it was a reasonable time to have dinner (9.45pm). We had steak and chips at La Leñita and ended up sitting next to the Puerto Rican basketball team! I really wish we had some photos, these guys were HUGE! Halfway through the meal one of the waiters grabbed a guitar and started singing folk songs to the guests, he was a great singer.

Friday we got up really late, did some yoga and exercises and went out for lunch. We were planning on booking a bus from Salta to Humuhuaca to see the quebrada, but we realised that we will see similar landscape once we cross over to Tupiza, so we booked a bus straight to La Quiaca which is on the Argentine side of the Bolivian border. We can’t book onwards from Villazón to Tupiza, so we’ll have to sort that out when we get there. Tickets safely in hand, we decided to take the teleférico (cable car… reassuringly made in Switzerland) up to the top of Cerra San Bernado to check out the view of Salta from on high. Luckily we chose a good day to go, it was pretty spectacular.

Today has been pretty uneventful, we have already seen most of what we wanted to in Salta, so we had a late breakfast and wandered back up to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, which has reopened. It’s a pretty small gallery, but has some interesting local art. Then we walked around the sunlit and pleasantly warm streets taking some photos and discovering little markets by plazas. This afternoon we sat in the Plaza 9 de Julio and watched what we think was some kind of pre celebration for tomorrow’s Dia del Niño. There was also a band playing and some strange races where waiters ran around the park carrying a tray with a bottle of beer half poured into a glass. We were pretty impressed that none of them actually let the bottle topple! We have a couple of hours left before we get on the bus at 12.45am!

The next day we took in some of the sights. Again we were a little thwarted by closings during the middle of the day (namely the supposedly great English tour of the university which we tried to visit three times, on the final time it was open, but they weren’t running the last tour of the day, the one we had arrived for), but we managed to see the Cordóba Cabildo and the very sobering Museo de la Memoria. We certainly didn’t know much of the history of Argentina when we arrived, but found out shortly after arriving in Buenos Aires that during the late 70s and early 80s the government ‘disappeared’ a startling number of people who didn’t support it. Many of the people who were taken were frighteningly young.

In the afternoon we walked to Parque Sarmiento which was a dusty disappointment and Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa which had some pretty uninspiring exhibitions showcased in one of the most interesting art spaces I’ve seen. We spent hours trying to find somewhere for dinner as most of the places listed in the Lonely Planet were either closed or simply don’t exist anymore.

On Wednesday we decided to get out of the city and explore some of the Jesuit estancias that are in the surrounding countryside. We took a bus to Jésus Maria and jumped out, eager to see what the town had to offer. For about an hour we felt as though we were in some kind of comedy game being played by the citizens of the town as we were sent from one end of town to the next and back again in search of the mysterious tourist information office. We never found it, but did manage to find our way to the Estancia Jésus Maria. It was a pretty impressive building and we learned a bit about the Jesuits in the area.

We had read that the most impressive of all the Jesuit estancias is Estancia Santa Catalina 20km outside Jésus Maria and that it’s pretty cheap and easy to get to in a taxi. Not so. Well, it is beautiful, but certainly not easy to get to. We jumped in a cab at the station and I was encouraged by the fact that the nice lady taxi driver called me ‘dear’. Then she said something about ‘el camino’ and ‘muy feo’. Ok, so at this stage we thought she was talking about some kind of tourist ‘way’ that people drive to look at all the estancias and that for some reason she thought Santa Catalina was ugly…. It was only once we got onto the terrible dirt road leading to the estancia that we realised she meant the road out there was ugly! But we arrived safe and sound, if a little shaken, and handed over the AR$57 plus 10% tip. The doors were locked and she wouldn’t let us out! Turns out she wanted AR$100 because the road was bad. I managed to stumble through the words to explain that we wouldn’t have enough money to get back if we gave her that, and eventually she relented.

After that ordeal we were keen to have some lunch and then look around. We were pretty nervous about being able to get back as this is literally a dirt road with a couple of shops and a church. But we figured worst case scenario we’d start to walk and hitch if we could. As we were wandering around looking lost a friendly gentleman herded us into a beautiful garden surrounded by old buildings. We asked if we could have something to eat and were taken into a pretty little restaurant and told that they had pasta. Fortunately Anthony had the foresight to ask how much it was… AR$50 for a plate of pasta!!!! Usually somewhere nice it MIGHT be AR$30. So we told him we could only afford one portion! He was a little frosty after that, so we ate and ran. We joined the Spanish speaking (and only) tour of the estancia and managed to understand bits and pieces. I spent most of the time chatting to a nice girl from Buenos Aires and was secretly hoping that she and her family might be able to give us a lift back to Jésus Maria at the end! Unfortunately they had a full car. Our faith was restored at the end of the day by the guide, his friend and a lady who ran a sort of general store who really went out of their way to get us a lift back to town and wouldn’t accept any payment for making the calls for us. Needless to say, we were pretty glad to make it back to Córdoba that night.

On Thursday we checked out of the hostel and leaving our big packs behind headed for La Cumbrecita for a bit of trekking and riding. We had to change buses in a place called Villa General Belgrano. We knew that it  was a town founded by Germans, but nothing could really have prepared us for it. It’s like a permanent Weihnachtsmarkt. There are even loudspeakers in the street playing oom-pa-pa music and the main street is lined with shops with Germanic names selling steins, bretzels and tablecloths covered with edelweiss. We stopped for some food and then jumped on the bus to La Cumbrecita. It turns out that La Cumbrecita was founded by Germans, Austrians and Swiss, so it was sort of similar to Belgrano. Pretty much the only meal to be found was Goulasch con Spätzle, followed by Apfelstrudel. Fortunately it was pretty tasty. We spent the afternoon wandering around, booked a horse ride for the following morning and had dinner and a relatively early night.

On Friday morning we had a pretty amusing, yet uneventful horse ride outisde the town. The scenery was beautiful and the horses were great. Our guide didn’t speak a word of English, so we didn’t really mange to learn to much either about the area, or how to ride a horse, but it was fun nevertheless! We had noticed on the map that there was a 2hr hike to a peak called Cerra Wank… how could we possibly resist! Apparently you’re only supposed to go with a guide, but we were already running a bit late, so we went on our own. Got a bit lost, but eventually reached the peak at 1715m and were pleasantly surprised that there was noone else around. Tea and cake at a German bakery at the end of the mini hike made it all worthwhile! Had more Goulash con Spätzle and went to bed.

The next morning we checked out and took a final walk out to the waterfall. We stopped at yet another little German bakery on the way and ended up chatting to the lovely, if somewhat crazy guy who runs the place. He was obsessed with Carlos Núñez, and insisted on playing us his music while looking at what seemed to be his personal album of photos taken around La Cumbrecita. It was pretty funny. Jumped on a bus back to Belgrano to take some snaps and eat more German food and then back to Córdoba.

On Sunday morning we checked out of the hostel again and made our way to the university for the 4th time to see if we could do the guided tour of the university. We were a bit early and it was closed again, so we had some breakfast and made it back just in time for the tour at 11am, only to be told that it was in Spanish. Luckily they told us the 5pm tour was in English, so we headed to the cinema to see the newly released ‘El Origen’ I don’t mind telling you that that’s the Spanish title for ‘Inception’. After the film we headed to the university for our tour. It was surprisingly pretty interesting, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba is either the 3rd or 4th oldest in America, depending on who you speak to and was founded by the Jesuits. It has some incredible old books including a version or the Bible in 7 languages from the 17th Century. After the tour we headed to the weekend antique markets to have a look around, then a bit more evening sightseeing before heading back to the hostel to wait until it was time to catch the bus to Tucumán.

We arrived not so fresh at 8.30am on Wed and jumped in a taxi to our B&B. Unable to check in for a couple of hours we stepped out to check out the area and see if we could find a wine bar. Unfortunately the town was still pretty sleepy, so we had a coffee and some medialunas and looked around for a wine tour for the next day. Later that day we found a great place and booked on a bit of a posh tour, and as a bonus they gave us a voucher for a free glass of wine! Happy at last, we made our way to The Vines of Mendoza and ate cheese, drank wine and chatted to the staff who were all too happy to begin our vino education.

We dragged ourselves out of bed the following morning, ready to be picked up at 9am to start ‘tasting’. Already in the bus when we arrived were Bill and Mark from DC. Lovely guys who had already done a tour with the same company only two days before, a good sign! Mark is a Spanish teacher so it was pretty interesting having him around. Soon after, we picked up Walter, a Brasilian guy who was VERY into his wines. Needless to say, we felt a little like children amongst the grown ups! However, I was to discover towards the end of the day that Bill and Mark didn’t take it too seriously, when I commented that one of the reds smelled like washing up liquid and they chuckled along with me!

We visited some truly beautiful wineries and tasted some sensational wines, surprisingly alongside the Malbecs and red blends, there were a couple of good whites too! We also learned a lot about the region and wines in general. For lunch we were at a place called Ruca Malen where we ate five courses with 6 ‘paired’ wines. Delicious food, great wine and a view of the Andes to boot, we were very happy! Throughout the day we saw and tasted wines that are produced in the old wooden containers (Mendel) or concrete vats (Alta Vista) and those that are produced in the new steel ones (Sottano). We found out that the ‘reserva’ wines from the region have been stored in new French (and some 20% American) oak barrels for at least 12 months. Not such a fascinating statistic until you realise that the best of the best oak barrels from France cost 1200 euros a piece and are often only used once for the gran reserva wines!!!! We also got to see some wines being bottled at Sottano, a pretty interesting process to see. Fortunately we were dropped at our door at the end of the day and managed to sober up a little before heading out for empanadas for dinner!

Didn’t do a lot on Friday, slept in, tried to do some sight seeing and book bus tickets, but we seemed to be thwarted at every turn by the incredibly long siesta that seems to run from midday until 4pm! So we mainly hung out in cafés and had our own long siesta in the afternoon! We did find a great place for dinner, but freaked the staff out by walking in at 8pm, I don’t think they were expecting anyone until at least 10!

On Saturday we braved the local buses to get to Maipú to hire bikes for a day of cycling around vineyards. There were a couple of Scandinavians trying to get on the bus in front of us, but they hadn’t bought the ‘Red Bus’ card that you need to pay. As we were all tourists, the driver seemed to think it only fair that Anthony and I pay for them using our card! Given that it was all of about 2p we decided to be charitable. It was nice to have some company on the way to the bike shop and at least there were four of us looking like idiots as we jumped up and peered out the window every time we saw a sign! We got the bikes from Mr Hugo, who rather surprisingly for someone who runs a roaring tourist operation, speaks practically no English, and were on our way. We visited La Rural/Rutini, Trapiche (where we had a great tour… in Spanish), Familia Di Tomasso and a great place that makes chocolate, dulce de leche, olive oil and spirits! Rather bravely Anthony tasted the 75% Absinthe (only legal in Argentina and Czech Republic) first. I decided to pass when I saw the look of pain on his face and the girl doing the tour told me she blistered her mouth when she had it! The dulce de leche was great though! On arrival back at Mr Hugos, we were greeted with another glass of red wine, it was almost getting too much, but only almost…. when we returned to Mendoza we went back to The Vines for some half price happy hour fun.

Sunday we were up early to check out and to try the gallery we’d been wanting to visit, it was closed again! So we spent most of the day wandering around the beautiful park and drinking coffee in cafes. After another meal that we turned up for so early we think we were actually eating with the staff before their shift, we headed for the bus station for our overnight bus to Córdoba.

We decided quite a while ago that we wanted to get married, but we just weren’t quite sure how or when. We thought maybe we’d do it when we got back to London when we finished travelling, but we weren’t too keen on the stress of organising a big wedding. I must admit that the thought had occurred to us to get married while we were away travelling, but we hadn’t really taken the idea that seriously until we were in Cairns in January. We took my Dad’s bike out a few times and rode up the coast and decided that Palm Cove was where we wanted to do it.

So we made some pretty big decisions in a pretty short space of time, booked the venue, chose a dress and then jetted out to India. We didn’t give my Mum all that much notice, but she managed to organise the fine details with about 6 weeks to go.

Anthony’s family flew out from the UK and joined my family and some close family friends for the ceremony on 20th May. It was small, calm, and for us, perfect.

Thank you to those of you who made such huge efforts to be there with us, and to everyone else for understanding why we did it this way.

Our flight landed at Noi Bai at about 8am local time and within 5 mintues of our taxi journey we’d seen rice paddies populated by people wearing traditional Vietnamese conical hats and plenty of people on bicycles also wearing the aforementioned hat! We liked it already! We were pretty knackered after our 3.30am start in Bangkok so we slept and wrote the Pokhara blog post until late afternoon.

Before I go on to describe our evening activity, I should mention that a very good friend of mine spent around 12 months in Hanoi learning Vietnamese and undertaking research for her PhD on the transition from colonial to revolutionary art styles in Vietnam. Phoebe had very kindly provided us with a list of things to do, and more importantly, places to eat!!! So that evening we decided to try her number 1 recommendation, a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant called Verticale. It was nothing short of spectacular. We chose the tasting menu, and had a total of 10 courses. I won’t go into too much detail, but we ate seafood, buffalo, cheeses, chocolates and cinnamon ice cream, all washed down with some French white wine. We were in love with Hanoi.

The next morning we decided to get up early and combine working off dinner from the night before with a Hanoi ‘must see’, Hoan Kiem Lake in the early morning. We jogged around the lake a few times and were thoroughly impressed to see a significant number of the local Hanoi denizens participating in Thai Chi and brisk walks, usually accompanied by a lot of random swinging arm movements. We had no idea that the Vietnamese were so into exercise, but the paths around the lake were packed with people (many of them decked out in their finest silk pajamas), it was almost as bad as Oxford Street around Christmas time. After our jog it was back to the hotel for breakfast and a shower before taking off on a walking tour around the Old Quarter. All the streets around the Old Quarter were originally named for the items that were sold in the shops on that street. While it’s still the case that you go to a particular street for a particular item, I think it’s all a bit more mixed up than it used to be. We really enjoyed wandering around, trying to avoid being hit by the hundreds of scooters and popping our heads into shops and cafes. We saw the beautifully restored Memorial House which used to be a merchant’s house and even managed to pop into house 102 on P Hang Bac which has a fully functioning temple where most houses have a living room! We spotted traditional street markets with baskets of leaping frogs and seafood and ‘Counterfeit Street’ where imitation money is sold for burning in Buddhist ceremonies. We had another lovely dinner that evening at a restaurant close to the hotel and then went to see the famous traditional water puppet theatre. Water puppetry originated in the Red River Delta of Northern Vietnam amongst the rice farmers who worked the flooded fields there, it is at least 1000 years old. The modern shows are performed in a square tank of waist deep water. I really enjoyed the performance (Anthony was a little ambivalent), but was envious of people who would have been able to understand the words in the songs that accompanied the performance.

Next morning we were up early for another jog, followed by breakfast at a little cafe we’d found the day before. Then we were off to the Museum of Fine Arts! We were very impressed with this well thought out museum and the beautiful buildings that it’s housed in. We spent most of the morning wandering around and admiring the laquer paintings as neither of us had seen anything like them before. We certainly have a lot to ask Phoebe about when we get back to Sydney. We headed to a place called Koto for lunch. It’s a restaurant that employs and trains young people from poor backgrounds to be waiters and chefs. We had an excellent meal delivered by some very enthusuastic young trainees, at times we had five people studying us and the menu and taking notes about what we wanted to eat. It was a pretty inspiring place and we decided we’d try and make the effort to go back. In the heat of the afternoon we wandered somewhat lethargically around the beautiful Temple of Literature. This lovely retreat from the hectic streets was founded in 1070 and is dedicated to Confucius. Unfortunately we seemed to have stumbled into a photoshoot, so it was a bit stressful trying to stay out of shot! After this we walked back to the Old Quarter and browsed the silk shops before making our way to another wonderful restaurant, Green Mango, for dinner.

Wednesday morning we were up early again as we were starting to get addicted to our morning jogs around Hoan Kiem Lake. The mornings were always quite damp due to the weird monsoonal downpour that woke us up at about 4am each morning. Then we walked up to see our second of the four ‘pickled’ communist leaders. Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum is a pretty daunting piece of Communist architecture (ie. lots of concrete) that apparently resembles a lotus flower, a claim we thought somewhat unfounded! We found out that the poor guy actually wanted to be cremated, but against his wishes he was embalmed. So we queued with hundreds of Vietnamese to have a look at Uncle Ho. He’s very very pale and frail looking… Anthony helpfully suggested he looks like this because he’s dead. It was a fairly similar experience to seeing Mao in Beijing, except the Chinese are much better at making people shut up and move along. After looking at him we went into the disappointing Ho Chi Minh Museum. We weren’t quite sure what this space was supposed to be, it failed to be informative but certainly managed to be confusing and a bit interesting because of it. It seemed to us such a shame that the museum gave so little of the history of Vietnam, it has the opportunity to really inform tourists (and young local school children) in a visually interesting way about the Vietnam war and the rise of the Communist Party. Instead it’s got some weird modern ‘art’ pieces and some random comments about volcanos being like communism. After that we walked over to the neighbouring One Pillar Pagoda and then north over Ho Tay Lake to Ho Tay Pagoda and a little ex-pat cafe called Kitchen for lunch. We had quite a long walk back to the Old Quarter in the afternoon, but were rewarded when we got there by dinner at another Phoebe recommendation, Cha Ca La Vong. This is a great little fish place that only serves one dish that you cook at your own table. We got chatting to some people at the table next to us, they were from Ho Chi Minh City and were experiencing the novelty of cooking their own grilled fish for the first time too!

Thursday, our last day in Hanoi. We walked to the Opera House which is an exact replica of the Palais Garnier in Paris. In the afternoon we went to the Bui Gallery which was showing an exhibition by Ha Manh Tang. We really enjoyed the exhibition, once again it was not like anything that we’d seen before. We made return journeys to two of our favourite places for lunch and dinner and said our goodbyes to Hanoi.

We arrived in Kathmandu the following day and pretty much started on our mission for trekking supplies straight away. There are so many shops selling fakes that it’s pretty time consuming, we ended up buying a bit of a mixture of fakes and real gear. Fortunately we also discovered that Nepal has some excellent restaurants so we treated ourselves to pizza and milkshakes and felt much better. After two days of shopping for supplies we were finally ready to be on our way. On Tuesday 23rd March we were up early, tickets in hand and on our way to the airport. Unfortunately we spent the entire day waiting for our flight to be called. Due to bad weather at Lukla, our destination, most of the flights ended up being cancelled. The same thing happened on Wednesday, and we began to think we’d never make it there. When we arrived on Thursday at the check in counter we were told that our names weren’t even on their list to fly at all that day! Fortunately the guy at our guest house who sorted out the tickets in the first place managed to pull some strings and get us on a flight with another airline and we actually made it to Lukla!

Day 1 – Lukla (2860m) to Phakding (2610m)
Upon arrival at Lukla airport we dodged the many porters and guides offering their services and found our way to the start of the trek. The first day is a surprisingly easy walk from Lukla down to a little place called Phakding. The guide book said that it was a ‘descent’ but as we were soon to discover, most of the trek is up and down valleys, so any given day in either direction involves a certain amount of climbing and dropping – it’s just that on the way up there’s generally more climbing and on the way down… more dropping! So we made it to Phakding without much trouble and found a tiny room for the night in a fairly average wooden guest house. We had a walk up a nearby hill, had an early dinner of Dal Bhat (the Nepalese staple set meal… rice, dal, veg curry) and got an early night.

Day 2 – Phakding to Namche Bazaar (3420m)
We were up at 5.30am to beat the crowds (there are a surprisingly large number of people doing this trek!) and walked a couple of hours to a place called Benkar where we stopped for breakfast. We had a pretty nice morning’s walk, staying mainly alongside the Dudh Kosi river, occasionally crossing it on rather terrifying suspension bridges and climbing and dropping in pleasant amounts. After the national park check point at Monjo things started to change and nothing could have prepared us for what was to follow. We’d read in the guidebook that there was a 2 hour ascent to our destination… Namche Bazaar, but we’d assumed that there would be some level ground along the way. There was not. We literally climbed a mountain for 2 hours straight. We surprised ourselves with the fact that if you take it REALLY slowly you don’t actually need to stop too much, so we persevered with taking slow baby steps and eventually made it to the top. One of the things that kept us going in this situation was watching the sherpas along the route. Anthony and I had between 10-13kg each on our backs. The sherpas, who are quite literally half our size, carry between 30-90kg on their backs. We had walking poles and hiking boots, they had no walking prop and either sandals or plimsolls on. They take it slowly, and they stop regularly, but they don’t complain, they don’t trip over and they make it! Watching these men, women (and sometimes even children!) makes you feel as though you have no choice but to keep going.

When we finally made it to Namche Bazaar we found a guest house and had some food. Then we went out exploring, found a bakery and ate lots of treats! We were due to spend two nights in Namche, it was the first of three acclimitisation stops along the way to Base Camp. We both had slight headaches from the altitude so we hit the sack early.

Day 3 – Namche Bazaar
We had planned to do a strenuous acclimitisation trek, but unfortunately during the night I was taken by a rather nasty bout of ‘traveller’s sickness’. I won’t go into detail, but as I had symptoms of altitude sickness in the form of a headache and lethargy as well we weren’t sure how to treat it. I basically slept all day and couldn’t eat anything, so I took medication for altitude sickness and antibiotics to treat the bug. Anthony spent the day wandering around the hills around Namche taking photos, sorting out our money for the rest of the trek and bringing me the most plain food he could find.

Day 4 – Namche Bazaar
We were due to leave for Tengboche today, but I was still pretty weak and couldn’t make it much further than the toilet at the end of the corridor! Gradually throughout the day I managed to eat some food and regained my strength for trekking the following day. Anthony sat around and tried not to look bored! In the end we think the extra day spent at Namche really helped our acclimatisation as neither of us suffered any further symptoms at all.

Day 5 – Namche Bazaar to Tengboche (3870m)
We had breakfast at our guest house and set out. It wasn’t the best morning and I was having some problems with my pack and still didn’t have much energy. The start of the day was relatively flat, followed by a long descent down to another river at a place called Phunki Tenga. We knew we had a steep ascent after Phunki so we stopped for a meal of fried egg, chips and veg fried rice at a place called Evergreen Lodge. When the waitress arrived with the food she put it on the table and proceeded to wipe the fork with her fingers before placing it on the table. She then looked at the knife and, as it clearly wasn’t clean enough for her high standards, walked over to a grubby looking curtain, wiped the knife on it and brought it back! Needless to say we were pretty grateful for our antiseptic wipes during that meal. The afternoon was as horrendous as expected with a very steep 2 hour climb up the side of another mountain to Tengboche, much to our surprise we made it!

Our room at Tengboche was right next door to a sweet shop! It was teenie, tiny and pretty open to the elements, but we loved it! We ate some fantastic chocolate cake at the bakery and spent the afternoon exploring the Tengboche Gompa and trying to stay warm. In the early evening we explored a little further and found some memorials to climbers who have died in the Himalaya. It was pretty spooky as the whole mountain was surrounded in a fog and you couldn’t see that if you took one wrong step you’d probably plummet to your death!

Day 6 – Tengboche to Pangboche (3860m)
We were supposed to stay an extra day in Tengboche, but they didn’t have any room at our guest house, so we decided on an easy walk to Pangboche which is at a similar elevation. Fortunately it was only a couple of hours walk as when we were on the approach to Pangboche it began to rain. We managed to find a room at a guest house just as a huge snowstorm set in for the afternoon. We sat in the freezing cold dining room and wondered if we’d be able to go any further on the trek. Most guest houses don’t start to heat the dining room (the only room that is heated) until at least 4pm, so if you arrive any earlier, your only real options are to go out for a walk to stay warm or wrap up in everything you own. Once the storm stopped we went out for a little walk and took some photos of the newly snow-dusted mountains.

Day 7 – Pangboche to Pheriche (4240m)
Fortunately most of the snow melted overnight, so we were able to continue on to Pheriche as planned. We wrapped up in everything we had and were on our way. Annoyingly after a short while we had to keep stopping to take off different layers as we got too hot! We missed the turn to Pheriche because it was so unclear, but fortunately managed to pick it up again. The walk around the side of a hill on a narrow trail into Pheriche was pretty precarious. Pheriche lies in a valley and the wind really whips up it very quickly. We had to cross the worst bridge we saw on the whole trek, it actually had a hole the size of a person in it. Once we made it we were happy though, we had a great room (comparatively) at a really nice guest house with a very cozy sunroom and lovely restaurant.

Day 8 – Acclimatisation day in Pheriche – trek to Chhukung (4730m) and back
We decided to head to Chhukung for our acclimatisation day in Pheriche. It ended up being a lot further than we expected and a much more challenging walk, but it was worth doing and we think it made the rest of the trek easier! Once we reached Pheriche we had made it above the treeline, so the tracks had changed from mainly dirt with some rock, to moraines which are primarily rocky and therefore pretty tough on the ankles. We made it back to Pheriche in time for the daily presentation on altitude sickness that’s put on by the volunteer doctors who work out of the clinic in Pheriche. It was really informative and entertaining. The American doctor who did the talk had actually written a country music style song about altitude sickness that she subjected us all to at the end!

Day 9 – Pheriche to Dughla (4620m)
This was a two hour steady up hill climb through the valley. The going was pretty tough as we were walking entirely on the moraines, but we made it to Dughla pretty early. There are only two places to stay in Dughla and most groups pass through and continue on up to Lobuche. The problem with doing that is that you climb nearly twice the recommended altitude in a day. So we secured a room at Dughla and then walked on to Lobuche as extra acclimitisation preparation and to check out what we had in store for the next day.

Day 10 – Dughla to Lobuche (4930m)
We had a bit of trouble sleeping in Dughla, due to both the freezing temperatures and the loud German men in the two rooms next door who seemed to think it was appropriate to have conversations through the walls. So we were up pretty early, had breakfast and headed off. The trail from Dughla leads directly up the steepest slope yet. It’s hard going and probably 200m up, but because it’s so steep it doesn’t take THAT long. At least we knew that once we reached the top it was pretty flat to Lobuche, but by this stage of the trek even walking on flat ground was getting pretty exhausting because the altitude was making it progressively more difficult to breathe. Nevertheless we made it to Lobuche in about 1.5hrs and made our way to the guest house we’d booked the night before. We got talking to a Kiwi guy who takes groups up to the summit of Mt. Everest, he was the first and only person we met and talked to who has actually climbed to the summit! It was pretty interesting chatting to him and he gave us loads of advice and tips. In the afternoon, we walked around to the Italian Pyramid which is a high altitude research station just a little further along the trail. It wasn’t really that interesting, just in a little windy valley that was freezing cold! We headed back for dinner and more conversation with our Kiwi friend.

Day 11 – Lobuche to Gorak Shep (5160m) AND Base Camp (5360m)
We knew this was going to be a tough day, so we set off early. Unfortunately we didn’t realise just how tough the walk from Lobuche to Gorak Shep was going to be. We had decided to have breakfast once we arrived in Gorak Shep and before we made our way to Base Camp which was a huge mistake. The map looked as though we had a small incline to Gorak Shep, but in reality it was up and down massive rocky moraines for two hours. Unfortunately I was taken by another bout of ‘traveller’s sickness’ so had to keep running behind any available rock before the Immodium kicked in! Pretty embarrassing given the number of groups and sherpas wandering around. At this stage of the trek there wasn’t always an exact path, so people can pop up from anywhere! I can laugh about it now, but at the time it wasn’t pleasant…

Eventually we arrived at Gorak Shep and found a room. We then ate a massive meal and headed off on the 6hr return journey to Base Camp. Base Camp isn’t at all what we expected – we thought it was going to be like a little tent village with all the tents clustered together. In reality it covers a huge area of glacier. The ice is covered by rocks in some places and in others only by a thin layer of dirt. It’s pretty precarious wandering around and you don’t realise how close you are to the ice until you slip on it! (For those of you who remember The Golden Compass it was a bit like when Lyra crosses the ice bridge at the end of the film!) We spent about 2 hours wandering around, it’s now just coming into the season when people attempt to summit, so there was a lot of tent construction going on, and not that many mountaineers. Our guidebook mentioned a mobile bakery that serves the best apple pie in Nepal… we had been counting on this for a bit of energy before the walk back, but unfortunately we couldn’t find it and noone seemed to have heard of it!

We started on our way back at about 3.30pm and appeared to be the only trekkers left. We ran into a French guy practically running over the rocks and ice in search of his guide. He couldn’t find him, so we told him to walk in front of us so that at least he wasn’t on his own. The walk is quite dangerous in places – you walk along the top of a rocky moraine and if you slipped too far to either side you’d probably end up falling to your death. Once we got back to Gorak Shep he found his guide sitting in the kitchen playing cards, he just shrugged his shoulders and said that he’d got cold waiting, so he left! We were gobsmacked!!!

Day 12 – Kala Patthar (5545m) and Gorak Shep to Pheriche
We knew we needed an early start to climb the 200m to the top of Kala Patthar (before the sun rose over Everest) which promised to offer the best view of Everest (which you can’t actually see from Base Camp) and the surrounding mountains. So we set off at 5.30am and began the climb. Unfortunately once we’d climbed 200m we realised that the summit was not where we had initially thought, but much higher up. The guide book was rather misleading and the first 200m we had climbed was only to a ‘ridge’ before the actual 200m climb to the summit began. Anthony made a valiant effort to reach the summit before the sun rose over Everest. I have NO idea how he managed to dash up hill so quickly. Not only was it incredibly steep and rocky, but we were close to 5500m high and the air is so thin you can hardly breathe when you’re standing still! On the way up we heard what sounded like a massive long-lasting explosion and we turned to see a huge avalanche from the side of Lhotse. It was about 2 kilometres away over the other side of the glacier but was stunning to watch. Unfortunately we missed the sun rise by about 15 minutes but we still had spectacular views and sat around for about 45 mins until we got too cold and had to descend.

The photos we have simply can’t do this view justice. You are sitting at what feels like the top of the world, looking down at base camp, looking directly ahead of you to Everest, Nuptse and Lhotse. These are the highest mountains in the world and it’s one of the most beautiful and peaceful places I’ve ever been. The view was everything we expected it to be and more and was the perfect finish to the trek… now all we had to do was get back!

After our climb down we had a difficult 3 hours back down (and obviously some up!) the rocky slopes to Pheriche. The wind was blowing relentlessly into our faces the whole way down so we covered up and made our way as quickly as we could.

Day 13 and Day 14 – Pheriche to Namche Bazaar and Namche Bazaar to Lukla
Not too much of interest happened on the way back down. Due to the fact that you’re losing, rather than gaining altitude and can breathe much more easily, you can cover a lot more ground so I think we ended up being more physically tired on the way down than the way up! On the walk from Tengboche to Namche Bazaar we realised just how steep the descent was that we’d climbed only a few days before – we were both impressed that we’d made it! We found most of the ascents pretty easy, we’d improved our fitness and we knew how quickly we could walk up, so we were pretty happy to be on our way back.

The final day was pretty tough, we’d forgotten how much of an ascent there was from Phakding to Lukla and we kept thinking we were just around the corner from the end, but there always seemed to be another hill to walk around or over. The pace we’d made over the past two days meant that we were pretty exhausted and ready for a shower, a decent meal and bed. It was amazing how much the environment had changed. In the past few days it seemed that winter had turned into spring and, although we were retracing our steps, the huge amount of blossoming flowers made our walk feel much more pleasant. When we finally made it to Lukla we sorted out our flights for the following day, ate dinner and went to bed dreaming of showers and the pizza and cocktails we’d have in Kathmandu the following day.

Unfortunately we had similar issues on the way back as we did on the way there. We spent the day at the airport, only to have our flight cancelled. The next day looked promising, but things slowly got worse, we thought we were on the third flight… but found out that we were actually on the third ‘phase’ of flights, which meant the 5th or 6th flight. It started to look as though we weren’t going to make it on our original airline, so we bought tickets on another airline (our original ones were open tickets so we could get a full refund in Kathmandu). We managed to get on a plane and had the most horrible flight imagineable. I nearly threw up about 5 times due to the turbulence. But we made it back, had a shower (which was very, very necessary!) and went out for pizza!

Here are plenty of pictures from our trek.

We had a bad start to our time in Varanasi. Unfortunately we didn’t sleep much on the overnight train from Agra, so we arrived tired and in need of a shower at midday on Thursday. We had a free pick up from the train station to our guest house and when we arrived at our destination the driver asked for a tip. Anthony and I were discussing between ourselves how much to pay and confirming that it was a free pick up. The manager overheard us talking and confirmed that it was free. Anthony wanted to make sure that the driver was being paid by the hotel and accidentally used the word ‘commission’. This sent the manager into an uncontrollable rage, it was really quite extraordinary. We tried to explain what we meant, but he wouldn’t listen to us and yelled at us to go to our room. After 10 mins Anthony went downstairs to apologise for the misunderstanding, the manager told him that he didn’t want to speak to us while we were staying there and that he did not accept the apology… needless to say, we left! This was the first time that someone had been so outrageously rude to us and we were pretty shocked.

We found another guest house which actually turned out to be closer to the action and had a fantastic view from the eating area. So we were happy! We got our bearings that afternoon and basically just chilled out.

The next day we took a long walk the whole way along the ghats, stopping to chat to people and just sitting by the river watching people bathing and performing puja. It was an incredibly serene experience and makes you nearly want to jump into the Ganges too, until you see massive drains depositing raw sewerage in right next to the people. In the evening we sat at Assi Ghat, wrote some post cards and chatted to some of the locals. As I was writing the postcards a crowd of people gathered to watch me. One man sat down next to me and took the postcards (including the pile that we had written in Agra) from me and proceeded to say ‘who is Linda? And Ben, and who is Eva? Who is Suzanne?’ It was pretty funny. Then he read the postcards and quizzed me about the pictures on front ‘Who built the Taj Mahal? Who did he build it for? Who is the god on front of this one?’. It was something that would simply never happen in London! On the way back we stopped at Dasaswamedh Ghat to watch the elaborate daily Ganga Aarti ceremony along with hundreds of other locals and tourists both lining the shore and sitting in boats packed from the ghat to halfway across the river.

On Saturday we got up at dawn for a boat ride along the river. The river is busiest in the mornings and evenings and it was absolutely beautiful bathed in the morning sunlight. We spent two hours relaxing in the boat, disturbed only by our boat man spitting out his paan and drinking the water from the river! We were pretty alarmed to go past the washing ghats (two of which were literally right next to an open sewer) and to be told that that’s where all the washing from the hotels is done… we’d deposited a big bag of laundry the night before! This got us thinking about how close to the river our guest house was and where the water for our showers came from, we came to the frightening conclusion that we were probably showering in Ganges water!!

We spent some time in the afternoon sitting by Manikarnika Ghat, the main burning ghat and the most auspicious place for a Hindu to be cremated. It’s a pretty sobering place. Behind the ghat are two hospices where people come to die. As a Hindu, if you die here you are offered moksha (liberation from the cycle of birth and death) which is the ultimate desire of every Hindu (apparently!). We saw many bodies being brought down to the river and placed carefully on the huge piles of firewood. A ceremony is performed and the fires are lit. I never realised that it would take a body so long to burn. It’s certainly not an experience for the faint hearted, but I didn’t find it awful, the people who were being cremated there were being given their final wish and would have been happy.

The next morning we were up at 4am for our 17hr train journey to New Jalpaiguri where we were stopping overnight before taking the toy train up the mountain to Darjeeling.

We were staying a couple of km out of town and it was a great decision. Our room was massive, there was a lovely communal living room with the daily papers and a gorgeous garden. Wifi was practically free and worked pretty well. So we were happy! Unfortunately the food let the place down a little, as did the incredibly friendly restaurant staff who spoke practically no English. I don’t know how many times I said ’scrambled eggs’ and heard ‘boiled eggs’ repeated back to me! We didn’t do much on our first afternoon, just sat in the garden reading and relaxing. In the evening we decided to try an Italian restaurant and again, much to our surprise it was excellent! I would have been happy eating the pizza in New York or London.

On Saturday morning we got up reasonably early, but had a slow breakfast and read the papers before heading into town for a walking tour of the old city. Jaipur was very carefully designed by Maharaja Jai Singh II in 1727 when he moved his capital here from Amber. The city was laid out according to an ancient Hindu architectural treatise called the Shilpa-Shastra and is remarkably well planned. Wide avenues divide the city into neat rectangles, each one specialising in different crafts. It was a joy to walk around an old city that not only had footpaths but was fragrant with the delicious scent of spice and rose water stalls as opposed to the more common human urine and cow shit. The tour took us to the Iswari Minar Swarga Sal, a tower that overlooks the city. As we’re spending more time here we’re learning how to deal with ‘tip’ situations. This time I requested that we walk to the top alone, no, we didn’t need someone to take our photographs or to make sure we didn’t get lost on the single path to the summit. Then we made our way to the City Palace, not really all that great after the spectacular Mehrangarh Fort in Jodphur, but worth the visit nonetheless.

On our way out of the old city we were stopped by a young man on a scooter who wanted to talk to us about why tourists are always shopping (we weren’t) and why they didn’t really make much of an effort to talk to Indian people. We were pleasantly surprised to enter into a decent conversation with a local and spoke about how we found it really difficult, because at first we talked to everyone and really tried to get to know people, but the longer we travelled here the more we realised that the majority of people who approach you and start a seemingly innocuous conversation end up wanting to sell you something or to take you to their shop. We explained that you can’t really blame people, but it made it a bit hard to ‘get to know’ local people. So we chatted for a while, then he asked for our ‘help’. He said he had an uncle with a gem shop in London and that they have to pay 280% tax on everything they ship, and would we go with him to the post office and send the gems as ‘gifts’ to someone in London and then they’d pay us 100% of the cost as an thank you. So Anthony read him the ‘gem scam’ section of the Lonely Planet, I told him I was a lawyer and that what he was doing was illegal and that if we were to help we would be commiting a crime. I told him the reason he was probably being taxed so much is that the goods are cheap in India and are sold at a huge profit in the UK, and that if the gem dealers have a problem with it then they should petition the governments of the UK and India and not ask tourists to take part in illegal activity (obviously at some point we would have been asked for money and we would have never seen any cash or gems). Finally we told him that obviously we were right about noone wanting to talk to us just for the conversation, but only because they wanted something from us, highlighting to him that he was just like all the other people who wanted something from us! All in all, we think we dealt with it quite well!

On Sunday we took an auto-rickshaw to the lovely Hawa Mahal in the old city. The Hawa Mahal, or Palace of the Winds, is a 5 storey, delicately honeycombed, pink sandstone structure constructed in 1799 to enable the ladies of the royal household to watch the life and processions of the city (at the time they were all under strict purdah, meaning they were not allowed to be seen in public). After this we went out to the Amber Fort. Much more impressive than the City Palace, we spent a couple of hours wandering around, listening to the slightly odd audio tour. Then we headed home and had a fantastic (for me… Anthony’s person didn’t sound too great!) ayurvedic massage.

All in all Jaipur was a very relaxing and lovely place to be. Only minor annoyances were the auto-rickshaw drivers who, like in Delhi, seem to delight at the prospect of ripping tourists off! I suppose the other disappointing thing is that there wasn’t all that much pink! Probably more blue really.

We’ve been in Pushkar since lunchtime on Wednesday and we’ve had a really chilled out few days. Pushkar is apparently usually one of the most picturesque places in India, but unfortunately at the moment the lake has dried up, so it isn’t quite what we were expecting. The story goes that Brahma dropped a lotus flower on the earth and Pushkar appeared. It’s a weird place, incredibly holy for the Hindus, but also jam packed full of hippy tourists and shops selling your typical ‘hippy’ clothing. There are signs up everywhere explaining that you should dress conservatively, and not embrace in public, so it’s pretty upsetting to see so many tourists paying no respect to what the town is about.

We stayed at a place 10 mins walk out of town, so have had the most relaxing sleep since we got to India, no cars, no people spitting and no dogs howling at unusual hours of the night. Aside from relaxing we’ve wandered around town, taken a walk up to the Savitri Temple on one of the highest hills surrounding the town and tried to find a decent meal!

All in all, it’s been an uneventful couple of days. I’ve nearly managed to get over the cold that’s been plaguing me for coming up to two weeks and we’ve rejuvenated ourselves a bit for Delhi. But we’ve also been frustrated by the the sheer volume of tourists and the tourist trade here, something we, perhaps naively, weren’t expecting.

Delhi here we come!

After a quick lunch of pancakes we headed for the fort. The Jaisalmer Fort was built in 1156 and the area surrounding it is still very much lived in by a large number of people. It’s easy to get lost wandering through the tiny meandering lanes surrounding the Maharaja’s Palace within the fort walls. Unfortunately as the city has modernised and running water has come to the old city the foundations are faltering and the fort is slowly sinking into the hillside. Because of this it’s recommended that you stay outside the fort walls and don’t use any restaurants within it. We didn’t find the fort as impressive as Jodphur, but it was spectacular nonetheless, we just wished we’d gone there first! After exploring the old city and the Maharaja’s Palace we headed back into town via a couple of handcraft shops (nope, we didn’t end up buying anything).

We spent the next few hours getting lost in the equally maze-like streets of the new town, exploring some havelis, the most amazing of which was Patwa-ki-Haveli – a towering Jain residence built between 1800-1860. We stopped to swap some books and then headed to a beautiful rooftop restaurant called Saffron for dinner. One of the best meals yet!

The next morning we were up at 6am for pancakes before heading out in the jeep to the start of our camel safari. On the way to the start point we stopped off at some memorials built for the Jaisalmer rulers over the years – it was pretty beautiful early in the morning. We finally got on the camels around 9.30am. We had a very entertaining group of people, 4 young French guys travelling together, one French guy our age and two Japanese girls, also the same age as us. After about 30 mins on the camel I was starting to feel pain, not pleasant when you know you have a day and a half to go! Fortunately we had an early lunch (simple, yet great food… and we made use of the sporks for the first time!) and spent a couple of hours resting under the trees. A few more hours on the camels in the afternoon saw us reach the sand dunes where we jumped around (well, watched the French guys jump around!) and set up camp.

In the evenings it’s traditional for the camel drivers to sing songs and talk a little about their lives. Much to our amusement and I think also to the drivers, our young French companions decided that they would like to sing too, and entertained us with almost the entire Lion King soundtrack in French, but even better were their versions of ‘I Will Survive’ and ‘We Will Rock You’. Anthony and I were in tears rolling around on the ground laughing at the lyrics they managed to come up with. Special thanks must go to Morgan for ‘I Will Survive’.

Sleeping under the stars was spectacular, if a little cold. I’ve never seen a sky so filled with stars – and lucky Anthony managed to spot a shooting star (or as the French guys called it a ‘moving star’). We were up early for sunrise the next morning and a painful, yet uneventful couple of hours ride to the point where we met the jeep to take us back.

We had a fantastic Thali at our guest house for lunch before jumping on the 2pm bus back to Jodphur. We decided to break the journey from Jaisalmer to Udaipur with a night in Jodphur which was a good decision. We had a relaxing evening and were up again at 6 for an early bus ride to Udaipur. Unfortunately our bus had two front tyre punctures along the way so we were slightly delayed. On the positive side, they had enough spare tyres and managed to fix the problem pretty quickly!

Here are a few photos from Jaisalmer and our camel safari.

When we got to Jalgaon we jumped on a local bus to Fardapur (aka middle of nowhere) which is the town closest to the Ajanta caves. We only had the day planned for Ajanta and had to be on a bus at 7am the next day, so despite our lack of sleep we jumped in a car and headed for the caves.

We’re both continually surprised about the places that we’ve visited and how incredibly old and beautiful they are. I can’t believe that we’d never heard of most of them, and probably never would have if we didn’t come to India. The buddhist caves at Ajanta are less immediately striking than those at Ellora, because they are less about structure than design, and more about painting. They date from around 2nd century BC to 6th century AD and whilst most of the paintings are only partially visible they are truly beautiful.

We got up at 6am Saturday morning to pack and get ready for the 7am bus to Aurangabad. Unfortunately our guest house didn’t mention they turn the electricity off from 6am-12pm so we had to pack by torchlight. We got to Aurangabad, checked in and jumped on the bus to Ellora. Once you get out of the big cities and the really touristy areas the English signage and tourist info disappears. It took us a while to get on the right local bus, but eventually we did and arrived at Ellora about 45 mins later.

The Ellora caves are spectacular, they’re not as old as Ajanta (earliest is AD 600) but were chipped out of the rocks over 5 centuries by Buddhist, Hindu and Jain monks. The Hindu caves are definitely the most grand, the Jain caves incredibly detailed, and the Buddhist caves the most simple and somehow the most calm. As we walked in the unforgettable Kailasa Temple, the most impressive of the Hindu ‘caves’ I decided to climb some steps to check out a balcony area. As I stepped off the top step, I trod in a hole and had a pretty spectacular (and thoroughly embarrassing) fall, twisting my ankle. After a few minutes it felt ok so we carried on with the day. The caves cover an area of approx 2.5 km up and down roughly hewn staircases and paths. By the end of the day my foot had swollen up and was quite painful so we decided to catch a jeep which depart when ‘full’ rather than a local bus where I may have had to stand. So when all 19 people were in we left for Aurangabad… yes 19 people! Not the most pleasant 45 minutes back into town.

Next morning was another early start, a taxi picked us up at 7am to take us to the airport where we were due to fly to Delhi and then on to Jodhpur. Unfortunately our flight was delayed by 2.5 hours due to bad visibilty (ie. smog) so we missed our connecting flight to Jodhpur. It is notoriously hard to book accommodation in Delhi and as I could barely walk, let alone carry a pack, we decided to treat ourselves to a night in a big hotel. We arrived at lunch, ordered room service, ice for my foot and dvds. More room service for dinner and great night’s sleep left us feeling refreshed and ready for the flight to Jodhpur the next day. The highlight of the stay had to be when the dvd arrived on a silver tray with a small bucket of popcorn and a can of Pepsi! Classic.

Here are the pictures!

We had a pretty lengthy journey to India, we drove to Melbourne from Phillip Island, narrowly made our flight to Sydney (we were held up by road works through Melbourne), then to Singapore, overnight in Singapore (we stayed inside the terminal and had to trust that Air India would collect our bags from BA lost property and get them on the flight!!), Mumbai, Goa and then a taxi journey to the capital city, Panjim. All in all it was pretty tiring but basically uneventful. We arrived with all our luggage, in one piece!

We spent a couple of days based in Panjim, wandering around town, doing a bit of clothes shopping (trying to make sure we dress properly, ie. cover up!) and getting over our jet lag. We spent a day exploring Old Goa which used to be the capital of Goa. A beautiful place, and not at all what we were really expecting from India, old Portuguese churches and monasteries set in beautiful palm tree surrounds.

Next we headed for the beach. We decided to go north first so got on the bus to Candolim beach. We were drawn by the description of the old Portuguese fort and the relatively new ship which had ran aground just off the beach. We spent 4 days in Candolim, enjoying the time to relax but put off by the other tourists we saw there! It seemed to be full of a mixture of package tourists and people who must have been going there since the 60s. Most of them didn’t wear so much on the beach… I’ve never seen so many thongs in one place in my life!!! We saw one rather large middle aged lady get up from her seat in a beachside restaurant to be confronted by thonged buttocks with an eye tattooed on each cheek! We had a hard time keeping that meal down.

After 4 days in Candolim we went to Margao which is the capital of south Goa. We liked it a lot more than Panjim, but maybe that’s just because we were slowly getting used to being in India! We had a trip out to Ponda to visit a spice plantation which was pretty interesting and then just wandered around the old quarter and the bustling markets. We’d been taking buses for a while by this stage and figured out how to deal with the fare collectors who inevitably try and charge you too much. Give them the right amount and ignore them, they just leave you alone, can’t really blame them for trying!

From Margao we went to Patnem beach in the south. We loved it! Much more our type of place and we found ourselves wishing that we had 4 days in Patnem and had only spent 2 in Candolim! We had a hut directly on the beach and there were plenty of places to get great food! After 2 days we took what we’ve dubbed the ‘Disco Bus’ back to Margao. The bus was probably the calmest we’ve been on so far, but it was all chrome with flashing disco lights and had dance music blaring from the speakers!

We headed out to the train station at about 7am for our 8am train, we were a bit unsure about how it was all going to work! The platforms didn’t have any numbering so we had to trust what we were told. We figured out where we were supposed to stand on the platform for our car, but unfortunately the info was wrong so when the train arrived we had to sprint down the platform, packs on backs, to our car. Even though Margao isn’t the biggest station in the world it was pretty hectic, children begging, tourists (like us) trying to work out what the hell was going on, Indian travellers with bags stacked high on the platform. But here we are, we made it onto the train and we have seats and our luggage in view. 5 hours to go of our 6.5 hour journey…

We arrived in Sydney in time for Morgan and Brad’s wedding at the beginning of December. We were so happy to be able to be there for it, a beautiful wedding and a fantastic day! It was great to catch up with the bride and groom and other school friends I haven’t seen for a long time.

While we were in Sydney we had a little Sherlock Holmes reunion with Bruce Nelson and Sarah Smith… very weird to be meeting up in Sydney, but it was a fun night of schnitzels and steins at the Löwenbräu (our second visit, thanks Janna, for the first!)

The rest of the time in Sydney was filled with going to the beach, shopping, eating and catching up with friends. Thanks to all who made time to see us!

Next, my parents, Anthony and I drove inland to take a little tour of the town I grew up in, Armidale. While we were in the area we stopped at the famous Thunderbolt’s Rock in Uralla and the biggest tomato greenhouse I’ve ever seen in Guyra. We spent a day on the land thanks to our friends the Wrights who took us around their properties at Black Mountain and Inverness.

We headed north for Christmas and new year at the beach in Queensland… fortunately the weather was with us and we had plenty of sunshine. Didn’t really get up to much, just plenty of eating, drinking, reading, swimming and sleeping. Perfect holiday!

From Cairns we flew down to Melbourne… see Ant’s next post for details of what happened there!

Here’s a few more pictures.

On arrival in Sukhotai we checked in to our guest house and set out to explore…

There’s not much in new Sukhotai other than swarms of insects gathering around every available light source at night, so we had dinner and headed back pretty quickly.

This morning we got up early, hired a motorbike and headed out to explore the 13th Century ruins of old Sukhothai. Sukhothai was the first capital of Thailand and the ruins are spread across 70 sq km with over 100 historical sights including royal palaces, temples, the city gates, walls, moats etc. Needless to say it was pretty impressive and filled our day! Unfortunately the serenity was disturbed on occasion by hoardes of school children on day trips… it’s quite a terrifying experience having 60 odd children in purple tracksuits on bicycles speeding towards you shouting ‘hello’ and laughing hysterically when you reply!

Off to Bangkok tomorrow… only 7 hours on a bus.

We arrived at about lunchtime on Monday and headed into town to find somewhere to stay. After trying a couple of places we ended up at a lovely little place in the old town called Siri Guest House. Spent the rest of the day orientating ourselves and eating… had falafels for dinner at a fantastic place called Jerusalem Cafe.

We spent Tuesday exploring on foot, after coffee we headed to Wat Chedi Luang – a beautiful Wat with an ancient Chedi which makes a nice change from all the ornate gold that you usually see. The Wat runs something called ‘Monk Chat’ where you can sit and chat to a monk, the idea is that it helps him to improve his English and helps tourists to have more of an understanding about what monks do. We spent about an hour and a half chatting to a very well spoken monk called Nan. We spent the afternoon at Wat Phra Singh, also beautiful! For dinner we succumbed to a Mexican place called El Diablo… it was fantastic!!!

We hired a motorbike on Wednesday to go to the flower and food markets in the morning and then up to Wat Suthep which sits atop one of the mountains surrounding Chiang Mai (Doi Suthep). It took about 30 mins to get there, climbing steadily up (we were quite glad we’d decided NOT to get bicycles!). We were a little disappointed by the Wat itself, but the view over Chiang Mai was pretty spectacular. Next we headed for the reservoir as we’d read that it is a favourite place for local Thais to hang out. Unfortunately it was pretty much deserted and was sort of eerie, this massive reservoir with playgrounds and bamboo huts on the banks all completely empty! We left pretty quickly and headed towards our massage at the Chiang Mai Womens’ Prison. Can’t say much more than it was a great massage and the inmates were lovely! Had a fairly average and annoyingly overpriced meal at one of the night markets, did some shopping and went back to pack for Sukhothai the next day.

We spent the last 4 days on Ko Lanta, arriving by ferry from Ko Phi Phi on Saturday afternoon. As you can see from Anthony’s post below the best way to get around the fairly significantly sized (in comparison to Phi Phi) island is by motorbike.
We stayed on Khlong Dao, probably the longest, flattest and prettiest of the beaches here. We didn’t really get up to too much really! Early morning jogs on the beach, out on the motorbike for breakfast either at great little cafe we found on another beach or to the German bakery (best breakfast so far in Thailand!). Cocktails and freshly caught seafood sitting at tables on the beach for dinner. Anthony helpfully fixed our guest house’s internet connection time and again… I think they must have thought he was wonderful, but the truth was, despite the fact we were told we had to pay for wifi, it wasn’t password protected!
The tropical weather systems caused us some trouble. The storms come over incredibly quickly and are quite spectacular to watch. Last night we attempted to get to the furthest resort on the island as we’d heard it has a great restaurant. I was a little dubious just getting onto the ‘main’ road… unlit for the most part, aside from lights from shops scattered sporadically near guest houses and the occasional street light that’s actually functioning!
After struggling to force our 100cc motorbike (Ant driving, me on the back) up the hills on sealed roads (I will admit that I actually had to get off and walk once!!), we suddenly found ourselves on a dirt track. As we’d already come so far we decided to keep going despite the pitch blackness and the frequent diagonal ditches in the middle of the road. Eventually we skidded quite dramatically right up to the edge of a ditch and shortly thereafter decided it looked like more rain was coming over so it was stupid to carry on.
We turned around, and after riding the 45mins back towards our beach found an excellent tapas restaurant and had some cocktails to get over our adventure!

So now we’re on our way to Chiang Rai, flying from Krabi to Bangkok and then from Bangkok up to Chiang Rai. We get in at about 10pm tonight and are planning on spending the next few days exploring and finding a trek to do.