Yes, yes, yes. This post is very late, I know. We’ve been in Australia for a well over a month and I’m just getting around to writing a new post. Slapped wrists and all that. But what can I say? We’ve been busy… and you’ll find out more about that in our next post.

We had just over a week to spend in Malaysia, after Cambodia had to be culled from the itinerary – sorry again Nino! – and our plan for that week-and-a-bit was shaped by an old uni friend of mine, Lenny. We hadn’t seen each other for over 10 years but after catching up on Facebook and then letting him know about our travels, he insisted that we pop by Malaysia to visit. We did, and quickly realised that it was a great decision.

We were met at Kuala Lumpur airport by a smiling, waving Lenny, who got a parking ticket for his troubles. We offered to pay it but he told us he’d ignore it and responded to our shock by saying ‘Welcome to Malaysia!’ This would not be the last time we’d hear that line.

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We arrived in Vietnam with only 6 days left on the visa we’d bought in Australia in December. As we’d underestimated how long we’d need in Nepal we had to rethink this stage of our trip. Initially we had hoped to spend two weeks in Vietnam and two weeks in Cambodia, but once we worked it out we were only going to have ten days to see as much as we could in both places. Once we looked at the logistics and costs of getting around we realised we were going to have to miss either Vietnam or Cambodia. As we already had flights to Hanoi and a visa paid for, Cambodia missed out – much to our dismay. We decided to spend the 6 days in Hanoi to get a taste for Vietnam and are now planning to come back to this part of the world to see more of Vietnam and Cambodia.

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.

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Oh yes… Pokhara was the big pouffe of our trip. The place where we decided to visit and put our feet up for a while after our trek up that little hill you may have read about in our last post. As it’s only a short bus ride from Kathmandu – well, 8 hours, but we’re used to those sorts of journeys now – we were planning to pop over for a couple of days after the trek. We’d heard so many good things about it from people we met while we were trekking, that we decided to sacrifice a couple of side treks on the way down to be able to relax there for a little while longer. I have to admit that the decision was slightly influenced by a few mornings of waking up at 5am in a tiny timber room to the sight of my own breath condensing in front of me, exhausted after only getting about three hours sleep, with dry cracked lips and a very sore throat. The thought of chilling out at a lakeside restaurant with a beer and a pizza was somewhat attractive at 5500m, and we booked our bus tickets straight away once we got back to Kathmandu. We could’ve flown a 30 minute flight but the only time we wanted to brave Kathmandu airport again was to get out of Nepal. The following morning, we we’re on the bus heading for Pokhara!

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Despite the fact that Darjeeling is pretty close to Nepal we hadn’t been able to find a suitable method of getting from there to Kathmandu easily, so we decided to fly which meant another visit to our least favourite Indian city… Delhi. We had a three hour drive from Darjeeling to the airport and then a relatively stress free flight to Delhi. Once we got to Delhi we had a pretty tough time trying to buy dollars (which we needed to pay for our Nepalese visas), it appears that in India only Indians can buy dollars unless you’re in the departures lounge and you’re only allowed in there 3 hours before your flight. We were pretty anxious about whether or not we’d actually be able to buy them in the departures lounge, so after much insisting (and some dropped comments about how on earth is Delhi expecting to deal with the vast quantities of tourists coming through for the Commonwealth Games later in the year), I was allowed through into departures to change the money while Anthony waited with our bags and the policeman at the entrance.

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!

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After our brief stay in Siliguri, we took the toy train for the 7 hour journey climbing 2000m into the Himalayas to its terminus in Darjeeling. After so many kilometres travelled horizontally over the previous 7 weeks, it was amazing how much India changed after a travelling a couple vertically. Not only did the obvious things change, like the climate, the vegetation and the wildlife, but it was also the changes in the people and the food and drink that made Darjeeling one of my favourite places in India.

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At the start of the Varanasi section of the Lonely Planet it says “Brace yourself. You’re about to enter one of the most blindingly colourful, unrelentingly chaotic and unapologetically indiscreet places on earth.” Colourful it was, but chaotic and indiscreet it was not. We found wandering along the ghats next to the Ganges one of the most relaxing experiences in India to date.

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Our journey to Agra started with us being ready for breakfast with plenty of time to eat and get to the station for our train. So we sat in the garden of our guest house in Jaipur and ordered some food. The staff in the kitchen, all 4 of them, then proceeded to take almost 40 minutes to fry two eggs which left us with no option but to take the first auto-rickshaw we could find otherwise we’d miss our train. Being two tourists with huge packs on our backs (and fronts), asking to be taken to the station and looking like we were in a rush, we were prime targets for an absolute ripping off. We decided to take this one on the chin and pass on our frustration with a bad review of the kitchen staff at the hotel on Trip Advisor!

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We didn’t have huge expectations of Jaipur, we were a little disillusioned after Delhi and expected Jaipur to be a big, ‘new’ Indian city ie. a bit of a mess with not much of interest to see. Our train left Delhi at 4.30am, but we both managed to catch some sleep and much to our surprise and delight a friendly driver from our guest house spotted us coming down the stairs and greeted us by smiling and waving his little piece of paper that said ‘Hotel Anuraag Welcomes Anthony’ with a floral border.

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Yes, a bit like Marmite. I’m talking about the whole love it/hate it thing.

Up until our arrival in Delhi, India had been amazing. Of course, before we left to come to India we had read about how challenging and frustrating it can be, but we’d also read that the rewards for coping with the challenges are greater than at most places a traveller can go. Up until Delhi we’d had the energy to cope with the frustrations and setbacks it had thrown at us. But we’d never come up against The Delhi Evil Army of Auto-rickshaw Drivers (probably their official title). Sometimes in our 5 days in the capital these people made us angry enough to hate everything about Delhi and made the thought of heading right to the international terminal at the city’s airport oh-so-attractive.

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Despite being water bombed (and Alexandra egged) last night on the way to a restaurant for dinner, we decided to brave the streets of Delhi this afternoon for the Holi celebrations. We intentionally wore nice white tops and, as we thought, like a red rag to a bull the happy locals just couldn’t resist getting us involved. We had water poured over us from the top of buildings, water bombs thrown at us from every angle and people jumping out from behind corners to squirt blue dye at us. Then there was the powdered paint which was lovingly smothered all over our faces and heads by well wishers, and unfortunately for Alexandra, accompanied by a good old grope from some of the more drunk of them.

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