We're back in the UK!

We spent the last three days of our trip in Beijing making the most of the good weather and food (lots of yummy crispy duck) before returning to the rain and English prices.

In Beijing we visited the Forbidden City, Tianamen square and took a walk along the Great Wall - which was fantastic, especially as we visited an unrestored section where there were no tourists.

Yup after spending a great nine months travelling across Asia our trip is sadly over.

Will each post our reflections of the trip our highs/lows, top 5's etc soon, but for me right now I'm slowly recovering from the shock of our 20 hour flight and not sleeping for the last 24hours with a big glass of red wine - i do have a reputation to uphold afterall!!!

Following a visit to Yangshou food market where Rich ate Snake, dog, frog and pigs penises!. We decided our next stop would be the Sichuan province as Rich wanted to “taste spicy food and see big mountains”. Our first stop was the regional capital, Chengdu. We arrived after a 25 hour train journey, the train itself was very similar to those we had experienced in India, but the real highlight was having dinner in the restaurant car (very orient express like) as spectacular scenery whizzed by. On the downside we also had to endure awful Chinese pop music being blasted from the train speakers from 6am until 10pm. Chengdu looks like a Soviet city – it’s a concrete grid full of tower blocks.

In Chengdu we visited the Panda sanctuary which has the largest number of captive giant and red pandas in the world. It was pretty cool to see the Pandas, particularly the cubs – I was very tempted to scoop one up and bring it home. It’s frightening to think that there are now less than 2000 left in the world.

We also visited Leshan, which is home to the ‘Grand Buddha’; this is the largest Buddha in the world and has been carved into a cliff face. To give you a sense of scale its over 71m high and his big toe is 8.5m long.

A highlight of our trip to Chengdu had to be the Sichuan opera, we saw a fairly amateurish local performance which turned out to be quite amusing. It featured high pitched singing, acrobatics and face mask changing. The story which was translated to us by our guide was about a white snake spirit who fell in love with a mortal, as the Buddha disapproved of spirit/mortal relationships, they were forced to separate and the snake spirit was imprisoned. To us this seemed to be a tragic story with Buddha as the bad guy, however to the local Chinese this story was regularly told to remind them that they should accept arranged marriages, duty over love.

A few temples and teahouse visits later we wanted to visit Juizhalgou national park famous for its coloured lakes. The cheapest way to get there was to join a 4 day Chinese tour, whilst we’d learned in the past that tours weren’t for us the tour cost was little more than the entrance fees and included both transport, hotels and food, we’d decided this would also be a good way to experience how the Chinese holiday. We’ll the tour started at 5am and quickly into the journey our Chinese speaking tour guide decided to entertain the coach by singing to us for the next 30 mins and then talked non-stop for another hour! – hereafter we shall refer to him as ‘Cocko the Clown’. The sites we visited were amazingly beautiful but sadly the Chinese way is to stand either in front of or behind a camera for the entire visit and low and push away anyone who gets within the photo. They also take the following obligatory photos – one of them next to the entrance sign for the attraction, one of them doing a catalogue style pose and finally one of them doing a peace sign pose. The problem was that there were just too many people at each of the sites (inevitable for a country with a population 1.3 billion) and it mean’t that we couldn’t simply stand and admire the scenery.

Whilst overall we enjoyed the tour the downside was that we never had hot water at the scummy hotels they put us up in, the food was terrible and no-one spoke any English.

After the tour we left Sichuan and traveled overnight to Xi’an, home of the terracotta warriors. Here we met a good bunch of people at our hostel and have spent the last couple of days traveling around with them. On Monday we went and climbed the holy mountain Mt Huashan which is 2000m approx high. I climbed to the first peak at 1600m (too steep and hot) and Rich made it to 1900m before we ran out of time and had to get the cable car back down. The walk up was very scenic though and the views at the top were spectacular.

Yesterday we joined the crowds and visited the Terracotta warriors. We originally thought that these had been discovered in tact and had been fully excavated, but were surprised to discover that most had been pieced back together and only a fraction of the site has been dug up. Funnily enough whilst there we saw the most hilarious sight – a Chinese tour group dressed in identical clothing – blue tracksuits – there were about 20 of them and they looked just like smurfs!!.
Today we are spending a lazy day wandering around Xian before catching an evening train to Beijing.

It was my birthday in Hong Kong, so thanks to the people who managed to remember this! We decided that a 12 hour night bus journey wasn't the best way of celebrating so instead went to the Ocean Park theme park/aquarium place, complete with dolphin shows and non scary thrill rides tailored to the local tastes. They were so non thrilling that Grapes didn't even throw up once! Particulary interesting were the tour groups - yes, it's possible to book guided tours of theme parks in China! I also managed Dim Sum, Sushi, a Mac Attack, Live Jazz, a few beers and a Mojito so all in all went to bed a happy man.

Next day we finally left HK for Shenzhen, a "special economic zone" of China proper - a curious invention that tolerates capitalism in a country where (when we last checked) it's offically against national ethics (or something). Here the Chinese build huge skyscrapers whether they need them or not in an effort to outshine the colonial HK just over the border. This is where the HK locals go to get their handbags, watches and DVDs as such fakes aren't tolerated in the former colony. There's a huge 6 storey mall dedicated to just cheap knockoffs - Grapes was in heaven until the sales tactics got a bit much.

Chinese night busses however proved to be rather superior to their subcontinental brethren. You get something approaching a bed, in a bus! It's a bit small but the coach itself is infinitely superior and they don't try to shoehorn quite as many people in. On the minus side there is no toilet on the bus so you get to experience the Chinese Service Station Loo! These are frankly disturbing. Thank God I didn't need a number 2 - we're talking a communal open trench (albeit tiled!) with 1 foot doorless partitions to create areas where you can squat and shit sensibly apart from your nearest neighbour! Toilet paper not supplied... Poor Grapes sadly didn't have the luxury of a urinal and still looks a little bit troubled.

We arrived in Yangshuo in the morning - everyone's seen images of Yangshuo - they're the pictures that every Chinese restaurant in the world has painted on the walls. It's a fantastic place in real life - the scenery is mindblowing though the town is very touristy. The usual "backpacker" thing to do is rent bikes and explore the countryside so this is just what we did. You can hire a tandem for a day for just over a quid.

Having not had our minds blown enough we went for a late birthday present balloon trip last night. This was truly amazing (and cheap!). We had a tiny basket to ourselves, and thankfully a pilot in the corner too. The safety brief consisted of a guy shouting "don't forget to bend your knees as you land" after us as we took off. The flight was around an hour, and this is possibly the finest scenery you could ever take any balloon flight over.

You can get all sorts of crazy food in China - they eat almost anything. Lunch the first day was snails squeezed out of their shells, minced with spices and shoved back in. You have to suck the contents out of the shells - delicious! Even more surprisingly delicious was the crispy fried rat. They gut and butterfly a rat, then dry it with spices like a crispy duck. To cook they chop it up finely bones and all and then stirfry with more spices. It's really nice in a crunchy way, with an intense gamey meat flavour like eating a stock cube. The same menu also had snake, frog, cat and even dog etc... And no mention of chicken anywhere!

We're not quite sure what we're up to next - probably off to Sichuan before heading up to Beijing where our flight home now awaits (on the 1st). Our holiday is drawing to a close!

On a final note, the internet is censored in China, so although we can write this we can't read it as blogspot.com is blocked. So is wikipedia and BBC news. So if blogger screws up the formatting of this post (as it is wont to do!) sorry we can't tell to try and correct it. Finally the "English Channel" (CCTV International - Ha!) is rather amusing in a totalitarian state mouthpiece kind of way. Reminds me of Czechoslovakia in the 80s "Our brave combine harvesters have exceeded production targets again this year etc etc etc".

Hello from Hong Kong!

We got our flight to Kota Kinabulu without any problems, thankfully the last we’ll see of Miri (not that there was anything particularly wrong with it). There wasn’t that much to actually see in KK, so we watched the new Pirates of the Caribbean film which was OK and took a day trip to the nearby island nature park for a bit of snorkeling in the crystal clear bath warm water. The corals were pretty stunning considering how close they were to a major city (about 5km), and there were plenty of tropical fish including some fairly violent triggerfish which kept angrily eyeballing me.

Deciding that we couldn’t quite be bothered to climb Gunung Kinabulu (at 4000m SE Asia’s highest peak) we headed down to Sandakan on Borneo’s east coast. It was a pleasant place with a cool village nearby, built in the traditional style on stilts out in the sea. Sandakan is also home to something called the English Tea House, with earl gray, fine views of the bay and a croquet lawn. Naturally I kicked Grapes’ ass (or Carowine’s ass as we can now refer to it after a waiter pronounced her name wrong...). I also found some marmite in a supermarket. God it was like heaven eating that again! Interestingly the label was in Chinese so someone else obviously likes it...

That evening we had a steamboat – an all you can eat where you have a big bowl of boiling stock in the middle of the table and a load of raw seafood to cook in it. We took it on ourselves to finish off the plates of food we’d been supplied with which proved something of a mistake as we could barely walk afterwards and all the other groups left most of their stuff. We were so bloated that we almost couldn’t care when a pack of angry guard dogs nearly killed us on the walk back.
Next day we took an excursion to the nearby Turtle Island, part of a protected area for nesting sea turtles. Again there was some amazingly clear water for snorkeling though the tide was low so the close up view of the coral was maybe a bit too close up (the water was about 20cm deep in places). The highlight of the afternoon was a turtle hatchling being released on the beach and being able to swim out with it as it flapped its way to an almost certain death – a fairly poignant moment.

In the evening we played the waiting game until the rangers gathered us up to see a turtle laying eggs on the beach. Apparently they don’t mind the disturbance. The eggs are then moved into a hatchery away from danger. Later they released a whole batch of hatchlings into the sea. It was a bit surreal as everyone encouraged them on (only around 1% survive apparently), especially the runty little one at the back who flapped so feebly down the beach you felt like stepping on it to save it the effort... The whole thing was touristy (and not cheap) in the extreme but still a great place to visit.

We’d booked a flight to Macau (the Portuguese Hong Kong) so rushed back to KK in time to discover that there’s a mad new rule stopping you carrying any bottle larger that 100ml on board a plane – even water or empty bottles aren’t allowed! We have a suspicion that this new lunacy has been visited upon us by the budget airlines to increase on board snack sales.

Macau is a nice enough place to visit, full of pretty Portuguese colonial buildings. Curiously in spite of being half Portuguese and half Chinese they drive on the left and have British plug sockets. It’s been smartened up in the last 10 years, though in comparison to HK it’s pretty shabby. There are some mental new casinos in the Las Vegas style as well as the tawdry old school ones. We had a look round but sadly no free drinks (apart from mineral water) and most minimum bets were a little above our tight arse limit. The main attraction for me was the Macanese food – a sort of Portuguese/Chinese fusion. As in Goa, it’s fantastic! A Chinese restaurant also turned up surprisingly delicious crispy roast pigeon and pigs cheek soup!

We spent 2 nights in Macau before we took the ferry to Hong Kong. It’s a different world here, all huge gleaming skyscrapers and huge crumbling tenement blocks... Everything’s a bit more expensive than Macau except shiny electrical things which is fortunate as I have broken my camera yet again (in Nepal). In many other respects it’s very British and even has the same speed camera signs as us. It’s also a bit grubbier than Singapore but this is actually a good thing!

The first day the only sight we had time to see after queuing up for 3 hours to apply for our Chinese visa was the World’s Longest Escalator! This is in fact a con as it’s an 800m stretch made up of at least 20 individual escalators. Oh, we went on the Star ferry as well. This is famous too (or so claims our guidebook).

Since then we've visited the viewpoint for the traditional harbour view, seen the largest outdoor bronze seated Buddha in the world, watched a live jazz band and eaten lots of food. The food is actually a little disappointing after all the hype as it's no better than the Chinese food we've eaten so far (though it's certainly not bad!).

Today we picked up our Chinese visas so it's off to the land of red capitalism (and our web address) Comrades!

The next day our cultural activity was a visit to Sarawak Cultural Village, which can be best described as a life sized model village presenting the houses, people and crafts of the various ‘tribes’ within Borneo. Highlights included Rich learning how to use a blow pipe (demonstrated below - he was actually quite good at it), sampling home-made wine and watching the touristy dance show.

Our guide book suggested that the nearby beach of Damai was worth an afternoon’s visit, we had originally contemplated staying there but since the only accommodation was of the 5 star resort variety, we decided to condense our time there into a day trip. When we asked the staff at the cultural village how to get there they looked bemused and told us simply to walk through the Holiday Inn. After a nice lunch at the hotel we wandered down to the beach and enjoyed playing in the sea for a few hours, surprisingly the beach was almost deserted….
We later discovered (by reading a sign on our way out) that we’d actually been on a private beach meant for use by hotel guests only – oh well!

Saturday morning we caught the express boat to Sibu, we had originally intended to spend the day there, but upon arrival we saw little to entice us to stay and so caught the next bus to Bintalu. There was not much to attract tourists here either but it was getting late and we were both quite tired having spent the day traveling. We enjoyed some tasty Chinese cuisine and a nice cold beer at one of the hawker stalls but our quest for a bar failed. The only bars in the town were ‘local bars’ offering either (very bad) karaoke or lap dancers. We decided to call it a night.

Sunday morning we caught another bus and went to visit Niah national park which consists of 31 square kilometers of lowland forest and limestone massifs. The reason to visit Niah is for the caves. The ‘Great Cave’ – famous for having the world’s largest cave opening at 250m by 60m, and the ‘Painted Cave’ – the paintings here date back forty thousand years – the first evidence that people had lived in Southeast Asia that long ago.
















We stayed in a lodge at the national park before heading to Miri the next day. We got to Miri late in the afternoon and although it was nice to find good restaurants and bars, there was little to see. That evening we decided to go to Gunung Mulu National Park the next day - we were not sure how easy this was going to be given that you needed to fly to get there (twelve pound flight versus 10 hour expensive boat trip) and are advised to book accomodation a few days in advance. Well to my amazement we managed it - a phone call to the park and a visit to Air Asia's office and a couple of hours later we were in Mulu. Whatsmore we were able to book our return flight from Mulu direct to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah enabling us to bypass Brunei completely.

Mulu park was pretty cool but unlike the other national parks we'd visited you need to have a guide with you to go anywhere and whilst not too expensive for us they were pretty expensive by Malaysian standards which probably explains why the only people at the park were foreign tourists (Mulu was privately owned whereas the other parks were government run). Mulu is famous for two things the pinnacles and its show caves. The Pinnacles are 50m high shards of rock (caused by rain dissolving the limestone) which are supposedly as sharp as samurai swords. Unfortunately its a 3 day tough climb to see them and with our time constrained by flight availability we opted to visit the caves instead. There are four caves to see Deer Cave, Langs Cave, Clearwater Cave and Wind Cave. My favourite was Langs Cave which is the smallest and prettiest of them all containing wierd and wonderful rock formations or to be technically accurate - curtain stalactites and coral like helictites.
















Whilst all the Caves were impressive in their own right, Deer Cave is believed to contain the largest cave passage in the world. Inside the cave is 2km long and 174m high, and up above us were millions of bats - you could both smell and hear them!. We waited outside the cave at dusk and caught sight of the 'Bat Exodus', where millions of bats leave the cave together to hunt for food, the effect looks like a continuous swirling black ribbon in the sky.

We were having a rather pleasant time in the park, until one of the Australian tourists asked us what flight we were on, suggesting that our KK flight had been cancelled, he explained that the airline FAX - a subsiduary of Air Asia was in financial difficulty and was about to be rescued by Malaysia Airways, a consequence of which was that flights were being changed or cancelled across Borneo. We went to the park office to check and he was correct, the flights to KK had been cancelled indefinately, the advice given to them by the airline was simply to show up at the airport by 11am where you would be put onto a flight back to Miri from where they would look to put you on another flight to KK. So here's what actually happened.......

We arrived at Mulu airport and were put onto the 12.30 flight, they had scalled back the size of the planes also so we travelled on a small 18 seater twin-otter plane - a priceless experience which in the end cost us nothing.

When we arrived at Miri an hour later we were advised that there was no availability on the daily flight to KK for either today or tomorrow. The previous day they had transferred some people in the same boat to Sibu airport further south to catch the KK flight from there but since these poor people had missed the connection at Sibu they were reluctant to do this again and so offered us a full refund instead and advised that we book the flight from Miri with Malaysian airways. The first flight available was 9pm tonight - it was also twenty pounds cheaper than the FAX flight so although we'll have spent a day sitting around in coffee shops eating chocolate cake its given me a chance to update the weblog!. Hopefully we'll get to KK by 10pm tonight.

We're now in Kuching (pronounced 'ker-ching!') somewhere in Borneo. It's even hotter and more uncomfortable here than anywhere else we've been! That may have something to do with only being about 100 miles from the equator in mid may surrounded by thick tropical jungle. Anyway, it's lovely here - we've been doing the things you're supposed to do in Borneo - seeing wildlife, walking in the jungle and swimmining in the sea. Tomorrow we're off to see some local cultural stuff. I've also possibly set a new record for losing bodyweight through sweat - did I mention that it's really hot here?

Ker-ching! translates as something like "cat city". It's got a cat museum we haven't been to for obvious reasons and is so called as one of our illustrious colonial forebears asked what it was called and his local guide thought he was pointing to a cat and not the city... It's a clean pleasant place with lots of nice colonial architecture, and the majority of its citizens are Chinese so the food's excellent too with all the same night market action as on the peninsula.

On our first night in Ker-ching! we had a bit of a surprise when we completely randomly bumped into Jo and Philip from South Africa (Diplomatic Immunity Mr Riggs). We met them in Nepal on our trek.

We visited an Orang utan rehabilitation centre the other day. It's an area of rainforest that's been set aside to breed and treat orang utans prior to being released back into the wild. The 6.00am alarm to get there in time wasn't exactly welcome, but it was worth it to see the big orange fella's skinning and eating bananas in less than a second! They also move incredibly gracefully through the trees being the only tree dwelling great ape. The centre was pretty good - there were no barriers between us and the orangs and we were allowed within a few metres of them.

The last 2 days we've been in Bako National Park. This is an astoundingly beautiful and largely pristine piece of land on a peninsula just north of here, accessible only by speedboat (well maybe other kinds of boat too...). It's been protected for over 80 years, so the animals are pretty nonchalant about human activity. We saw bearded pigs, probiscus monkeys, vipers, mudskippers, loads of other less exciting stuff (maquaques yawn) and my favourite the 1.5 metre long monitor lizard.

The plant life was pretty stunning too, running the gamut of various types of jungle that I can't be bothered to list now. It was amazing to finally see real jungle, and only when you see it for real can you really understand how hard it must be to survive in it. The 95% humidity, the 35 degree heat, the density of the undergrowth, the cliffs and hills hidden within it, the clouds of mosquitos and all the plants covered with horrific spikes make it a deeply unpleasant place to be.

To escape this for a while we hiked to a beach in the park. It was easily one of the most beautiful beaches I'd ever seen, and the water was as warm as a bath - so warm we actually wished it had been a little colder. It was almost deserted but sadly time was pressing so we had a 30 minute swim and sweated back to the park HQ where our speedboat awaited.

I've also finally invested in a laptop - I bought it 2nd hand for an excellent price off Arfur Divali in Little India in Singapore - no money back no guarantee etc. Bets can be placed now as to how long it'll last... We used it to watch a pirate copy of "Hot Fuzz" the other night which was an excellent film and comes with my heartiest recommendation.

Farewell India and hello Singapore, the land of 24 hour shopping malls, escalators and great food – country number 17 on our trip!.

We took a sleeper train from Varanasi to New Delhi, and of course being our last Indian train it was naturally over 5 hours late meaning an entire night spent in a grotty train station listening for the announcement “For your kind attention” (telling us that each and every train was delayed) every couple of minutes and of course being eaten alive by mosquitoes. We arrived at Delhi the following evening and pleasantly appreciated the fact that it was much less hassely than when we arrived back in January. Maybe it was the 45 degree heat and high humidity or the fact that few foreigners visit India at this time of year – either way it was welcomed and gave us an opportunity to visit the sites we’d missed before such as the Red Fort, Jama Masjid and Chandi Chowk. Naturally Rich also made the most of the wide availability of good curries…….

We took a surprisingly comfortable Air India flight which took 6 hours to Singapore. The only drawback was the desire of the air stewardesses to constantly feed and water us, which meant another night with no sleep. Naturally when we arrived at Singapore we were shattered, but despite this you couldn’t help but notice that the two countries couldn’t be more different. In Singapore you cannot spit (hoorah!), eat or drink on any public transport, drop litter or smoke anywhere – hefty fines and in some instances prison sentences for committing such offences. The cows have been replaced for shiny cars, McDonalds sells Big Macs again and above all it’s really clean. There are however skyscrapers and shopping malls everywhere, in fact you could also walk around the entire city without venturing outside simply by walking through one mall to the next.

Singapore is famous for three things in my mind – Shopping, food and a Singapore Sling in Raffles Long Bar – naturally we did all three. The shopping was to be honest disappointing the electrical items are no cheaper than we can buy at home on the internet the only advantage here I think is the sheer amount of choice available to you, but having said that most of the shops are the same i.e. M&S, Gap, Topshop, Body Shop, River Island, Zara, Mango etc and its all been imported from the UK!.

The food on the other hand is fantastic and cheap (as long as you eat in the plentiful food halls and hawker markets and not in the restaurants!). We sampled “Eat all you can Sushi” for 6 pounds per head, Black Pepper Crab, Seafood and of course Singapore noodles. We also tried the Durian fruit which smells revolting. We also visited Raffles and had a Singapore Sling (which tastes like Calpol), sadly the entire hotel was completely refurbished about 10 years ago and in doing so the colonial charm has been replaced by 5 star modern luxuries, they did however provide you with monkey nuts and actively encourage you to throw them on the floor. Drinking is actually more expensive here that it is in the UK, we went to Clarkes Quay on Saturday night and the price of a pint of Tiger beer was about 5 pounds!. Singapore is of course full of lots of very poncy bars – great for people watching.

We visited Sentosa Island which is a completely artificial beach resort complete with imported sand and watched “Songs of the Sea” a laser, firework and water show which whilst aimed at children was good fun. We also went to China Town, the Esplanade, MacRitchie Reservoir and Little India but to be honest did little in the way of sightseeing as there isn’t that much to see.

We left Singapore on Wednesday and took a bus to Kuala Lumpur – the seats on the bus were big and spacious – there was even enough room for Rich’s legs!.

The journey to Kuala Lumpur took 7 hours and thankfully the bus dropped us off at China Town which is the backpacker and budget hotel district and also home of KL’s biggest counterfeit night market. We spent two nights in KL, to be honest it was a lot like Singapore in that there were skyscrapers and shopping malls everywhere but noticeably not as clean. Food is just as good and shops much cheaper (except electrical goods – the hunt for Rich’s new camera continues….) but otherwise there was little to see and do. A highlight to our trip was a visit to the Petronas Towers, built in 1998 and the tallest building in the world at 452m high (88 floors).

Conscious that we have little time left on this trip, we cut short our visit to KL and after a breakfast of dim sum headed by bus to Pulau Pinang, an island on the north east.

Today we are in Georgetown its still really hot here so visiting tourist sites is challenging to say the least and we seem to spend most of our time either showering or looking for an air conditioned mall/cafe etc. Georgetown is a pleasant colonial town and trading port which has many beautiful buildings dating back to the British occupation of 1786.

Next stop Sarawak, Borneo.....

We're back in India having made the deeply uncomfortable 24 hour bus and train journey from Kathmandu to Varanasi. I believe Grapes has already alluded to the Nepali fun sized tin box bus on truck chassis experience, but this one was at least air conditioned. We managed to get ourselves old skool 1st class train tickets for the Indian side of the journey - our very own compartment with natural aircon due to the lack of glass... This is of course a good thing as the daytime temperature here is 45 degrees and the nightime minimum is about 25!

Varanasi is a weird place. It's India's holiest city and people come from all over to take a dip in one of the worlds most polluted rivers. To quote the Lying Planet, the level of faecal bacteria in the water is 1.5 million per 100mL of water, when the safe bathing limit's around 500. And that's just the shit. When they're not swimming in it they've got funeral pyres in full view on the shore, but we've not had the experience of seeing a dead baby floating in the water...

We're staying in a really nice (air conditioned) room right by the river, and this morning got up at 4:30 for a dawn boat trip. The city seems fairly quiet and laid back compared to our expectations, maybe due to the time of the year, but the bathing ghats are still pretty busy in the morning. It's also rather nice to be eating proper curries again!

Anyway, as promised a little more about our trek.

We left Kathmandu at 7am for 3 bus trips which took us as far as a place called Bouleboule. This is a little way up from Besishahar, the traditional start for the Annapurna circuit but we didn't particularly fancy a 4 hour hike up a hot dusty road being overtaken by busses and jeeps so we took the easier option.

The weather started out pretty hot and humid for the first few days so I was soaked in sweat most of the time. Grapes was mostly OK as the condition of her agreeing to go on a trek was that I carried all the stuff so she only had a small day pack. Most of the first section was up and down through rice terraces - big mountain views were lacking but it was still exceptionally pretty.

As we climbed the valley narrowed into a series of spectacular gorges with the river thundering through, and the teperature dropped to comfortable (for walking). The scenery changed to pine trees and orchards as well as our first glimpses of snow capped peaks. We'd left the lowland Hindi culture behind and had entered the Tibetan influenced Buddhist areas of Nepal.

The higher we got the more the valley started to open out and the better the views became. This picture is of Annapurna II at about 7900m (if I remember right!). We were now in the rain shadow of the main Himalayan chain and the terrain was drier and the weather stayed clearer for longer.

This is us at about 3700m between Pisang and Braga. You can see my huuge backpack and Grapes diddy little handbag but she's still smiling, I've not been killed and it's worth it! Around here we start meeting more trekkers - as you get higher your stops become constrained by maximum daily altitude gain and we align ourselves with the stops listed in the Lying Planet.

This is Braga village with the monastary (gompa) in the background (the red building). We stayed in Braga for 2 nights at 3500m to help acclimatise the the altitude before the high pass. All the villages in the region have barely changed since the middle ages, with the possible exception of the overhead power cables (which have only been here for around 5 years). On our day off we attempted to walk to a nearby ice lake at 4500m. Walks like this help with acclimatising to the altitude. Grapes gave it up at 4300m, knackered. I made it to 4500, and had to turn back 10 minutes short of the lake too dizzy to attempt to cross a steep snow bank with a 1km drop down the side...

After Braga the weather got cold, and these happy little fellas started showing up. This is a yak, every village has a hotel called the Yak - some have several. On the course of our walk we also saw eagles, otters, vultures and weird hamster type things.

This is the view at the bottom of the Thorong La on the east side at around 4400m. The nearest settlement on the west side is at 3700m so you can see why most people cross it east to west. It's a barren area - only a few clumps of brown grass cling to life up here, and everything's expensive having been portered and mule trained up along the same path we've taken. To while away the time everyone huddles in the dining room as its the only heated room in the lodge playing cards and reading books.

This view is nearing the top of the pass at over 5km above sea level. We set off at 6:30am to give us enough time to summit by 10am before the wind and cloud build up. Near the top there is a never ending series of false summits, and at this altitude there is only 50% of the oxygen available at sea level. In spite of spending time acclimatising we manage to walk for about 1 minute before we need a 5 minute breather to recover! I've probably never felt so exhausted in my life...

Three and a half hours later we've made it! Look how flushed with success Grapes is! Doesn't she look delighted? Bet she can't wait to do that again! Also marvel at my day glo yellow fake North Face jacket - bought for 4 squids after my rain jacket got nicked by some pesky kids (probably). We're at 5416m which is 4 times higher than Ben Nevis and over 600m above Mont Blanc! There is a small cairn 50m higher so like a small child I dash up there just because I can. We also partake in Nepal's most expensive tea and super noodles. The tea cost about 60p and had to be carried 70 miles up there (along with the kerosene to boil it) by some porter and is still cheaper than Starbucks. Sadly the worst is still to come - a knee destroying 1700 metre descent to Muktinath where a cold shower awaits me (though not Grapes who uses the last of the lukewarm).

Down the other side this is the view over the medieval village of Jharkot. We're now geographically and culturally (if not politically) in Tibet. The landscape is dry, barren and windswept. The Star Wars feel of the place is enhanced by the 100cc motorcycle taxis that have started to use the new dirt road and wheeze their way up and down the valley carrying fat Indian pilgrims to the temple complex at Muktinath. Sadly (for us and the lodge owners) this new road is a feature of much of the trek down to Tatopani though it has yet to link to Nepal's road network.

We join the main river valley the other side of the pass at Kagbeni, 2800m above sea level. Here the river bed is 1km wide and a savage wind rushes up it every day after mid morning, sand blasting everything in its path. This is also the deepest valley in the world - further down the valley floor lies at 2500m while two 8000m peaks (Daulaghiri and Annapurna I) lie either side. (The mountain in the picture is Nilgiri)

A few days trek down the valley (passing through Marpha - the apple capital of Nepal!) we reach Tatopani. The food is pretty good down this side of the circuit and there are hot springs here so we decide to spend a rest day here. It helps that our friends we met on the circuit, Amanda and Chris are staying here too... After Tatopani the route climbs back up to cross a ridge at Poon Hill - the views back to the Annapurna range from here are stunning, as you can see...

After Poon Hill by some miracle I pursuade Grapes to carry on as far as the Annapurna Sanctuary before heading back down. It adds about 5 days onto our trek, but it's a truly amazing place. On the way up low cloud blocks the views but on arrival at Annapura Base Camp (4400m) we're treated to a clear sunset. The Sanctuary is a small valley high in the centre of the Annapurna massif. Once inside you are completely surrounded by mountains - most are over 7000m. It's a different world - glaciers, avalanches, moraines, ice lakes. We stay the night there and the views early in the morning are just as special, even though the temperature in our room was below zero.

This is Annapurna I (8070m) from A.B.C. This may also be the first time we've bothered to put a photo of Francois the Camel on the internet - it would have been fairly pointless to have lugged him 150 miles by foot otherwise...

On the way back down the valley to the trailhead it rained a lot. The weather is building towards the monsoon and every afternoon without fail we got treated to a large thunderstorm, usually with hailstones the size of 5p pieces. Grapes initially vowed never to do a trek again, but has since mellowed and admitted she actually enjoyed (most of) it. I shall be doing the Everest Base Camp trek at some stage - it's a bit tougher than the circuit (apparently) but you do get to see the world's highest mountain...

We rested up a few days in Pokhara, a city with nothing to do. At all. It's extremely pleasant with a beautiful Himalayan backdrop (when it's clear) and a nice lake. All we did was plan which nice cheap restaurant to eat in next. In one (Bistro Caroline funnily enough) I ate one of the finest steaks I may ever eat - it was barely warm, huge, tasted devine, melted in the mouth and came with fantastic peppercorn sauce and cost 3 quid! Bloody hell!

Once we'd got bored of eating we headed back to Kathmandu before hightailing it here a couple of days later. We're flying to Singapore on the 4th so Grapes can do some shopping and I can have a really expensive Singapore Sling in Raffles hotel. It should prove to be quite a contrast after the filth, stench and chaos of India...

We've arrived in Pokhara after our 24 day trek in the Annapurnas. We've covered around 150 miles including the 5416 metre Thorong La pass. At the moment there's a monumental thunderstorm going on outside and all power has gone, so we'll do a proper update with hopefully pictures later!

It was good! The Himalayas are reeeeeally big!

We'll it took us 24 hours to travel from Darjeeling to Kathmandu in Nepal. The last leg of the journey from the border to the capital was an overnight bus and it was horrendous. This little bus is actually on a truck bed and so has very hard suspension, it also provides its passengers with absolutely no leg room.

To make it worse, the couple in front insisted on fully reclining their seats back and the drunk behind singing to us, that is when the driver didnt't have the radio on full blast.

The journey proved to be qutie eventful, at around 1am when we'd given up all hope of sleep and had started to doze, we were woken by the smashing of the front windscreen, the bus didn't stop and a local nepalise guy explained later that it had been smashed by local insurgents!.

Early in the morning however Rich claims to have seen a naked western woman walking along the road although to be honest I think he may have been hallucinating.

Welcome to Nepal!! - country number 16 on our trip!

We arrived in Kathmandu early on Sunday morning, checked into a nice and cheap hotel, showered and slept for the best part of the day. Monday was also a local festival day, this ensured that our sightseeing around Durbar square included a buffalo being sacrificed in front of a hindu temple and the living goddess being paraded around the centre. We also found me spiritual home (see below) and watched the production of an Indian music video. Below are some photos of Kathmandu for you to enjoy!!

We have decided to go trekking around Annapurna so today has been spent preparing and kitting ourselves out. We plan to go on the 20 day trek on Friday, mountains here we come (think Rich might need some help though!!!!)

We'll I didn't expect Chennai to be that great, it is afterall simply a working class Indian city with little to attract the tourist, but honestly it was a complete an utter cesspit. It was filthy and smelly and incredibly chaotic. I have never wanted to leave somewhere so much in my entire life. Thankfully we were only there for one night and that's enough said about the place.

The next day we caught the train to Kolkata (Calcutta) and shared our train cabin with an old guy who spent the entire journey bossing his meak wife around and a middle aged guy who constantly burped and belched, to such an extent that it soon became socially acceptable for everyone around us to do the same. Now I know I'm not the most tolerant of people but add this to a 9 hour delay making our train journey 35 hours in total and as you can imagine by now I'm not in the best of moods. Rich managed however to escape and enjoyed the sunshine on the train platform where he met a 10 year old Bengali boy who spoke excellent english and was keen to understand about the countries we had visited on our journey. In return he gave Rich lots of tips about what to do in the city (including an excellent ice cream parlour recommendation). Needless to say by the end of the journey they were the best of friends.

We arrived in Kolkata at around 10pm and caught an Ambassador taxi (bit like an old Rolls Royce) to the tourist/cheap hotel district of Sudder St. Thankfully we had just enough time to find somewhere to stay and grab some food before everything shut up at 11pm. Kolkata is much better than Chennai, and probably best described as a bit poorer/dirtier Mumbai in my opinion. We were there for 4 days in total, highlights included enjoying a traditional pot of tea in the grounds of Fairlawn hotel - a hotel owned by a British couple which has not changed since the days of the British Raj. Drinking cocktails in perhaps the coolest bar we've ever been too in a five star hotel along the trendy Park Street (exception maybe the Fashion Bar in Romania). Watching crowds queue to get into McDonalds with the same fever as shoppers hitting the January sales (OK not quite a highlight but fascinating all the same - it was the first one to open in the state and was only 2 days old). On the downside there was the naked beggar who just wandered the streets scavaging for food from bins and a market which whilst looking a bit like covent garden was so awful that we both wanted to leave the moment we'd walked in.

Nevertheless we decided to take the Sleeper train to Darjeeling having previously travelled 2AC and 3AC. The fare was a third of the price - what had we let ourselves in for!!!. Actually it was fine the beds were a bit thinner and there were no pillows or sheets but that was about it. We shared the 'foreigner cabin' with 3 spannish girls and had a policeman complete with guns sitting in the carriage next door! - so as the Indian guys wandered by to stare at us Western women showing flesh (ie ankles and shoulders) they were promptly moved on, as were the transvestites that came to say hello - but hey no belching!!!.

We decided against travelling the Darjeeling Toy train (9 hours) and got a jeep instead (3 hours). Darjeeling is about 2100 metres above sea level and should provide amazing views of the Himalayas but sadly its been too foggy. Its a built up city on a steep hill with lots of steps - but this is OK as its our first taste of exercise before Nepal. Accomodation here is cheap so we've upgraded to a nicer hotel room complete with duvets - the weather here is much the same as back home a mere 13 degrees during the day. On our second day here we went to visit the zoo and Himalayan mountain institute, a few hours later it started to rain, so we sought shelter, but it continued to rain and got heavier and heavier, then came the thunder and lightning and hale. About an hour later we've accepted our fate and know that we'll have to walk the 2.5km back to our hotel and get drenched. Which we did - soaked to the core we were (our shoes are still damp) and whats more the roads were completely flooded with sewage as well as rain water!. We dried off but a power cut mean't no hot water for the rest of the day. The rain didn't stop until well into the evening and so we spent the day cocooned in our hotel room.

Yesterday we went for a joyride on the steam train which was fun, we also learned that if you stand too close you'll get covered in coal and steam - as Rich is demonstrating. We also enjoyed

a very British afternoon tea (complete with cakes), visited a tea plantation and learnt all about the different qualities of tea. Naturally we have bought some for our tea loving families to enjoy when we get back home. Our favourite was the complimentary cup of white tea we were given - it was really nice so we thought we'd get some, the price though was about seven pounds for 50g.

Today we joined the Tea Planters club and are honary members for the day (once the preserve only of aristocrats) and here's a picture of Rich enjoying a cup of Darjeeling. Tomorrow we will head off to Nepal.

Well, we've reached our southerly most point in India at Varkala beach, and are heading back up north tonight. We're off to Chennai (Madras) for a day before continuing up to Calcutta. It's probably about time too as the heat and humidity are starting to get oppressive down here (38 yesterday!).

In Aleppy we met up with an English guy and decided to share a 24 hour backwater cruise. These aren't cheap, but was probably the most pleasant thing we've done in india - floating down palm lined waterways, eating superb fresh food with cold kingfishers to hand. The guy who owned the boat was also from england - he'd emigrated here with almost no money to build an eco friendly boat in return for visa support from the keralan govenment. The boat wasn't quite finished but he's running it to raise the cash to complete the project at which point he gets to sell all the designs. All this talk got me thinking - the diesel engine powering the boat was too noisy I thought. Hmmm, what if you could build an internal combustion engine that ran off continuous combustion? It would need a compression, combustion and exhaust stage. Well you can achieve that with a supercharger and combustion chamber and you could power the supercharger off the exhaust turbine blah blah blah etc etc shit i've just invented the gas turbine! Damn I'm clever. Shame it's 80 years too late...

After the boat we got another boat down to Kollam, a pretty dull backwater town in the middle of the backwaters. We stopped a night before heading down to Varkala. Getting the bus almost caused Grapes to burst a blood vessel - I asked the bus driver if he was going to Varkala to which he said he was, but even before we could get on he'd started driving off. Grapes got him to stop by hammering on the side of the bus. Once on the conductor told us that actually the bus didn't go to Varkala at all and we'd have to change (which was actually no problem at all). Thankfully Varkala has proved nice and relaxing but I think India is getting to Grapes and she needs a change!

Varkala itself is a string of restaurants and hotels along the top of a cliff with a smallish beach below. It is very picturesque but the beach has a reputation as being one of the most dangerous in India! Having been for a few swims I can probably agree. The waves are massive - a bit like being in a washing machine and the rips are really strong. They have full time lifeguards here and the day before we arrived a couple of people got swept out (but rescued).

We met loads of cool people here (it has one of the best so called "traveller vibes" I've experienced) and I even met a guy from Burnham-on-Sea! Poor chap. Possibly the funniest guy we met was the 40something alcoholic stoner who's ambition is to build a shed. The food here is pretty good too - plenty of cheap seafood and even some Thai approximations which aren't too wide of the mark. Like most places in Kerala no bars are licensed so beer is served in a teapot with a couple of mugs and they shut when the last person leaves. Having said that I'm starting to get a little tired of rapidly warming Kingfisher with all the rubbish that they put in. The stuff they have here would probably be illegal in the UK!

Hmmm, lunch was McDonalds... (not the best when you both have the shits)

Took the train down to Fort Cochin in Kerala. It's a former colonial outpost which most western powers had a go at at some time. This actually makes it a rather interesting place. That is if you find walking around aspirational London suburbs interesting, but it is when you're in India. The weather down here is sooper hot, and the humidity is coming up as well. Apparently in less that a month it'll be unbearable down here so our impending escape to Nepal will probably be in the nick of time.

While in Cochin we decided to see a Kathakali performance. It's a local traditional dance that usually takes place overnight. We got the 2 hour tourist taster but as with the camel ride, what seems like being short changed actually turns out to be quite enough thankyou! The costumes are spectacular, and the fervour that the performers whip themselves up into is frightening but there's almost no dialogue other than sign language and facial expression. When you don't understand what's going on it starts to get a little (shall we say) tiresome. However, it's still a worthwhile cultural experience. For those that want to know, here's the plot summary (as told over 2 hours):

Archer bloke is very proud of his skills
God disguises himself and beats him in a duel.
Archer bloke repents his egotism.
The. End.

We've now moved down to Aleppy, where we have scored our lowest price accommodation yet, at around 2.50GBP. It's a lovely clean room with ensuite, close to the centre and even the owner seems quite nice (we beat him down from 2.75GBP! ;-). This beats our previous record set in Cochin of 3 pounds! Another thing we like about Kerala is that the rickshaw drivers are more reasonable, and on some occasions have even started out on the right price!!! Maybe the heat is too much for arguing.

We're off to the beach now, with the Lying Planet's ominous comment that going into the water is "dangerous"... We'll let you know. Presumably that's not "dangerous" in the same sense as going into a wave pool with a couple of hundred hormonal indian teenagers. Ah the scars will take a while to heal...

We'll the bus trip was awful, to start we were at the back of the bus, on the top bunker and the road was very bumpy. Our 'two berth' was actually the size of a short single bed which was just about OK for me, but poor Rich could neither sit up or lie down and so spent most of the journey standing and chatting to other travellers. We didn't have the worst seat though, some unfortunate traveller got the seat over a wheel with absolutely no leg room!. Each time the bus went over a bump, which was probably about every 15 seconds we were literally thrown around in our bunk, oh and the 10 hour journey turned out to be just over 12 - it was great!!!!. Naturally we have now vowed not to use another long distance bus and will stick to trains in future.

Ok so we arrived in Hampi at about 8am, the bus was full of westerners and as it pulled into the bus stand we were greated by about 50 rickshaws and touts all wanting to take you to their hotel. Luckily we escaped the madness and found our own hotel room very easily. It was smart and clean and we thought we'd done well, that was until 2 days later the owner gave Rich a lecture because we'd not used his restaurant (looked a bit manky) "not good business sir". Added to the fact that we'd also learned that the traveller epicentre was on the other side of the river (beer and meat available), we saw red and promptly moved.

Anyhow about Hampi, its quite strange being a town full of boulders and ruins, we hired a motorbike (this time it didnt attack me!) and drove around to get our bearings. We saw most of the main sites by simply driving around them, imagine scrambling on a bike around Stonehenge and you'll get the picture. On our second day we decided to hire bikes and cycle around the rest, the bikes sadly weighed a tonne, had no gears (making hills tough) we're not big enough for Rich (his seat kept sliding forward) nor were any of the bolts fastened (we did this ourselves with the help of Rich's swiss arm knife). Nevertheless we really enjoyed Hampi, but personally I think Rich's favourite bit was wading across the river that separated the town from our accomodation (saving about 10 pence each by avoiding the boat crossing).

After 3 days we left Hampi and got the train to Bangalore. As a city there is little to see and do, but it is quite affluent by Indian standards and therefore has some good bars and restaurants. To quote the LP "Bangalore doesn't party darling it lounges". Nevertheless we found the hippiest joint Taika and tried to 'lounge' with the best of them. Sadly Rich was wearing his shorts and sandals so we initially were only allowed in the bar and not the club, but were then let in at 11pm for free. Great we thought having sipped cocktails for the last hour or so, sadly it was no different to the average club in the UK and closed at 11.30pm!!! In fact forget Woods all of Bangalore comes to a halt at 11.30pm.

Yesterday we went to 'Wonder La' a water/theme park just outside of Bangalore, naturally it wasn't quite as good as somewhere like Alton Towers but we had lots of fun. We'd taken our swimming gear but soon realised that Indians cover up and were changing out of Saris and into tracksuits. Suddenly being the only westerners and me having taken a bikini, didnt seem such a great idea. So as the saying goes "When in Rome...." and all that I bought some jogging bottoms and we both kept wore t-shirts. The water park was great fun there were lots of cool slides, far better than any i've seen in the UK and of course the climate here is perfect for such a park.

Today we're just hanging around Bangalore before catching a train this evening to Cochin in Kerala, which is the backwaters of India and apparently quite chilled. Bangalore has been good for a short stop-over, the only downside has been the rickshaw drivers who hassle you at every street corner and want to rip you off at every opportunity, for example agreeing a fare in advance means nothing, they will still ask for double when you arrive at your destination. Naturally we've stood our ground but it has become very tiresome and frustrating so I think today's the right time to leave.

Anyhow hope you're all well, we're off to find some lunch now..........

Now in Panjim, the capital of Goa, but heading off to Hampi tonight. It'll be our first overnight bus journey, it's not even air conditioned and apparently the roads are terrible (though probably not as bad as Kazakhstan....).

Since the last post we've visited the beaches at Anjuna, Calangute and Vagator. Anjuna is famous for it's flea market where you can buy any old tourist tat. Our favourite was the shorts without button holes. Its also the first time someone's tried the "there's something in your ear" scam. Anjuna is where we hired Bogbrush, the crappy Enfield for a bargain 300rs a day. Continuing her tribulations with motorised 2 wheel transport Grapes burnt her leg on the exhaust within 2 minutes of getting on but thankfully she was too late and I'd already handed over the cash.

To describe Bogbrush in a way that does it justice is difficult. It was the lesser 350cc version complete with horrific 1 up 3 down gearbox on the right. There were neutrals where there shouldn't have been, the back wheel was loose so the back brake came on with a big bang, the speedo and lights didn't work, it chomped fuel and would randomly stall, usually in the middle of a busy junction (and it had a kickstart). All good fun then, and rather like my car in fact... :-)

We decided to spend a day in Chavvy Calangute. It was wall to wall fat sunburnt people, all moaning about the lack of fish and chips. Kind of like a costa del goa, but with open sewers as well. We stayed up the road at Baga so we could visit Tito's, "Goa's top club". It was of course rubbish, with mid 90s style flourescent painted walls and we had the double misfortune on visiting on House and RnB night. Calangute's only saving grace is on the southern end of the beach there's a grounded oil tanker that's been there for 7 years (hmmm dodgy insurance job or something - someone in the local government must have received a fair few brown envelopes over this). It's kind of surreal swimming near this thing with sunbeds and bars just on the beach facing it. For Grapes though, Calangute's main attraction is the almost endless string of shops selling fake handbags. I've never seen her so happy, she'll probably not achieve the same state of nirvana again in her lifetime. She bought 3 in the end (for her Mum, sister and herself). I now know that Chloe bags have padlocks and Radly bags have little dogs attached to them by string but not sown on cos that's an obvious fake...

We tried to visit Panjim for the first time on saturday but without realising arrived on carnival day, in the middle of a nationwidewide doctors conference. It's the first time we've not been able to find any rooms at all, so we went to Vagator instead. Vagator is (apparently) Goa's main party beach, but it's actually quite a nice place in its own right. Don't buy marmite on toast from the place listed in the Lying Planet in Chapora.

We ran Bogbrush out of fuel, stuck it on reserve and handed it back before making our way to Panjim. This time there were rooms available, and just after checking in we bumped into Clare and Kristen (from Rajasthan) who'd also just checked in! They blagged some free tickets to the "Panjim carnival evening", complete with black, red and gold theme (so that was me buggered then). It was kind of fun, especially as we got singled out by the announcer (Grapes was called "Carla"). The bands weren't bad either in a cheesy way, and it was funny watching all the indian guys captivated by the ropey russian belly dancer.

One evening we met expat Robbie, who'd retired here from Charlton. He was a staggeringly suntanned CSA exile, who spent his days smoking and drinking while slowly dessicating himself in the sun. He recommended this nearby beach, and as we had to wait an extra day for the bus to Hampi we thought we might as well. The 4 of us went, and it was quite pleasant, though Robbie's speedos were maybe less so. (See picture here! http://kristenandclaretravelling.blogspot.com/)

Now in Goa, but left Mumbai for Matheran about a week ago. Matheran is described as a hill station, but a better idea is to think of it as a Monument valley style mesa with a town and jungle on top. The ride up is very impressive and everywhere you go the views to the valleys 800m below are stunning. There is also a ban on motorised transport at the top so you get dumped at a car park 2km from the village itself. We're so bloody minded that we refused to hire a porter to take our bags up and instead struggled up ourselves in the 30 degree heat (which is noticably less than Mumbai).

Luckily we found a helpful hotel owner for the first time in India - he was actually honest and even took us to a festival one evening and paid for our dinner! The festival was actually a Hindu and Muslim one that happened to fall on the same full moon. It was held at one of the lookouts and the view down into the misty moonlit valleys surrounded by jagged silhouetted peaks was quite magical. Makes the Taj by moonlight sound a bit rubbish really...

Matheran is actually famous for having a narrow guage railway run from the bottom to the top, built around a hundred years ago. When we arrived it wasn't running, but it transpired that after a 2 year hiatus (from monsoon damage) they'd just finished the repairs and were doing test runs. After a lot of negotiation (read pleading) they let us ride it down on one of the tests for free. It didn't exactly feel ready to go, and half way down we had to stop to help clear a pickup that had got stuck on the rails...

We headed down to Goa straight afterwards, sharing the overnight train with a couple of snoring brummie indians innit. First we headed for Palolem beach, right in the south of the state. It's a massively overdeveloped beach, made to sound quite nice in the Lying Planet. Actually it is quite nice as all the development is bamboo beach huts and bars but very busy none the less. The sea is very warm here, but quite murky, and full of fish that you don't see until they jump over your head.

One day we decided to hire a scooter. Then we didn't. We never went for a wander on it. Grapes never decided to give it a go and she certainly didn't fall off after 20 metres. She definitely didn't require a bandage on her knee made of sanitary towels cos that would just be embarrasing. Just to reiterate, none of this ever happened.

(At the bottom of the screen even before I started typing: "Labels for this post:e.g. scooters, vacation, fall". Strangely prescient these computers aren't they? ;-)

Now we're at Arambol beach, right in the north of the state, a journey requiring 4 individual bus journeys (at a total cost of about 60p each). The last bus was so full that you couldn't move for sweaty Indian men - needless to say not a particularly enjoyable experience.

Arambol is a bit of a hippie backpacker place. Its full of people with dreads, henna tattoos and psychadelic trousers. We haven't really explored it yet but have just had lunch and feel too lethargic to so have gone to this internet cafe instead. We'll probably stay here for a few days before heading off. I fancy hiring an Enfield (tried on the other day, even worse than my bike but sound fantastic so who cares) to wander round the rest of Goa for a few days, and as Grapes hasn't had a scooter accident she's quite receptive to this idea as well.

We left Agra on Sunday and caught the 23 hour train to Mumbai. As we were unsure as to what to expect from an Indian train (with its 8 different travelling classes) and given the distance involved, we travelled 2nd Class 3-Tier AC. This basically mean't a bunk on an air conditioned carriage - although Rich really wanted to travel sleeper class in the jam packed carriages with the locals (its exactly as you're imagining).

Well things didn't start too well, the train was due to depart at 9am and getting Rich up that early was always going to be a challenge, but we got there only to be told that the train was delayed by an hour - it actually was 3 hours late in the end (pretty good by local standards apparently) and by the end of the journey was 5 hours late. The journey wasn't too bad and passed surprisingly quickly through eating, sleeping, watching DVDs on a Chinese guys laptop and chatting to a few locals. Getting a clean budget hotel in Mumbai however was another thing! - nothing available in our price range (ie cheap) and touts everywhere, we settled in the end for a room aka prison cell without a window in a fire trap ramshackle hotel but have since upgraded to a windowed room in a hostel.

First impressions of Mumbai - its very hot! 34 degrees during the day and it doesn't get much colder at night - so a bit different from Bishkek!. Its also very very colonial and because of this it has the feel of many european cities. Here they are much more westernised but it still feels like they are about 50 years behind the times - there are lots of cars here but they are 1950s Fiat types and the Royal Enfield motorbike is king here. They have a much more relaxed view towards alcohol here but much to Rich's disappointment the next 2 days are 'dry days' across the region. The food is excellent - we've eaten lots of seafood including Bombay duck, Squid and Crab (delicious), we have also visited the usual tourist hotspots Chowpati beach, Elephanta island, India Gate and Marine Drive. We can see what we suspect are the morass of call centres in the distance and have so far resisted the temptation to seek out either the LTSB one or First Alternatives!.

Our limited plans at the moment are to stay in Mumbai for another day and then to catch the train to Matheran (a quiet, relaxing and scenic hill top station about a 2 hour train journey away) before joining the throngs in Goa to spend some time lazing on a beach.

Today we're in Agra having finished our tour and saw the Taj Mahal. The Taj is a truly beautiful building, especially the geometry and the shifting shades as the sun rises and sets. Our (cheap) hotel room overlooks the Taj so we'll get to see the morning thing tomorrow without too much effort - we saw the sunset bit today but the sheer numbers of tourists milling around kind of spoils what should be a peaceful spot. Anyway, its still not the best building in the world which as far as I'm concerned is the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

Our tour finished last night - after Udaipur we took in holy/hippie Pushkar, the state capital Jaipur, a "tiger safari" where the tigers didn't come out to play but there were plenty of other things to see, and then on to Agra. Some of the highlights of India so far:

The rats temple - just like an ordinary Hindu temple except that there are (literally) thousands of rats running unchecked around the place - they're holy rats apparently. Totally bonkers but taken completely seriously by the locals.

The driving - everyone who comes to India comments on the driving, so here's my turn. It's actually just a different set of driving rules - you only have to worry about the stuff in front (a bit like skiing). If something in front is in your way or looking like it might get in your way use the horn (the only time when you have to worry about what's behind). In practice this simply means that right of way goes to the first person to arrive. I like it - it rewards the inventive!

The Jodhpur fort audio tour. The tour takes a minute to talk about narcotics while you pause in front of a wizened old man with a bubbly pipe thing. It then informs you that you can ask the chap to let you sample the aroma (nice interactivity!). He then informs you that the pipe's gone out so gives you a chunk of opium instead. In the middle of an audio tour. Crazy Hindus.

The 'priests' of Pushkar were also quite funny, though not so much in a good way. They will do a prayer for you and all your family in return for a donation to the temple. This donation can be 50, 100, 200 pounds! No really sir, whatever you can afford! What price can you put on your friends and families happiness and wellbeing? Well not 50 rupees apparently. Even less so when you put the donation in the locked donation boxes instead of the tray they pass round...

We went to see a Bollywood film in Jaipur. The cinema was an amazing piece of architecture, a bit like a giant wedding cake - all pink and white swirly bits. The film we saw was something about "the journey from engagement to marriage), sort of a cross between a crap (sorry is there any other kind) soap (with the evil mother in law character and the dramatic fire) and a hollywood romcom by numbers with a cute kid who would pop up from time to time and say something funny - fortunately in Hindi. Exactly Grapes' favourite kind of film then. Most interesting was the audience participation. It was exactly like being in a pantomime with people alternately heckling, and applauding the different characters.

Having seen the Taj Agra has been largely exhausted as a destination so we're off to the station tomorrow to get tickets to somehwere. Not actually sure where yet but we'll see.

We are now in Rajasthan in India, where the sun is shining though when we arrived in Delhi the newspapers were full of news about the possibly record breaking cold snap (the overnight low of +4 degrees was enough to see schools closing!).

Actually this is a very scummy country - there are open sewers in the streets, a bewildering menagerie of animals wandering and defecating everywhere, everyone is after your money by whatever means available to them and the noise and the stench and the grime is like nowhere else i've ever visited. On the other hand, all this is still just an ugly scab on top of some fabulous architecture and history.

We arrived in Delhi, and somewhat foolishly signed up for a tour of Rajasthan (they tried to sell us more but that was quite enough). Its actually quite nice to not have to worry about finding a hotel every night, and we have our own driver but the suspicion is that we could have done the same itinerary with more flexibility for half the price... We also have to face almost daily battles with our driver about not wanting to go into certain shops, not eating in certain restaurants, and battling him over which sights we want him to take us to (the commision scammers are years ahead of their Thai counterparts here).

So far we've seen (amongst others) Delhi, Jaisalmer (Golden city, best one so far), Jodhpur (Blue city - where the trousers come from), and we're currently in Udaipur (White city where they won't let you forget that Octopussy was filmed). So just the Pink one to go then... We also went for a camel ride and slept out in the desert under the stars, a wonderful if uncormfortable experience.

When we finish our tour in Agra (home of the Taj Mahal) we have to decide where else to head. So far Mumbai and Goa are the main possibilities (cos everyone goes there). Varanasi is on the way to Kathmandu so we'll probably go there and I have a fancy to head to Darjeeling and drink tea, though that's a bit out of the way.

The food here is great, though curry twice a day isn't doing my insides much good. It's very cheap but surprisingly I have yet to have a curry as good (or as hot) as we can get in the UK. Grapes is suffering a grapes shortage as wine is expensive and rare here, and beer is more difficult to get hold of than expected (mysteriously you can always get one Kingfisher Strong but they can never supply you a second one...). Rajasthan appears to have some limited prohibition and in some cities you can't even get meat.

For those that know him, we have also found the Future Mrs Miserable Bloke. Most people we meet are also on similar tours to us, but we've met (and said hello) to this woman on at least 8 different occasions but only with the barest flicker of recognition back!