---trippinballs!!---

The Best Of...

2008-10-24T10:33:00.000+11:00

1. What’s your favourite country?
2. What’s your favourite place?
3. Did you have any trouble being a vegetarian?
4. What are you going to do now?
5. How much money did you spend?

These are the most commonly asked questions we hear now that we’re back in the real world after nineteen months of living in an employment-free fantasyland. The answers are: 1- A four-way tie between Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and India. Colombia, Nicaragua and Bolivia are also up there now that I think about it. 2- Laguna Apoyo, Puerto Chicama, Varanasi, Zipolite, Machu Picchu, Mancora and too many other places. 3- Only when we didn’t explain that chicken, fish, veal(!) and ham are not vegetarian foods. 4- Nobody knows. 5- I shudder to think.

To finish off, here’s a selection of our favourite posts from Trippinballs. We chose these because we like the photos, the stories or we just have great memories of the places. (Click on the titles to be taken to the posts.) And also, visit trippinphotos if you just want to see pictures, rather than read poorly spellchecked ramblings. We hope you enjoyed reading trippinballs as much as we enjoyed living it...

Walking to Lago Frey, Argentina

The bus ride through the Andes from Tucuman to Cafayate, Argentina.

The Uyuni Desert, Bolivia

The markets in Zumbahua, Ecuador

Mountain biking down the World's Most Dangerous Road, Bolivia

Twin Lanes Bowling in La Paz, Bolivia

Shipwrecked in Panama

Rescuing baby turtles on Playa Majaual, Nicaragua

Volcano boarding on Cerro Negro, Nicaragua

Crossing the border between Honduras and Guatemala

Semuc Champey, Guatemala

The Missing Hotel Room of Chihuahua, Mexico

Bryce Canyon, USA

The Bookshop Trick, New Delhi, India

The Golden Temple of Amritsar, India

Trippinvignettes

Bathing with elephants in Chitwan National Park, Nepal

Watching a cremation in Varanasi, India

This is The End...

2008-10-09T10:18:00.000+11:00

At 10:30 in the morning we touched down and gratefully unfolded ourselves from a plane that made far too many strange clunking noises during landing. After a quick inspection from the immigration and customs people, we wheeled our bags into the clean, orderly country of Australia and were met by my very tired parents, who had come to the airport to pick us up at the originally scheduled landing time of 6:30 am.

Our nineteen month journey

We’d done it. We’d gone around the world and arrived back home the way we’d hoped to: in tact and carrying our original luggage. After over one and a half years we’d survived with no major dramas, no dangerous robberies and no serious bodily harm. The closest we’d come was the theft of $60 from a hotel room and a suspected collection of internal parasites (there was also the shipwreck, the birthday tumble from the moving truck and the Varanasi Experience - but those amounted to mere psychological damage than lasting physical harm).

We really feel lucky to have finished the trip with a minimum of bad experiences. We want to say a huge thanks to everyone who prayed for us, blessed us, talked to us, sent us birthday money, emailed us, didn’t rob us even though we were both asleep on the bus, helped us on our way or just thought of us as we trundled around the globe seeing some of the best, the worst and the most bizarre aspects of humanity and nature.

Back home

Finally, I’d like to give my biggest thanks to Angie. Angie is a wonderful travel companion, who isn’t afraid of an argument if we don’t get what we paid for, has no tolerance for any whiff of a scam and always finds the best hotel room for our money. If not for her, I’d probably be unconscious and face down in an ice-bath while some surgeon’s college dropout prods around my supple lower back looking for kidneys. I see him holding a never-returned textbook from the Bogotá library, his eyes darting nervously back and forth between my lumbar zone and a blood-spattered diagram of kidney. ‘Kidney: Ve como un frijole’ (looks like a bean) states the caption.

Even if it never came to something as dramatic as that, then I’d at least be much poorer and would have worn my way through several pairs of shoes after getting out of taxis way before we’re anywhere near where we’re supposed to be. She takes care of all that stuff, while I tighten loose screws that rattle in the window frame when the air-conditioning kicks in. We are a team.

Angie takes some time out from keeping us safe and waits for a sushi lunch

(Plus, she’s obsessed with food, which means I always eat well.)

Bad Travelers

2008-10-08T18:02:00.000+11:00

For two weeks we lazed around Bali, swimming in pools, eating food and curling into a bedridden foetal position after consuming something dodgy, possibly from the egg-station at the daily buffet breakfast free-for-all.

It just wouldn’t have been right to finish this trip in a calm, well-planned fashion. We’d been traveling for nineteen months, and after all the mad rushes for busses, boats, planes and trains, it would’ve felt a little inappropriate to just wander up to our final transport and slide on like we’d been practising it for a year and a half.

Not that we wanted to be late; wandering up like a seasoned traveler would’ve been great, but in retrospect, it couldn’t have ended in any other way than this:

I was positive that the ticket we had booked months earlier had us flying out of Bali at 11:50 that night. Rather than double check that time, like sensible people, we decided to enjoy a long dinner accompanied by some sickly celebratory cocktails and a spot of reminiscing about the last year and a half. Nine o’clock rolled around, and on the way back to the hotel, we checked the ticket times on the internet. I was a little startled to find our departure time was actually 10:10 pm; about an hour from now, meaning the brutally strict Jetstar check-in had just closed and we were half an hour from Denpasar airport.

The most stressful taxi ride ever followed; it wasn’t stressful due to the fact that we’d paid the driver to get us there in record time (twenty minutes), it was the gut-twisting, plain embarrassing feeling that we might miss our final flight, for no good reason other than laziness and incompetence.

In the end, our beaming taxi driver got us there in time for the flight (‘Very good time! Very fast!’ he exclaimed as we pulled up to the drop-off point, eyeing my wallet). In a hilarious twist, the plane was three hours late anyway, so really we had nothing to worry about, except for the fact that even after nineteen months, we still hadn’t learned some of the most basic fundamentals of stress-free travel.

One Last Fitting

2008-10-08T15:46:00.000+11:00

Spending a year and a half in hotel rooms means you start to find the little details fascinating (I did anyway). Here's the last hotel room shot from the trip, our framed air-conditioner controller in Bali.

For more photos of interesting/depressing/weird room fittings, see here, here, here, here and here.

The Big Day

2008-10-04T14:59:00.000+10:00

The chapel overlooks Uluwatu

Originally, we were supposed to fly straight home from India, but Eric and Leah decided to get married in Bali, so that gave us a good excuse to add three Indonesian weeks onto the end of the trip. The big day came, and the weather was good, and the setting was stunning, and it was a wonderfully happy way to finish off our trip.

Paparazzi

Leah dabs away the happy tears, Eric wipes away the sweat.

Quite the setting

Angie in her sari, which behaved itself and stayed in place. Phew.

Mumbai

2008-10-03T17:30:00.002+10:00

In lots of ways, Mumbai is identical to the rest of India. Morbid congestion infests the roads, hawkers harass on the footpaths, the number of people going about their daily lives is too large to comprehend, and the noise never ceases. In other, surprising ways, it is most un-Indian. The architecture has been lifted straight out of olde-England, with lots of big stone, big arches and statues. Red double-decker busses plod about streets with names like Henry Road and past buildings called Victoria Terminus (the busiest train station in Asia, which is really saying something).

Most of the younger women wear western clothes, and some even wear business suits. Men and women hang out (and talk) in restaurants and bars and everyone speaks English, even if they’re in a group made up entirely of locals. And there are comparatively obscene amounts of cash floating around. We saw plenty of people being driven around in expensive cars, and we were forced to pay over forty dollars for a hotel room, an amount that would have kept us bedded for a week in other parts of the country.

Most surprising of all – among the usual handkerchiefs, fake watches and sunglasses that are sold at stalls on the footpath, in Mumbai they sell sex toys, cunningly boxed as ‘massagers’.

Bali Bits

2008-09-28T14:26:00.000+10:00

The tiger character from a traditional dance

Wooden horses and cobras

Temple statues

Temple fish and coins

Harassed monkey

Monkey attack on Angie's pop. Uncle Mike was not amused.

Roundabout statue

Gili Air Breakfast

2008-09-24T18:29:00.000+10:00

The fruit, the coffee and the view

The location

Gili Air

2008-09-23T18:10:00.000+10:00

Rustbucket transportation

Oi! We ‘ome yet, or what?!? Bali

2008-09-15T01:47:00.000+10:00

Shirtless, beer-clutching mobs of over-muscled males; shoulderblade Southern Cross tattoos accessorising Australian flag boardshorts; pink, over-fed girls overflowing from spaghetti strap singlets; coagulated accents inflecting around a vocabulary consisting mainly of unspellable sounds - ‘aahhh’, ‘whhhoor’, ‘yahh – hahAAAH’, ‘Tay-LAH!!! Get BACK ovr’ere!’. It’s good to be home.

Oh no, wait. There’s a wedding on (Angie’s brother, Eric and his fiancé, Leah) in Bali, and that’s where we’ve just landed. Culture shock hit us hard; after India and its separation of the sexes, strange-uncle dress code and omnipresent air of devotion, it was a little confronting to find ourselves in Kuta amid a pre-drunken mass of holidaying Australiana; an alien, yet disturbingly familiar, uninhibited microcosm of home rarefied by Bintang and the Balinese sun… ya bastard!

We had two weeks leading up to the wedding booked in a nice hotel (with a hairdryer - a hairdryer!), a swish-ish way to cap off our nineteen months trippinballs. There was a week to wait before checking in, and rather than killing that week in Kuta amongst the shopping packs of braid-headed, flag swathed holiday makers and touchy-feely-grabby-and-ripoffy shopkeepers (plenty of time for that later), we went in search of something a little more serene.

Bye Mumbai, Bye India.

2008-09-14T14:03:00.000+10:00

Mumbai was out last stop in India, and it put on quite a show for us as we left. Ganesh, everyone’s favourite elephant-headed Hindu deity had his big festival and the streets filled with trumpet-blowing, statue-carrying crowds as we gobbled down our last Indian meal of paneer butter masala (cheese tomato curry), aloo palak (potato and spinach curry) and fresh lemon soda. The food, especially for my vegetarian self, has been amazing in India.

As our taxi banged its way to the airport, we passed dozens of celebrations in the street; throngs of dancing devotees trailing flatbed trucks carrying enormous speaker stacks and technicolour Ganesh statues. Most people, and passing cars, took on a dull burgundy tinge, thanks to all the red powder being flung about in celebration. There was music, colour and movement in copious, very Indian, amounts. It was a fitting final glimpse of a gloriously bizarre country.

Agra to Mumbai

2008-09-11T19:31:00.000+10:00

Around Agra

2008-09-10T06:30:00.000+10:00

Food map

One of the most spectacular architectural wonders of the world is surrounded by some of the most spectacular architectural failures. I'm talking about the hotels that have windowless walls, or teensy windows, facing the main attraction. View form our room (thorough cement grate).

The Taj and surrounds

Rooftop breakfast - Muesli, curd, milk tea and the Taj

Agra street

Behind the Taj is a river, and from there you can see the Taj for free (it costs over $20 to enter the grounds).

Offerings revealed by the low water level

Taj Mahal

2008-09-08T06:37:00.000+10:00

Happy tourist

Tour group

Angie's Varanasi

2008-09-06T06:14:00.000+10:00

People unimpressed by my vessel selection on the Ganges

Happy Tears

After buying some jewelery from a woman, we agreed to be taken by her son to his store, where he would show us some of his merchandise. As he led us through the streets, he turned to Angie and said:

‘I was talking to one man, and he said the saw you walking here and crying the other day.’

Angie replied that, yes, that was her, but before she had time to elaborate, he continued, with one of my favourite theories on the effects India can have on tourists.

‘All the time I am in Varanasi I see tourists here and they are crying. I think, maybe, these are happy tears?’

Angie explained that, probably no, they aren’t tears of happiness, and recounted the traumatic details of the particularly infuriating encounter with a travel agent that led to her storming the alleys in tears (a bemusing sight for the locals, which kept them talking for days, apparently.)

* * *

Morning on the ghats

Goat eating a schoolbook

After-school Job

Angie was walking around the streets, being harassed by hawkers, touts and guides, as is usual for any foreigner in Varanasi.

‘Miss, Miss!’ came the familiar call from a pre-adolescent kid.
‘No thankyou’, replied Angie, denying whatever was on offer before it was even proposed (again, usual for the foreigner.)
‘No, no, Miss, I am not a guide, I only wish to talk to you.’
‘Okay, but I don’t want to go to any silk shops or ghats. I only want to walk.’
‘Miss!’ came the melodramatically offended response, ‘I am not a guide! I am a student.’ He then proceeded to make chit-chat, asking all the usual questions about what country Angie was from, which city she was from (‘MCG or SCG?’ is how we sometimes get asked this) what she does in Australia, before getting down to brass tacks:

‘Perhaps you would like to come to my Uncle’s silk shop?’
‘You told me you were not a guide!’ said Angie exclaimed.
‘Oh, Madam!’ he cried indignantly, ‘I told you, I am not a guide! I am a student! In the mornings I go to school, and in the afternoon I work.’
‘And what is your job?’
Innocently, he explained: ‘I round up tourists and take them to the silk shop.’

* * *

Naptime at the Nepali Temple

Cow with a sense of humour

Follow That Corpse! A Visit to the Burning Ghats.

2008-09-04T06:30:00.000+10:00

‘Yes please what you want? Rickshaw? Silk shop? Boat? …Hashish?’ (In hushed conspiratorial tones for that last one) ‘Where you going? Hotel? Main ghat? Burning ghat?’

These questions, and variations on them, form a constant soundtrack to any tourist wandering around Varanasi. It’s how seemingly millions of young men make their living; either by acting as a guide or by earning commissions from businesses after they’ve rounded up some rich westerners willing to part with wads of rupees. They’re incredibly persistent, and notoriously greedy when it comes time to pay for whatever service they have provided. They really can make a walk around the streets unpleasant, and are best avoided.

So when it came time to visit the burning (cremation) ghat, we didn’t take up any offers to guide us there, instead attempting to navigate the tangled alleys that sprawl between the buildings crowding the riverside. There aren’t any useful maps of the alleyways; they’re a cartographic nightmare and any sane mapmaker would just stick to producing purposely-inaccurate maps of the Indian countryside (apparently designed to confuse potential invaders.) The alleys dogleg about as they dodge the buildings, which are so tall that you can’t see any distant landmarks. There aren’t any street signs, and I’m pretty sure the roads don’t have names anyway. Plus it’s noisy, with motorbikes honking and weaving at incredible speeds. And of course it stinks, with all the cows and dogs about.

Unnavigable

In the heat of midday we wandered for a sweaty hour or so in what we thought was the vicinity of the cremation ghat. Outside of monsoon season, it would have been a simple case of walking along the water’s edge to our goal, but the high level of the river meant that the riverside pathways were metres underwater. It became obvious that we were never going to find the ghat, and we decided to return to the main road, which feeds pedestrians and bikes into the unnavigable concrete maze we were now lost in.

Back on the main road, in desperation, we looked at a map. While Angie was tracing her finger pointlessly around the page, six men trotted past us, a bamboo stretcher on their shoulders. On the stretcher, wrapped up like an extremely morbid Christmas gift was what was obviously a corpse. It was covered with shimmering fabric, with bright garlands and fluttering tinsel wrapped around the outline of a body. There was only one place this package was going, and we set off after it, our colourful, yet inanimate guide to the ghat.

Back in the tangle, we soon lost our guide. The many bends, corners and anonymous forks of the streetscape, along with the crowd, meant keeping up was impossible. We sat and had a drink, wondering what to do. Soon enough, another gaily festooned cadaver bounced past, and we were on our way again. Sure enough, we soon lost it, but we had the hang of it now. We’d follow the stretcher for as long as we could, then wait patiently until another passed us, when we would begin moving again. In this fashion we soon made it to the ghat. As we neared it, we could tell it was close thanks to the smoke and ash that floated thick in the air.

Sometimes they don't get burnt

Following a crowd, we neared the water’s edge, where a pyre had been built and the wrapped form of a corpse freshly dipped in the Ganges sat atop it. We watched as a man walked around the pile of wood, lighting the straw underneath with a pile of coals held in a handful of hay. The fire was slow to start, and various family members poured ghee (clarified butter) on the now unwrapped body, threw offerings of cigarettes into the fire and took photos. It seemed to be a mostly male affair, and it was all very casual. People weren’t dressed up, and a crowd of onlookers were free to watch. As the fire really got going, we saw some of the rather gruesome things that extreme heat does to skin and flesh.

Apparently this operation runs twenty-four hours a day. This ghat is the most auspicious place a Hindu can be cremated, which explains the high volume of bodies being run through the streets. Awash in smoke and ash from the fire we watched for a while, then left, a little disturbed, but glad to have seen another facet of this unique river.

The ghat at night

Varanasi Boat Ride

2008-09-03T06:47:00.000+10:00

Sleepy time on the river

‘The Quintessential Varanasi Experience’ is how our guidebook talks about a dawn rowboat ride on the Ganges in Varanasi. So, one morning in the still-hot pre-dawn we hauled ourselves out of bed and through the concrete warren of the city towards the river. Halfway there, a boatman spotted us and led us down through unlit tunnels to the water’s edge, where we negotiated a price.

We’d been warned that at the moment, the price would be higher than usual; the monsoon rains swell the river and create strong currents, meaning two or three men are needed to row the boat, rather than the usual solo oarsman. As expected, the boatman made a big deal of how many people were needed to row the boat at this time, but we agreed on a price and boarded the boat. Our ‘boatman’ promptly disappeared back into the dark maze of the city’s alleys, leaving us alone on board with a small boy of around twelve and a man straddling middle and old age. Just how these two were going to power this rather hefty vessel up the river was puzzling.

The solution to the problem of powering such a craft upriver became immediately clear as the young boy reached into a compartment, pumped furiously on a lever inside and a clunky diesel engine grumbled into high-volume life. We were on our way, the vibrations of the engine shaking us from our seats.

‘How nice is this?!’ I yelled at Angie as the orange sphere of the sun began to rise through distant clouds.
‘What?’ she screamed back, leaning into my ear.
‘I said it’s nice!’
‘I told you we should’ve found another boat!’

We chugged upriver, past dramatic riverside buildings, the ghats (steps leading into the water) filled with bathing locals, and boats filled with tourists being rowed by two men with another on the rudder. We vibrated past them at a comparatively breakneck clip, the chug and splutter of the vessel’s mid-mounted tractor engine announcing our presence to all.

The looks we were getting from other tourists out for their Quintessential Varanasi Experience were less than appreciative. Angie felt the grimaces and scowls were because these other tourists felt we were making too much noise. ‘Why would you choose that horrible smoke-and-noise-belching monstrosity for a pleasant morning boat ride?’ their scrunched faces seemed to say. I choose to believe that it was actually jealousy that they were feeling; our superior machine would cover at least twenty percent more water than them, in the process adding to horrid pollution that gives the Ganges it’s distinctive, decidedly unhealthy appearance.

On the left is a man having his morning bath. On the left, stuck in the archway, is a corpse.

Not that the Ganges needs much help in this department; we passed two dead bodies in an hour on the river, one floating freely amongst the garbage and floral offerings, the other wedged in the arch of a semi-submerged temple. Those alive on the shore were more of a spectacle. People bathe, wash clothes and perform ceremonies at the water’s edge, creating a enchanting environment of colour and sound. They also cremate bodies at the ‘burning ghats’ which may explain why the clothes I sent to be washed came back smelling of smoke.

The Teej

2008-09-02T06:45:00.000+10:00

Indian society is incredibly male oriented, however, they have at least one festival dedicated to women, the Teej (spelling probably wildly inaccurate). They also have mother’s day, but this is an import from the West. The Teej, as it was explained to us by our hotel owner, is a two day festival, in honour of Hindu women.
On the first day, the women are showered with gifts from their husbands – jewellery, clothes, flowers and food. On the second day of the Teej, the women are prohibited from eating; they put on their best saris and head to the temple or holy place to make offerings and pray. And for what do they pray? (Here is the male twist in the tale) As our hotelier put it the purpose of the women’s day is for the women to ‘honour their husband, and pray for his health, longevity and success’.

Mmmmm, Fosters

2008-09-02T06:40:00.001+10:00

I don't remember when I last drank Fosters. I do remember it not tasting very good, and I don't think I finished it. This Fosters was less flavousome, but more refreshing.

Varanasi

2008-09-01T06:17:00.000+10:00

High density living

Varanasi is a super-holy city in the North of India. Varanasi is like a teeming, concentrated, museum version of India; it’s less diluted by the human need for personal space and etiquette, which is pretty thinly spread in India to begin with. Everything is more intense. The streets are narrower, the rickshaw drivers are more conniving, the swarming touts are more aggressive, the smell of sun-baked cow dung and open-air urinal runoff is more potent. The sun pounds heat down into the tarp-covered alleys, creating a slowbake oven full of sweating shopkeepers, who are usually comatose on their cushioned shopfloors by lunchtime. Bikes and scooters careen through the narrow passages, and huge bulls lazing on in shady spots block off thoroughfares, forcing pedestrians to find an alternate path through the concrete maze. People carry offerings of flowers, curd, food, water and line up to be let into the high-security, Hindu-only confines of the Golden Temple. Dead bodies are carried through the streets down the Ganges, where they are cremated or just tossed in whole, while people bathe, wash clothes and drink the water just metres away.

In Varanasi, the most remarkable thing to see is just the way people relentlessly get along with their lives amidst all the noise, heat, hassle, death and concrete. It’s plain to see that there’s too many people there, too much stuff going on, but it all works somehow, and makes Varanasi one of the most invigorating, spirited cities I’ve ever been to.

Kite fliers

Happy bull

According to a magazine I was reading, 40% of Indians suffer from hypertension. It's roundabouts like these that cause it.

Leaning Shiva temple in the swolen Ganges

Kite flying is a popular afternoon pastime in Varanasi. Every day near sunset, the sky would fill with hundreds of small, paper kites.

A storm front rumbles in, dropping the temperature an arctic to the mid-thirties.

Bussing It Upper Class in Nepal

2008-08-31T18:08:00.000+10:00

The inside of a Nepali bus is always overcrowded, hot and uncomfortable. The roof of the bus is usually less overcrowded, less hot (thanks to the breeze) and uncomfortable. We took a ride in the upper class for our last bus ride in Nepal, and came away with some new bruises and a wonderful sense of relief due to the fact that there were to be no more Nepali busses on this trip.

The strange faces we a re pulling are probably due to the fact that the bus has just swerved to avoid hitting another car or a sleeping cow or a child using the road as a toilet. When you're on top of the bus and it swerves, it feels far more dramatic and precarious than when you're safely nestled inside, hence the rough heads.

Angie settles into the groove of things

Temples and Monasteries of Lumbini - Mahayana School

2008-08-31T06:47:00.000+10:00

Tibetan Bell

China

Our transport

South Korea (under construction)

China and South Korea

Vietnam (due for completion in 2006)

Austria

Nepal

Work in progress

The German Temple - Lumbini

2008-08-31T06:14:00.000+10:00

Funded entirely by an exceedingly wealthy German woman, this temple belongs to an order of monks from Kathmandu, who use it as a kind of holiday home when it gets too cold up in the hills. It's the most impressive temple fo the lot in Lumbini.

Temples and Monasteries of Lumbini - Theraveda School

2008-08-30T06:58:00.000+10:00

Being such an important site, Buddhists from around the world have built temples in Lumbini. The temples and monuments are funded by foreign entities; sometimes governments fund them, sometimes Buddhist organizations supply the cash, and sometimes a wealthy individual supports the project. This creates a kind of Buddhist embassy zone, which is a fascinating showcase of the religion’s role in cultures around the world, and the ways in which those cultures have influenced Buddhism.

Sri Lanka

Myanmar

Thailand

Japanese Peace Pagoda

Lumbini - Buddha´s Birthplace

2008-08-30T06:45:00.000+10:00

Buddha was born just outside Lumbini somewhere around the 2nd, 3rd or 4th century. It’s one of the four main pilgrimage sites for Buddhists in this region of Nepal/India. It´s really, really... really hot.

Subcontinental Busses

2008-08-29T22:56:00.000+10:00

Just another near miss on Nepal's main highway

Busses in India and Nepal have a distinct homemade aura; the line of rusted spot welds gradually popping to reveal the slick tyres below may be awfully crooked, but they’ve got that same charm that comes with poorly produced handmade souvenirs. Not that this charm is a good thing, but it’s a slight comfort to know that if the end should come around the next blind, crumbling cliff edge, the carriage of my death will have been crafted by the hand of man, rather than a soulless robot in a bus factory.

Nepali safety advisory

Not that I expect the end any time soon. The fact that these vehicles are in such a state of ill-tuned disrepair, along with the woeful state of the roads, along fact that these roads are thick with other, similarly feeble vehicles, means that the ‘Bus Pilots’, as they are known here, rarely get the chance to push their ‘ships’ – I guess they call them that – into the realm of third gear.

Our only bus crash - fortunately we were stationary

So, for the most part, we trundle along through the countryside at a pleasant pace, with the horn taped down in urgent warning should another bus/motorbike/monkey attempt to navigate the same blind bend we’re currently edging around. Compared to the death defiance and we performed daily a year ago in Ecuador, it’s all rather serene, albeit with the odd breathtaking precipitous manoeuvre, just to remind us that, perhaps, we should have taken the train.

The train has more leg room

and beds

Elephant Ride

2008-08-28T06:57:00.000+10:00

All aboard

We took an elephant ride into the Chitwan National Park one afternoon to search for one-horned rhinos. We didn't see any, but it was a fun ride anyway. As a bonus, I got to drive the elephant on the way home.

The trainer made the elephant go by kicking it gently behind the ears

Very tall grass

Deer

Tourists

I tried making the elephant go faster by nudging it behind the ear, like the trainer did. But that just made the elephant flap it's ears, which I think means they're annoyed. I still had the memory of being thrown from the back of an elephant when we washed one the previous day, so I didn't kick it too many times before just letting her go at her own pace.

Elephant Bathtime

2008-08-28T06:42:00.000+10:00

Elephants don’t stay clean without plenty of water, so every day down at the river in Sauraha they have a bath. For a couple of dollars, anyone can join them for a wash, which is a couple of the best dollars I have spent on this trip. The animals seem quite happy to have tourists clambering all over them, and at the trainers command, will spray you with water or wiggle their bodies with enough force to throw you off into the river (the word ‘wiggle’ doesn’t really describe how violently an animal weighed in tonnes can throw a human about – it looks like a wiggle, but feels like a souped-up version of one of those mechanical bull ride machines.)

And just to add an element of danger to the whole experience, there’s a crocodile that lives around the corner, but thankfully, has so far left the elephants and their tourist bathing partners alone. The locals have a rather gruesome method to keep it happy – they throw dogs into the river (a guide told me that last year it ate sixteen.)

Angie gets a bath

Me being thrown into the crocodile infested river

I didn't pay the trainer directly. I had to give the money to the elephant, who grabbed it with her trunk and passed it up.

Sauraha

2008-08-27T22:51:00.000+10:00

After a while travelling through places like Nepal and India, you get used to all the animals on the road. Horses and bullocks are always pulling things around, while cows, pigs, goats and chickens look on from the road’s edge. And of course, there’s always skinny dogs everywhere, exploring plastic bags and food scraps.

But as we walked down the main street of Sauraha, we added a new animal to the list of domesticated road users. Huge elephants plod up and down the streets of the small town, with their trainers perched on their shoulders. They really are enormous, much bigger than I would have imagined, and with their makeup on are impressive beasts indeed. The local horses, who even though they have very nice haircuts and pull around colourful buggies that are the main mode of public transport, look very insignificant next to the pachyderm hulks that cruise nonchalantly around the streets.

In Sauraha, they use the elephants mainly for tourist purposes, running groups into the nearby national park to look for one-horned rhinos. Traditionally, the elephants have for other, more practical functions, such as hauling building materials, chasing wild elephants out of villages and playing elephant polo (unfortunately, we were in town outside of polo season.)

Elephant Making Centre

2008-08-27T18:32:00.000+10:00

All the elephants in Sauraha have to come from somewhere. Up until the 70’s, they trapped wild elephants, but these days there is a centre dedicated to breeding them. The elephants spend most of the day grazing in the jungle, and they come back in the afternoon to eat special treats the trainers make out of grass and molasses. When we visited, there were three two-month-old calves running about the place, and they get pretty much all the attention from visitors. Their mums weren’t worried about the babies coming over to us to play; they were more concerned with when they would be getting their grass and molasses balls.

Pokhara

2008-08-25T06:48:00.000+10:00

Island temple

Somwhere in those clouds is a magnificent mountain range, but the clouds never moved and we never saw the hills

Pokhara Japanese Peace Pagoda

2008-08-25T06:03:00.000+10:00

Nepal

2008-08-18T23:37:00.000+10:00

Mountains thick with snow and wandering yaks; crags and scarps surrounding lonely Buddhist temples; possible yeti encounters. These are the things that, in my head, would be Nepal. We didn’t even have a guidebook when we entered the country, so I’d done even less than usual in the way of research prior to arrival in a new country (which usually involves looking at the colour pictures in the Lonely Planet and then going back to watching television). I’d rearranged my pack with warmer things closer to the top, found my beloved mitten-gloves and let my beard grow thick and luxuriously insulating. So, once we were actually in Nepal, it was rather disconcerting to find myself on a bus zooming through valleys carpeted by fluorescent green rice paddies underneath a pounding sun.

As we hurtled deeper into the country, it just got hotter and sweatier, and I began to suspect we’d accidentally boarded a bus to Vietnam (travel agents and bus booking people are notoriously untrustworthy around here). It was all rather confusing. I didn’t even know that they had monsoon seasons in Nepal, let alone the vicious kind of sun that was now heating us to the point of dehydration.

Random town

When we reached our destination, Pokhara, it only got stranger. We checked in, sat on the bed and a strange, alien sensation washed over me. It was silence. After a little while, I realised I had gone a whole hour without hearing a car horn, bus siren or rickshaw buzzer. A whole hour! Since arriving on the sub-continent a month ago, we’d become so used to the constant noise of traffic that the only time we noticed it was when it wasn’t there anymore. We decided that we would stay in Pokhara for a while.

Car horn free Pokhara

Rishikesh to Gorakhpur. Urgh.

2008-08-16T01:37:00.000+10:00

Motorcycle movie stars

As far as travel days go, this thirty-hour odyssey across Northern India ranks up there with other favourites such us our entry into Guatemala or the boat crash of Panama thing. It started off pleasantly enough, with a slow taxi ride along the highway. The snail pace of the Indian open road meant there was plenty of opportunity to muck around with other road users. Jeff, our co-passenger in the taxi got involved in a sing-off with a rock-star motorcyclist. His flawless a cappella rendition of Bjork’s All the Modern Things, performed with half his body out the window, won him the competition and respect of the passing motorists.

At the train station, a dense picnic was underway on the platform, as hundreds of Indian travellers waited for their rides. Our train arrived, and after a panicked search we found our bunks and rattled off into the night.

Haridwar train platform

Bedtime

We awoke in Lucknow, where we were planning on catching a bus for the next leg of the journey. At the bus station, it all went to pieces. Misinformation piled upon lies and guesses from information desk and ticket counter staff as we desperately tried to escape Lucknow, a city with little in the way of charm but abundant in funky smells. This apology from one ticket seller, who had given Angie some erroneous information, summed up the day that was now only just beginning:

‘I’m sorry ma’am for giving you the wrong information. You see, I am Indian and we only say things to help’

After four frustrating hours and twenty conflicting stories about where the bus was, it became clear that we weren’t going to be bussing it anywhere today. A friendly tourist police officer put us on another bus back to the train station, and arranged for a colleague of his to meet us there, where he directed us to the mysterious arena of the ticket counter.

Lucknow platform

I bought a ticket and our trouble only deepened. The time of the train hadn’t been printed on the ticket, and when I asked around, I was given three wildly different answers as to when the train would be leaving. The apology given by the guy at the bus terminal echoed in my head as I bounced from counter to counter in the station, trying to find two different people who might give the same answer to the same question, but it could not be done. After a few hours of this, progress only came when Angie burst into the ticket office and then burst into tears, much to the puzzlement of the men working there. ‘Why you cry?’ they asked.‘Because I’ve been in Lucknow for seven hours now and all I want to do is get to Gorakhpur and nobody can tell me if I’m going to be able to do that and there’s no busses and I don’t understand this ticket and…’ more in the same hysterical, foot stamping vein.

It worked though, because a guard took pity on this strange frantic westerner in the ‘staff only’ area. He took the ticket, performed some obscure interactions with various other ticket counter staff and produced a ticket for us to Gorakphur, complete with departure time and seat numbers.It took hours of running around and a breakdown by Angie, but we got what we needed. However, we still don’t really understand what happened, and what we need to do in the future to avoid it happening again. This is Indiarail.

Air con

The train pulled out and we left Lucknow, eight hours after we had hoped to have gone. For all our work, we were rewarded with a visit to Gorakhpur, a muddy sewer of a town completely lacking any redeeming features. And another two days of travel to follow.

Happy busker

Lovely Gorakhpur

Cows and Monkies

2008-08-13T23:05:00.000+10:00

Angie and really, really small cow

Rishikesh Statues

2008-08-12T17:15:00.000+10:00

Rishikesh

2008-08-12T17:03:00.000+10:00

The bridge over the Ganges

Rishikesh is a holy city near the start of the Ganges. It's also where the Beatles stayed when they visited India, and where they wrote bits of the White Album.

Standard breakfast drinks: tea and fresh lime soda

Ganges at night

Choice is Wonderful

2008-08-09T04:57:00.000+10:00

Sit or squat, everyone's happy!

A New Addiction

2008-08-09T04:54:00.000+10:00

A Teaching from the Dalai Lama

2008-08-04T06:27:00.000+10:00

While we were in McLeod Ganj, the Dalai Lama gave a series of teachings, something he does every now and then around this time of the year. We only went to one session, because I was battling a brutal flu, and it was a struggle just to get out of bed. The security was incredibly tight – we had to pre-register to attend, upon entry we were both given the most thorough frisking either of us had ever enjoyed, and guards armed with machine guns patrolled the crowd while the Dalai Lama talked.

Photos were forbidden on the day, but this is the statue the Dalai Lama sat in front of

There were hundreds of monks there, along with lots of Tibetans, Koreans and Westerners. Everyone sat on the floor, and bands of monks wandered through the crowd pouring butter tea for everyone (butter tea tastes like normal, milky tea, but with half a stick of butter mixed in). Seated atop a small altar, the Dalai Lama delivered his teaching (which focused on effective meditation techniques and the difference between reality and what we perceive) in Tibetan, and every fifteen minutes or so he would stop so the Korean translator could translate over the microphone. There were English and Chinese translations broadcast over the radio at the same time. For those whose view of the Dalai Lama was blocked by a pillar or a tree (the ones the hall had been built around), a scattering of large plasma screens showed his spritely gesticulations as he talked. Like every famous person, he was shorter than I expected, and also quite a bit plumper, but he moved like a man much less than his 73 years.

Prayer wheels behind the temple

The teaching went for about two and a half hours, which was clearly too long for the large group of elderly Tibetan devotees near us – they spent most of the time throwing balls of paper at each other and giggling quietly like naughty schoolkids. At the end, everyone stood up and the Dalai Lama left, encircled by an entourage of monks and serious-looking, swivel-head men in suits.

It was fantastic.

Trippinvignettes - Number 7

2008-08-01T22:29:00.002+10:00

In which ‘J2’, in a fit of violence-induced-spluttering, threatens to do away with an entire village, a village that had saved our skins days before. Full story here.

Mansucum, Panama.

Tsuglagkhang Temple, Residence of the Dalai Lama

2008-07-28T06:38:00.000+10:00

For those who've been to, or even driven past, the Nan Tien Temple near Wollongong, this temple would seem pretty humble. But it has the same beautiful atmosphere and sense of absolute calm, and the Dalai Lama lives out back, too.

Guard on patrol

Monk and butter candles

Angie spins wheels

McLeod Ganj - A Piece of Tibet

2008-07-26T09:58:00.000+10:00

The main street and the gompa (temple)

Ever since he fled Tibet back 1959, the Dalai Lama has called McLeod Ganj his place of residence (it is never referred to as his ‘home’). From here the government in exile campaigns for true autonomy – a struggle that seems to be increasingly and tragically futile. Although there is support coming from various world powers, the stubbornness and greed shown by the Chinese government prevents any fair resolution from being reached.

McLeod Ganj

Along with the tragic history of Tibet, the Tibet Museum has some amazing photos of the Dalai Lama riding a donkey through the Himalayas on his way to India; eventually a quarter of a million Tibetans would make a similar journey to escape persecution in their own country. It is a highly risky journey – twenty-two days of hiking over the highest mountain passes in the world, suffering frostbite (most of the refugees do), and reaching India or Nepal does not guarantee that they wont be sent back to Lhasa and severe, inhuman punishment.

Typical weather in McLeod Ganj

Rain became a big part of our lives in McLeod Ganj

Many of them came to McLeod Ganj, and there is a strong Tibetan culture here. Every shop and hotel display ‘Free Tibet’ posters and Tibetan flags (which the Chinese government has banned in ‘Tibet China’, as they call it officially. They have also ‘banned’ the Dalai Lama from being reincarnated in Tibet). There are Buddhist prayer flags flying from most of the buildings and Tibetan stallholders selling jewellery and Tibetan food.

Tibetan flag and prayer flags

Badminton time

The Tibetan refugees seem to be doing well here, but it is sad to think that they’d probably rather be at home in a free Tibet, without fear of persecution.

Prayer wheels in the Gompa

Monks protest for a free Tibet. If they did this in Tibet, they'd be in prison for years.

The Golden Temple in Amritsar

2008-07-24T20:54:00.000+10:00

This is the Golden Temple, or Harmandir Sahib, in Amritsar. It's the holiest place there is for Sikhs, but everyone else is welcome to come and visit too. The complex consists of a large square building that surrounds a courtyard and pool. Just about everything is marble, and what isn't marble is painted white, meaning that it is blinding in the midday sun. In the middle of the pool is the temple, covered in 750 kilograms of gold.

Most of the time at the temple we were posing for photos with visiting Indian families.

Or sometimes just their confused babies

There is a huge dining hall, where they dish out tasty free food to anyone who wants it. They also provide free accomodation for everyone (a big part of Sikhism is the idea of being inclusive, which means helping out everybody, no matter their religion, status or history). We didn't stay in the complex, it was too hot. We wimpled out and got an air-conditioned hotel room instead.

Angie is a slow eater, so we were last out

Corn man outside the temple

These guys are the groundskeepers who look after the gardens surrounding the temple complex. They wanted their photo taken just for the fun of it, they weren't even really interested in seeing the result

Bathing in the healing water at dusk

More Golden Temple

2008-07-24T15:55:00.000+10:00

Border Closing Weirdness

2008-07-23T01:02:00.000+10:00

India and Pakistan have long been less than model neighbours. They have an intense rivalry that stems from a dispute over their northern border – they both want Kashmir and they both feel that the other party has no right to it at all. The absurd pinnacle of this rivalry came back in 1998 when the two countries began exploding nuclear warheads in an grave display of oneupmanship that threatened to render the whole point moot by destroying the world.

Thankfully, they never extended to exploding these warheads over each other’s borders, but the sweaty, mustachioed antipathy is still alive and screaming. Every day at around 5pm, on the only land crossing between the two nations, all the angst and nationalism is stirred up and set loose with the gusto of an atom bomb.

As with everything in India, it all starts with a mad rush. This mad rush occurs on the 1 km stretch between the outer gate, where there has been tightly packed chanting and dancing since 4 o’clock, and the grandstands surrounding the inner gate, the actual spot where India stops and Pakistan begins. The outer gate opens at 5, and the stands soon fill up (being foreigners, we were directed to the VIP section.) When the stands are full, people sit on the edge of the road.

The last cross-border bus of the day passes through. The uniformed driver shakes hands with the guards and everyone, literally everyone in the crowd waves goodbye.

The music starts up, from both sides. For the entire afternoon, everything that happens here on the Indian side is mirrored over on the Pakistani side, including the raising of the volume of the poppy but patriotic music.

Two flags are produced, and people line up for the chance at running with the flags down to the main gate and back. This is a big, big deal. Scuffles threaten to break out between Grandmas when someone pushes in. When the men are allowed to join the queue, the two lines disappear and are replaced by a swarm of eager flag-bearers. Soldiers step in and attempt to restore order.

After a couple more laps down to Pakistan and back, two supremely chuffed men are chosen to take the flags to the highest point on the VIP stand and begin waving the colours furiously at their counterparts on the other side.

Dancing begins. The PA is pushed to the brink of implosion in the effort to drown out the Pakistan-themed tunes blasting over from the West. The women dance separately from the men, who stand at the dividing rope, seeing how close to the girls they can get before being threatened by a stick-wielding guard. Everyone chants manically as the MC works them up with some call and response cheers.

The ceremony begins. The guards emerge from out back where they have been warming up by way of star jumps (these guys actually need to be very elastic to take part in this). The first event is the yelling competition. A few of the guards take turns yelling into the microphone as loud as they can for as long as they can. A pair then march off and position themselves between the gates of the two countries. Everyone cheers.

There is some more yelling, and then the guards march melodramatically towards the gate (to more adoring cheers). It’s quite amazing that they can move like this, given that they are in special shoes that look like boots, but are actually high heels. These guys have to look taller than the Pakistani guards. In a few years, they’ll probably all be on stilts.

The flag waving continues.

By now everyone has been sitting in the pulsing heat for an inordinate amount of time. With no shelter from the sun, my memory didn’t quite encode everything that happened next. It is all just a blur of extremely high kicking, fierce expressions, more yelling, a strange thing where the ropes of the flags are endlessly tossed about and of course, more cheering from the perspiring masses.

After numerous ceremonial false starts, the flags are ever-so-slowly lowered. For once there is no cheering. Everyone is concentrating acutely on making sure both flags come down at the same time. If one were brought down before the other, there’d be riots.

The flag is whisked away, to rapturous cheering. For a brief second it is presented like a newborn to a sea of ecstatic fathers, and then locked away for the night. More cheering.

And the ceremony is finished. People descend to the road and mingle with the guards to have their photos taken and to stand five-deep at the gate yelling to people on the Pakistan side. The entire process took about two hours.

I imagine it was far more theatrical than the closing of most of the borders we’ve passed through on this trip, which I assume would consist of a lone guard cheerfully locking the padlock on the boom gate then striding off to count a pocketful of unofficial ‘border taxes’ charged to naïve gringos, keyring swinging on his index finger as he whistles a happy tune. But the ceremony serves an important purpose, because these two countries obviously need an outlet to blow off their nationalistic steam. As long as they continue to confine their game of keeping-up-with-Joneses in this bizarre forum, along with the odd game of international cricket, we should all be safe.

Delhi Street Cows

2008-07-22T22:41:00.000+10:00

Cows roam free on the streets of Delhi, like enormous street dogs with an aura of absolute calm. This quiet confidence is because to Hindus, cows are sacred and are to be respected at all times (so it is the cows who have right of way.) In groups or alone, they dawdle down the busy streets and laneways, completely unaffected by the utter mayhem that surrounds them, oblivious to the congestion their bulk causes in the tightly packed thoroughfares.

The closest these beasts ever seem to come to experiencing hostility is from the odd cyclerickshaw driver, who will slap their rump and yell at them when they block the path, but apart from that, they live a blessed urban life. Shopkeepers seem to really like the cows. On one particularly hot day, I saw one man pouring water over one beast that was splayed out in front of his shop’s entrance. The cow was completely blocking anyone’s path into the store, but the clerk repeatedly returned inside to refill a glass with water before emptying it over the sacred animal’s head. Actually, perhaps this was his non-violent way to try to get the cow to move, but whatever his motive, the animal obviously loved this trickling reprieve from the heat.

On another night, I was inside a shop chatting to the owner, when a cow lumbered past. The man quickly said something to one of the clerks, who then grabbed a bag of chapatti (bread) and chased off down the street after it. He returned minutes later, a little deflated. Apparently the cow had refused to eat the bread. ‘She didn’t want it. Everyone feeds the cows’ the owner told me, smiling.

Of course with all these well-fed (but possibly malnutritioned – there is not a blade patch of grass to be seen anywhere) cows rambling about the place, a mess is inevitable. The ineffective ‘cardboard on top of it’ method of dealing with such unpleasantness is usually employed, and then the rains fall and the circle of life continues. In the heat preceding the cleansing precipitation however, the clotted, viscid odour of curry-fed bovines mixes with the smells of spices, cooking oil and leatherwork, giving the streets their unique, sickeningly pungent atmosphere.

The Bookshop Trick

2008-07-21T22:21:00.000+10:00

Me walking

We went for a walk one day to Connaught Place, which is an important site for tourists who wish to look at things (such as a circular park, a bunch of imported chain stores and an unnatural thickness of honking vehicles) and is thus a magnet for touts and scammers. On the way we were accosted by one such fellow, whose game was to act as your highly-paid tour guide, whether you want a highly-paid tour guide or not.

‘Don’t you want to see the India Gate, sir?’
‘Yeah, yeah I do but I’ll find it, thanks.’
‘But the Red Fort? Don’t you want to see the Red Fort, sir?’
‘Uh, I don’t know. Yeah, but I’ve got a book, we’ll find it.’
‘Why not sir? Why do you not want to see the Red Fort?’
‘Uh, I do, but…’
‘Okay I will show you the Red Fort, sir’
‘Nah, that’s okay. I’ll be able to find it’
‘No sir, I will come with you. We go.’

This could have gone on for hours, but Angie stepped in with a few stern words (for both me and the ‘guide’)

‘You’ve just got to be tougher with them. Stand up to them a bit.‘ she told me. ‘No!’ she demonstrated, index finger gesticulating formidably ‘We just want to be alone and explore the city ourselves!’

Predictably, this had no effect whatsoever on our unwanted companion. For a while longer we tried the ‘just ignore him and he’ll go away’ tactic of getting rid of him, but Angie soon grew tired of that and started ordering him again to leave us alone!! (Her exclamation marks). Of course that didn’t work, and he began pointing out things that he thought we’d find interesting. He could tell we’d find them of interest because we were already looking at them by the time he’d worked out what they were. ‘Ah, yes’ he explained form behind. ‘This is Piccadelhi’ after he saw us scoffing at an unamusing row of English phone boxes with ‘Piccadelhi’ written on them outside some awful shop.

It all came undone in a nearby bookshop. ‘Ah, yes’, he intoned again from three steps behind, ‘This is the Jain Book Depot’ as we crossed the road towards the Jain Book Depot. We went inside, thinking we could somehow lose him in a small retail space. Perhaps the lights would confuse him. We looked at books for five minutes, every now and then surreptitiously glancing toward the door to see if he’d gone. Each time, he waved back, smiling.

A much more agreeable character we encountered near Connaught Place

We decided to make a run for it; maybe try another bookshop. As we were on our way out, Angie whispered to me: ‘I’m just going to say something to him as we leave’ I led the way, brushing nonchalantly past our companion and pushing open the door, then froze mid-stride as Angie’s clear voice boomed out from behind me, drowning out all other noise in the busy store.

‘DO. NOT. FOLLOW. US!’ (Her capitals, full stops and bold type).

‘Oh-kay’ he sing-songed nervously as all eyes bounced between his embarrassed face and this small white woman with an abnormally loud voice. Sure enough, it worked, and we never saw him again.

Delhi Photos

2008-07-20T22:35:00.000+10:00

Quiet cards on a back street

We Arrive in India

2008-07-18T22:05:00.000+10:00

Our hotel was hiding in there somewhere

Utterly exhausted, we arrived in Delhi; my bodyclock was telling me it now 3am and demanded I lie down and have a long, deep sleep. All my faculties were concentrated on the singular goal of spotting my name on a board held by the smiling, pre-arranged driver from the hotel, then of course motoring off to our pre-booked bed.

Of course, there was no sign to be seen, and no sign of our driver.

We now faced the vile prospect of catching a taxi from the airport to Central Delhi. Generally, taxi drivers are bastards, and the ones who hang around airports and bus stations are utter bastards. The drivers of Delhi have a reputation for being a particularly devious and untrustworthy breed; never taking you where you ask, dropping you off in the middle of nowhere, overcharging and generally enjoying making your life hell.

With this in mind we peered outside to a screaming throng of touts, drivers and all the kinds of characters you don’t want to deal with in the fragile state brought on by a sleepless international flight.

We stepped outside the terminal to whoops of greedy glee as taxi touts spotted us - another delirious and naïve white couple, the exact kind that can usually be parted from large wads of their cash without too much trouble.

The slight concession of a pre-paid system of taxis exists at the airport, where you buy a slip that tells the driver where you want to go and give them that slip as payment when you’re there. After going through an attempted scam by the clerk (which brought the total number of attempts on our cash to three for the day already; one short changing by a phone attendant and another involving miscellaneous and unspecified ‘other taxes’ at the currency exchange), we were handed our precious, precious slip.

So of course, this slip was now the key to all our happiness. I left Angie in charge of it. The driver needed to have the slip signed by a guard before we could leave the airport, and a small battle ensued inside our cantankerous Morris Minor when the driver asked for her to hand it over. With steel in her eyes she passed it forward, it never left her sight until it was handed back to her. Pure mother bear instinct.

We left the airport and headed out underneath a low slung haze, thinking only of bed. After all the usual near-misses and close-calls that arise when an entire population of drivers regard lane markings and traffic lights mere suggestions, we arrived in the vicinity of our hotel. Exactly where our hotel was no-one was sure, and we spent a good deal of time bouncing down alleys that didn’t exist on my map, or any other map, probably.

Eventually we found it: a collection of wood-walled, dusty rooms with cardboard thin mattresses. Mattresses! I was ecstatic at the thought that I might very soon be stretching out on a horizontal plane. However, Angie was sure there were better accommodations to be found and went off in search of them. Meanwhile, my head pitched and yawed atop my slumped body in what you might call a lobby.

She soon returned with the happy news that a room had been found and I would presently be free to lapse into blissful unconsciousness. We got to the room, and I have never been happier to find myself in front of a circular bed seven feet in diameter, though at that point, I would have been delighted by a reasonably thick pile of hay.

Every time we entered or exited the room, we did battle with this, the World's most complicated light switch

Foggy London Town

2008-07-17T19:41:00.000+10:00

Our gracious host Rochelle, who saved us from impossible accommodation prices in London

It was all so wonderfully English!

Bristol Critters (The Zoo)

2008-07-14T20:28:00.000+10:00

Because it was close to feeding time, this Indian lioness was pacing back and forth, eying off anything that looked like a source of food. Very similar to the way Angie acts when it is close to her feeding time.

This thing looked suspiciously like a common housecat to me

Pygmy Hippo

Looking down on a seal and the underwater walkway

A contraption designed to measure how fast children could run. Paul got up to 35kph, I got 30, Angie and Charlotte made it somewhere into the mid-20's

Meerkats

Bristol

2008-07-14T18:35:00.000+10:00

We went to Bristol to visit Paul and Charolette, who we last saw somewhere in Nicaragua. Bristol is a very English-looking place.

Luckily we weren't trying to find Clifton Cathedral

School for the underprivileged

English food. A slighlty warm (in places) pasty with chips and curry sauce. Yummo!

New York Buildings

2008-07-13T21:28:00.006+10:00

The organ in St Patrick's Cathedral

Empire State Building

Flatiron Building

The Chrysler Building

London Tourist Type Things

2008-07-10T18:23:00.000+10:00

The Eye

Big Ben and Regular Angie

The Tate Modern and some of the biggest graffiti-type paintings I've seen

Camden

Hyde Park, where the overgrown grass made some of the park goers look like big cats waiting for a kill

Canada...

2008-07-08T22:27:00.000+10:00

Canadian buildings

A quirk in our round-the-world ticket meant we had to fly out of Canada, rather than America. Here is just about everything of interest we saw in Toronto before flying oot the same day.

Canadian cafeteria

Canadian taxi and Canadian humour

Canadian train station

Flights oot of Canada

Leaving America

2008-07-07T22:14:00.000+10:00

After a restful month in Philadelphia, we had to move on. It was a fantastic rest from the silly amount of moving we had been doing. When the day came to leave, it was very sad for Angie and Stephie - as they said, it kept 'raining on their faces'.

Angie on our bus to New York

The last lights of The States we saw as the bus to Canada pulled out of the city - 'Tattoo', 'The World of DVD Female Peep Show Male Peep Show', 'Hot and Crusty'

Trippinvignettes - Number 6

2008-07-06T07:08:00.003+10:00

This was less a quote, more a mantra repeated by ‘Dr. Blake’. Whenever someone said something he agreed with, he’d display his concurrence by pulling out his trusty old ‘Makes Sense’ verbal rubber stamp, marking the exchange a success for rationality. He’d even do it to things that he said, sprinkling the stamp about in a way that, in the end, had little meaning, and made no sense at all.

Various locations, Ecuador.

Happy Birthday America

2008-07-04T21:54:00.000+10:00

We were still in Philly for America's birthday party, which is special, because that's where America was born. We put on the colours, ate lots of food that matched our clothes, sang the theme song and watched some in-your-face fireworks. It was quite a bash.

Angie's contribution to the big celebration - marshmallow and strawberry kebabs. Red, white and blue ones, of course.

A couple of days later, the party was still going. We went to watch some more fireworks, but got stuck in traffic. It worked well though, because then it started bucketing down, and we were stuck right in front of the show.

Around Philadelphia

2008-07-03T22:10:00.000+10:00

To the Shore! Atlantic City!!

2008-06-30T21:52:00.000+10:00

The boardwalk

On the Eastern side of America, when you feel like some time at the beach, you don't go to the coast, you go to the shore. We went to the shore, to Atlantic City. Atlantic City is a beachside mini-Vegas with all the class and sophistication you would expect from a gambling town. The boardwalk is the heart of the city. It runs along the beach and is lined with huge casinos, malls, gaming parlours and an infinite number of souvenir shops selling some really, really nice stuff.

Some of the classier merchandise

Perhaps the most shocking revelation I've had in a while came while we were strolling along the boards. It turns out that the original game of Monopoly was not based on London, but actually based on the Atlantic City boardwalk! Egads! It took me a while to get over that.

Cold water

One mall had beach-themed resting areas set high above the waves

Globe of DEATH!!

We went to a restaurant that gave out free paper hats

Surfer

Philly Loves Rocky

2008-06-29T22:16:00.000+10:00

Skip forward to the 1.50 mark to see the important bit

Apparently the Rocky character is based on someone real, and the Rocky tributes refer to both versions

Everyone in Philadelphia loves Rocky. The museum steps that Rocky runs up are probably the most important tourist attraction in the whole city, and this is the city where they signed the Declaration of Independence. At any one time, there is always at least one person skipping up the steps and jumping around at the top.

This is Angie and Stephie doing the famous run, but you'll notice that in the original, Rocky didn't run up the steps holding his best friend's hand.

Around New York

2008-06-22T20:10:00.000+10:00

We spent a couple of days in New York, and it's a wonderful city. We ate bagels for breakfast, wandered around, navigated the web-like subway, ate pizza in Little Italy, saw a few sights, ate in Chinatown and spent most of the time gawking at the inhuman enormity of the place.

Angie and a taxi

The Statue of Liberty on Times Square

The real one through the fog

Outside the Rockefeller Center, there is this Meccano-ish model of the building

They're not shy with the flags

A walkway around Ground Zero

Ground Zero

Ray Shinnery, an old bluesman we saw at a club in Greenwich Village

Trippinvignettes - Number 5

2008-06-22T01:42:00.004+10:00

In which a pair of recently graduated accountants from Canberra (how could this quote not be awesome?), discuss the horrors of travel and the bliss of Public Servitude.

‘We can’t wait to get back to our new government jobs, even though we didn’t vote for this government’

‘AGREED’

Point Hostel, Lima, Peru.

Philly Phoods

2008-06-21T23:44:00.000+10:00

A Phake Philly Cheesteak (suitable for vegetarians, this is made with soy chicken and the closest I got to the real thing)

Philadelphians are intensely proud of their native foods, and there are two snacks in particular that are their absolute pride and joy. The first is the Philly Cheesesteak, which is a portion of a shredded up cow grilled and dumped on a bun along with some onions and a good dollop of Cheez Whiz. It’s the kind of thing best enjoyed at around 2:30 in the morning after all the bars in Pennsylvania close (for some strange reason, all the bars in Pennsylvania close at 2).

The second thing they love in Philadelphia is the bizarrely named ‘Water Ice’ Water ice is not really water; it’s not quite ice. It’s something in-between (but it’s not gelato or sorbet or a slurpee). Whatever it is, it’s loaded up with noxious levels of colours and flavours and served with a spoon and is fantastic in the sun.

A face-sized breakfast burrito for brunch at Sabrina's (a favourite of Philadelphia). It came with a side of half a dozen chopped and fried potatoes.

Angie destroys a Phillies hotdog

Philllies ice-cream, which is cream and chocolate suspended in a bath of cool sugar.

A Baseball Game

2008-06-20T12:45:00.000+10:00

We went to see the Philadelphia Phillies play the Los Angeles Angels

When someone scores a home run, this bell lights up and starts swinging. It stayed motionless while we were there.

The bell, the lights and the city

This is something called 'rally caps'. If your team is losing, you put your hat on upside down, spurring them onto wonderful victory. The Phillies lost 6 - 1.

The Magic Garden

2008-06-20T05:03:00.000+10:00

This is the kind of thing that a person can do when they acquire a house, a bunch of tiles, glass and mirrors and a couple of decades to put it all together

New York Round One

2008-06-19T18:38:00.000+10:00

My first day in New York was an ulcer-inducing succession of problems, setbacks and ‘very, very unusual’ computer malfunctions, as I went about obtaining my visa for India. In the capital of the world, the internet had somehow not made it down to street level, and on the rare occasion that it was available, cost at least eighteen, eighteen dollars an hour. After an ordeal I’d rather not recall, I submitted my application and began the nervous wait for my passport to be returned. Our flight to London left in two and half weeks, and processing time for an Indian visa was two to three weeks…

Meanwhile, Angie had a wonderful day browsing through expensive shops, making new friends in Central Park and even had a New Yorker buy her a coffee when she ordered before realising she had no cash. !!!

Once we got to eat some of the massive, famous New York Pizza slices, everything was ok.

Philly (delphia)

2008-06-11T07:13:00.000+10:00

After fifteen months or so of constant traveling, we were very excited at the prospect of seeing Angie's best friend Stephie, and also excited at the prospect of spending extended periods on the couch in front of her tv.

Road Photos from Arizona, Nevada and Utah

2008-06-09T09:37:00.000+10:00

The road to Vegas

Entering Bryce Canyon National Park

Outside Page, Utah

Lafonda at Monument Valley

These caravans are everywhere in the desert. This is a relatively medium-sized specimen, towing a smallish SUV

Roadside dinosaurs in Arizona

Trucks mating

Trippinvignettes - Number 4

2008-06-09T02:36:00.002+10:00

In which ‘The Quintessential Whinging Mature-Aged Tour Group Participant’ relates, with childlike melodrama, his disgust at spending too long at an idyllic natural waterhole fed by geothermal underground springs. This was the first thing he said after looking around for ten seconds, and I thought his tour guide did a very good job of not slapping him and sending him to sit in the car while everyone else enjoyed themselves.

‘We’re not going to stay here for TWO HOURS are we?’

Ojo del Agua, Isla Ometepe, Nicaragua.

The Painted Desert

2008-06-08T12:40:00.000+10:00

Wood-Shaped Rocks in the Petrified Forest

2008-06-08T10:17:00.000+10:00

It looks like wood, but this is solid stone

Monument Valley. More strange rocks.

2008-06-07T11:33:00.001+10:00

Bryce Canyon Weirdness

2008-06-06T05:38:00.000+10:00

Las Vegas Lights

2008-06-05T02:39:00.000+10:00

We spent a couple of days wandering around Las Vegas. It wasn't the glamour-fest we'd been led to expect from TV, it was more of a tracksuit-fest. But it was still fun to see; a giant museum of neon, money, food buffets and holidaying families.

Angie narrowly avoids being stepped on by a massive clown

The Roundabout Bar - closed!

This is Paris, a French-themed casino that has a very clever lighting system that makes it appear as though you are in Paris on twilight in a park full of slot machines

Hoover Dam

2008-06-03T14:43:00.000+10:00

Chloride. Lame.

2008-06-03T09:14:00.000+10:00

There are a few genuine ghost towns littered about the Southwest, by-products of the earlier days of the mining industry. Chloride isn't one of them, but, supposedly, it's where you go to find out about them. Our informant in Chloride (a shopkeeper) pointed us to Cyanide City (located behind his shop), a lame 'reconstruction' of a ghost town, where they have shootouts every Saturday.

Fortunately, we missed the spectacle of fake dueling cowboys and the tourists who come to see them. Unfortunately, the roads to any real ghost towns were deemed impassable for Lafonda, and we saw no ghosts, no towns.

The Grand Canyon

2008-06-02T08:00:00.000+10:00

Angie in a big hole

That's us on the right

Montezuma Well

2008-06-02T02:39:00.000+10:00

Our New Travel Partner

2008-06-01T10:19:00.000+10:00

Meet Lafawnda Shauntain La-donna, our travel partner and transport as we drive around America's South West. She's a rather boring looking Ford Focus, but is very concerned about our safety (she bursts into fits of panicky beeping if we undo our seatbelts while in motion and locks the doors as soon as we take off).