This is The End...

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.)

Gili Air Breakfast

The fruit, the coffee and the view

The location

The Golden Temple in Amritsar

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

Delhi Street Cows

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.

Bristol

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!

Happy Birthday America

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 New York

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

Philly Phoods

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.

New York Round One

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.

Rare Sighting of Us

Angie says there aren't enough pictures of us on the blog, so here's a photo of us a breakfast in Zipolite. You can see my hair is getting rather long these days, resulting in me being called Gringo Rasta (as in Rastafarian) more than once by local kids.

Yellow Flag (moderate danger)