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.)

Bad Travelers

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.

Gili Air

Rustbucket transportation

Bye Mumbai, Bye India.

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

Varanasi Boat Ride

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.

Bussing It Upper Class in Nepal

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

Subcontinental Busses

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

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.