Bangkok and Cambodia

So our flight from Kathmandu to Bangkok was fairly uneventful...though I was very surprised as to how restless I got on a 3 hour flight...tell me to spend a 12 hour day on a truck and it’s no problem, 3 hours on a plane and I was restless as hell!!! When we arrived in Bangkok we were due to have our first experience of public transport...and an experience it was as when we got there we discovered that all the buses had been cancelled for some reason!! So the first experience was to experience the unpredictability of public transport!! So plan B was to find taxis for us all and once that was sorted we drove into Bangkok. It was the evening time as we were driving in and was lovely to see the lights of the city as we drove in. None of us did much that evening except to venture out for some food...which was an ordeal in itself considering how long we waited for food, though we quickly learned that this was just the way it was done in Thailand and food in restaurants is never rushed...which is fine in some situations but not when a large group of hungry travellers rock up looking for some food before bedtime!!

My first day in Bangkok was action packed in the sight-seeing sense! We were up early to get some breakfast and head off to the Grand Palace...however as soon as we went to head off the heavens opened!! So we (quite literally) rain checked for a couple of hours to see if it would improve and went to a local cafe for a drink and to use the internet. We literally set up shop in Temple 75 for the few days; there was always at least 2 or 3 UktoOzers there at any given time!! Luckily the rain did die off and myself, Rosie and Kev headed off to find ourselves the Grand Palace. It was only a 15 minute walk from the hostel but due to some very odd traffic junctions instead of just crossing the one road we needed to we ended up having to cross about 8 going the whole way around the junction! When we did get up to the Palace myself and Rosie put our scarves over our shoulders to cover up and went to go get tickets....only to get shouted at by a man with a megaphone that we had to borrow clothes from the cloakroom to cover our shoulders. We said we had scarves on but this wasn’t acceptable so we had to rethink. To get a loan of clothes from the cloakroom would have been a 40 minute wait but the Palace closed an hour later which wouldn’t have left us with a lot of time to actually see it. We then saw someone walking out with a scarf over their shoulders so we said we’d give it a try, went and bought the tickets and joined another queue...to get shouted at again about our shoulders! The most annoying thing about all this was that other women were wearing sheer shirts so their shoulders were actually visible so we don’t really know why they were having such a fit about our scarves which properly covered us! So we dashed back to the cloakroom...only for the dude with his megaphone to announce they had run out of clothes and we would all have to wait until clothes came back. At this point we were both getting slightly pissed off about the whole situation, but we remembered that there was loads of clothes stalls outside the Palace (obviously preying on tourists needing clothes!!) selling t-shirts and the like. So we went outside the gates and went looking for something cheap and slightly ok looking...but all we found were horrendous luminous coloured Hawaiian shirts!! We looked at each other and without saying a word walked off only for the little lady to shout after us “For lend, for lend”. So it turned out all the stalls outside rented clothes to tourists and were there for when the cloakroom ran out. So having a lend of the horrendous shirt rather than buying it was acceptable in both our minds so Rosie got a lovely luminous green and I a rather fetching fuchsia pink!! Once we were all kitted out we popped back inside and finally made it into the Palace and found Kev (I didn’t forget in that whole story that he was with us...just being a guy he didn’t have wardrobe issues to deal with so he went in ahead of us to walk around in case we ran out of time!!). The Palace itself was pretty impressive. I’m not saying I would live there...it was all a bit sparkly and bright for me but it was fabulous to look at. Everything had shiny tiles and sparkles all over it. And the roofs of the buildings were really ornate. My favourite part of it was probably the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The Emerald Buddha is one of the national treasures of Thailand...and ironically enough is actually made of jade!! When it was found it was presumed to be emerald and so it got its name but years later was found to be jade but the name never changed. It is a tiny Buddha in comparison to all the other ones that are usually in the temples and it was sitting high on a very fancy, ornate, gold throne type thing way up at the top of the temple. We wandered around the Palace grounds for about an hour or so and then we were all photoed out and me and Rosie were definitely ready to lose our latest fashion statement! So we headed out and made our way to Wat Pho, where the famous Reclining Buddha resides. Triona had mentioned the Reclining Buddha to me in emails but I definitely didn’t expect to see what I saw. I knew it was unusual as Buddha is usually depicted sitting cross legged or on some occasions standing but never lying down. So when we got to Wat Pho we walked around all the temples within the grounds looking for this lying down Buddha. We might have found it a whole lot quicker had we realised that it was a MASSIVE statue rather than just a little one that could fit in any temple. We were approaching one large temple and I could see through the window what I said to the others was “a large horizontal piece of gold”. We walked a little closer and realised that yep we had found it and holy crap it was huge!! Pictures and dimensions would do nothing to describe the enormity of it; it is truly something you have to see to get an idea of exactly how huge it is!!  When we left the temple the ticket man was very kind and told us that the ticket would get us into a couple of other temples and that a tuk tuk would cost us the equivalent of 30cent, so in we hopped and off we went. He brought us to the first temple which supposedly was the happy Buddha with a big belly....and the temple was shut...so we got slightly suspicious at this stage and asked the driver where else was marked on the map. When he told us, a quick consultation with our guide books told us that all the temples that were marked were closed so we asked him to just take us home but that we would still pay him. At which point he started saying he was going to take us to some sort of Thai craft showroom but that we didn’t have to buy anything just look. We point blank refused and told us to just take us home, so we started off and after a few minutes he pulled over and tried to talk us into going to a different shop with clothes in it. Once again we said no and insisted that he take us home, he wasn’t particularly happy about it but he did eventually give in and took us home...though he dropped us a couple roads up from the hostel...I think he was trying to get some kind of revenge on us!! So it was a jam packed day 1 in Bangkok!

Day 2 was just as eventful. Rosie, Joe and I headed off on a walk to the river in the morning with the plan of walking down the river to the Temple of Dawn, however when we reached the river we discovered that there wasn’t a nice river walkway so we decided to ferry it up to the temple instead. The temple was lovely and had lots of little temples and what not within the ground so we had a good walk around and then Rosie and I did a boat ride around the canals. We both really enjoyed this as we got to see all the houses that hang out over the canal with all the little boats parked outside. Unfortunately as we weren’t there on the weekend we didn’t get to see the floating markets which was slightly disappointing...however we did see a crocodile sun bathing on a step just out of the canal which was kind of cool!! After that was more ferries back up the river to a fish and flower market and then we found our way to a Buddha temple that had hundreds of colourful prayer lanterns hanging from strings across the courtyard. I had expected most of the temples throughout South East Asia to remind me of the ones that I had seen in South Korea but had been pleasantly surprised at the totally different style in Bangkok. But this temple was the first time that I was reminded of Korea which was quite nice. Once we were finished there and had tracked down a tuk tuk that didn’t try taking us once again to the Thai crafts exhibition place we went to the Marble Temple. Again this temple was amazing to look at but we decided not to buy a ticket and to just walk around the grounds...which worked out pretty well as we walked past a back gate which was open so still got to see the inside of the temple and take a picture!! Once we were finished our exploration of the Marble Temple we headed back to the hostel after a very busy day of sightseeing. However the day was far from over as that night we were heading out to celebrate Pete’s 65^th birthday! Pete’s birthday is not actually till the 22^nd of August, and on the original itinerary (before the China cock-up) we would have been in Bangkok and we had planned to take him out to a show. So when the itinerary was moved around we decided to move his birthday too!! So that evening we all went to a lovely seafood restaurant right on the river under the Rama VIII Bridge (the Prince had it built for his father’s 80^th birthday!!!). Then we were off to our show, I won’t go into too much detail except to say it was unexpected and very surprising!! We all came out to get back into our tuk tuks and head back towards home for a very strong drink!!!

Next morning was a lateish start for everyone after the frolics of the previous evening. Rosie, Joe and I made our way down to Chinatown to see the Golden Buddha. I know you’re probably thinking every Buddha statue is gold (except for the emerald one of course!!!) but this one is actually made of solid gold. After a walk through Chinatown (and a market where we saw everything from sweets to a bucket of stomachs!!!) we headed back to the hostel through a fabulous flower market. The colours and smells here were amazing and I couldn’t believe how many orchids there were in so many different species and shades. Unfortunately my camera had died at this stage so there are no pictures of the fabulous flowers which I was pretty disappointed about! Then it was home to pack and sleep before and early start for the Cambodian border.

We had 2 mini buses the next morning to drive us to the border where we were met by a lovely Thai girl who brought us the whole way through the border and looked after everything for us. When we got out on the Cambodian side of the border we had our own coach to bring us to the hotel in Siem Reap...called Smiley’s! And it was a very fitting name as the people there just did not stop smiling and could not do enough for us. After the early start most of us decided to stay in the hotel and eat rather than go exploring...which turned out to be a really good idea as that evening we had a huge storm! It started with just a little rain, which turned to a LOT of rain which turned into a deluge. Then the thunder and lightning started....and then the electricity went! So we ate dinner by torch light, which brought us back to our truck days a little bit!! The electricity was gone for a good few hours and only came back on at about 10 that night...at which point most of us were in bed as there was nothing else to do but sleep!! But the storm itself lasted most of the way through the night.

The following day was sightseeing day. Luckily the rain had stopped and we actually had a really nice day for it. The hotel organised mini buses for us to go to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Phrom. I had been looking forward to seeing Angkor Wat as I had heard so much about it and it is the one that is really famous. But I have to be totally honest and say that I was slightly disappointed. It was amazing but slightly less spectacular than I imagined...though again this could have something to do with the fact that once again the curse of the scaffolding struck again!! It did get pretty impressive when we climbed up to the top section and got to see the work and that that went into the building and designing of it. But after an hour I was definitely ready to move on! Our next stop was by far my favourite. This one was Ta Phrom which is a temple that has been completely overgrown by a jungle. It’s ridiculously hard to comprehend what we saw, even though we saw it!! There were these massive big trees that were hundreds, if not thousands, of years old growing OUT of the temples. As in the tree was seeded in the roof of the temple and the roots had stretched down over the outside of the temple walls to reach the ground!! And as I’ve said these trees were hundreds of years old, which makes the temples even older and even standing there looking at it, saying to myself yes its real, the tree really is growing out of the temple so the temple must be ridiculously old I couldn’t get my head around! It was amazing to walk around and see it though and definitely the highlight of the day for me. Once we were finished there we went to Angkor Thom which was also amazing but at this stage I was getting hot and slightly watted out so I had a quick look around and then found nice tree with some of the other guys to sit under and had an ice cream! Overall it was a really good day and nice to get all the sight out of the way in one day, which meant after a very hectic Bangkok visit I was able to have a lazy day the next day! One funny thing about the sightseeing day was that for the most part it was all us UktoOzers who went on the trip, but one other guest in the hotel also signed up for it. He was a solo traveller from Hungary and he saw the list at reception and put his name down for it, not realising that we were a group. So he hopped into the mini bus with us the next morning. We all looked slightly shocked but I think he got more of a shock when within 5 minutes of being with us he realised that we weren’t just really sociable people getting to know each other, we were actually an established group! Of course he got curious at this stage and was asking us all about the trip which we gladly filled him in on all the fun details. But when we got to Angkor Wat, the first stop he quickly saw that while he was still full of enthusiasm for EVERYTHING he was seeing while he was on his 6 weeks trip, after being on the road for 4 months we had lost a bit of our enthusiasm and weren’t quite so enamoured with staying at the Wat for hours to explore every corner and nook and cranny of it! I think he was slightly miffed that he didn’t have extremely enthusiastic travellers to be with for the day but we were all used to it so not bothered by it too much!!!

The following day started out as a lazy day, spent sitting around the hotel, catching up on internet stuff and my journal. However, so as not to completely waste the day, me, Rosie, Joe, Bui, Kev and Pete headed into town for some food that evening. We found a nice little restaurant had some nice food and then decided to go for a drink. The drink however turned into a pitcher challenge as if we drank a pitcher of cocktail we got a free t-shirt. I went back to my student days of “Yay, free stuff” and so we got a pitcher and all left with a lilac (which in the pub lights looked grey!!!) t-shirts. We went on to another bar then and spent a lot of time there which involved another free t-shirt and a lot of dancing too!!! So the lazy day turned into a late night which defeated the purpose of relaxing, however I didn’t mind in the least bit as we had a really good night, and it was good to get out dancing!! We seem to get to do it once a month...which is a far cry from how often I went out dancing at home but it’s good to fit it in every now and then!!!

The following morning, despite the late night, was an early morning, as we had arranged to go on a boat trip to see the famous floating village. We had a bus ride there and then arrived at the dock and sorted out our boat. The floating village was very different to the canal ride in Bangkok. In Bangkok the houses jutted out over the canal but in Siem Reap the houses were literally on the water on floating platforms or in some cases large boats. It was amazing to see it but I couldn’t get over the difference between some of the houses. Some of them were really well kept with hanging baskets outside and that kind of thing; whereas others were really run down and we could see that they literally had one room as bedroom, living room and kitchen for the whole family. My favourite part was when I saw a couple of kids floating down the river in bug tubs and a little paddle. It was the cutest thing ever....all that was missing was an upside down pot on their heads and the picture would have been complete!!! As much as I enjoyed seeing the floating village I was very glad it was only an hour long after a late night the night before. When we got back to the hotel most of us hit KFC for some greasy food (though what I really needed was Mam’s Sunday Roast that day!!!)) And then it was back to the hotel to have an afternoon nap. Then dinner and packing rounded off the last few hours of Siem Reap.

The bus ride to Phnom Penh the following day was our first real experience of public transport. I had packed my day bag to include a cardigan in case there was air conditioning that made the co0ach a tad too cold. A tad too cold....hole crap it was freezing! We were all in cardigans and scarves and whatever anyone had to hand to keep warm; cuddling up to each other just to rob some body heat!! It was so cold that there was condensation dripping out of the air conditioning machines...which in turn dripped on us and didn’t help with the coldness. Half way through the journey we stopped for a break and we all piled off to go outside and warm up for a bit!!! And then we really started to miss the truck as once we were ready to go sit back on the truck after grabbing a drink and a snack we couldn’t because the driver had locked the door so we all just had to stand at the side of the road until he came back!!! We arrived in Phnom Penh to the bus station and I was amazed to see what unfolded. When the bus pulled in all the tuk tuk drivers moved in, presumably to harass us once we got off the bus. However dudes who worked at the bus station appeared out of nowhere with big steels barriers and positioned them around the bus so that we could all get off and get our bags without being hassled by anyone! It was brilliant but slightly unbelievable too that they have to go to those lengths to stop passengers getting hassled!!! That’s all I can really saw about my first Phnom Penh experience as all we did that night was go for dinner which was a bit of an ordeal as we seemed to have walked the wrong direction and only found a couple of seafood restaurants where we ended up being stared at and the waiter got slightly annoyed at us when we all didn’t know what we wanted to eat as soon as we sat down at the table! So day 1 in Phnom Penh was marked down as a bit of a dud but I presumed things could only get better (haha who’s singing the song in their heads now??!!)

Day 2 in Phnom Penh was interesting. I’m not sure I can mark it down as a winner as it was pretty hard hitting. Our first stop of the day was to go to Sol Seung or S-21, a prison that was used during the war. The prison has been converted into a museum documenting the atrocities that were bestowed among the people who were held there. I knew it was going to be hard to be there, as I had had a similar feeling when I went to Sachsenhausen in Berlin and this was just as hard as it all happened so recently. The first thing we saw was a notice of the “rules” that prisoners had to live by which included things like “you must immediately answer my questions without taking time to reflect”, “while getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all”, “do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders, if there is no order keep quiet, if I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting”, “you are strictly prohibited to contest me”. We saw this sign within 5 minutes of being there and it gave us all a sense for what we were in for during the tour. The guide also told us that the prisoners had to look straight ahead and weren’t allowed to look either left or right at any time. The first thing I noticed in the first room we were brought into was a photo on the wall. When the revolution was thwarted and the prison raided photographs of everyone who had died in the prison had been taken. This was for proof that they had actually died. This picture showed a man on the floor with horrific injuries to his stomach and bowels with shackles around his feet tied to a bed. There was also a chair in the background and a small steel box on the floor. When I looked around the room I realised that we were standing in the room that the picture was taken in and everything was exactly as it had been in the picture, including blood stains on the walls which were still there. There were similar pictures in the following rooms and it didn’t get any easier as we went along. When we went outside to go to the next building the guide stopped us at what looked like a climbing frame. He told us that before the war the prison had been and elementary and high school and that the frame we were looking at had been the playground. However the guards used the frame as a torture device to get the prisoners to confess to crimes that for the most part they hadn’t committed. The second building was where the cells were. The cells had been built in what had been classrooms. The cells were tiny. They were about the size of a portaloo and the prisoners would be shackled to the ground so that they could only sit. This meant that a lot of the prisoner’s loss the use of their legs and their muscles were never used. Another I thing I remember from the cells after the guide pointed it out was faded writing on the wall. The guide told us that it was there from the time of the school and was there for pupils but that it had been left there when it was turned into the prison; it said “nobody is perfect”. I wasn’t quite sure if it was there to let the prisoners know that’s that how they were thought of or if it made the soldiers who were on patrol there to feel a little better about themselves. On this note I’ll add that at the end of the tour we watched a short video which featured an ex-soldier who worked at the prison. I was shocked at how unremorseful he was about his actions. He talked about what he did to the prisoners and even admitted that he killed a man after hitting him over the head with a stick when his commander asked if he was a strong enough soldier or something along those lines. I understand that he felt he had to do those things or else suffer the consequences however in the video he smiled and laughed as he told some of the stories so it was like he wasn’t even sorry for what he did or didn’t see anything wrong with it whatsoever! We saw so many other things and heard about so much while we were there. It was very educational but also heart wrenchingly sad. After the museum we were brought to the Killing Fields. They are called this as, like in Germany where prisoners in concentration camps were put to hard labour, a similar thing happened to prisoners in Cambodia. For the most part it was prisoners from S-21 who were sent there and when they were told they were going to the fields they thought they were being sent to work. However at this field the only thing that happened to them was that they were killed, hence the name. The Killings Fields were just as horrific as the prison itself. Our guide warned us to be careful where we stepped as because it was the rainy season teeth and bones quite often found their way to the surface as not all the remains had been exhumed. He also told us that they wouldn’t be as the Cambodian government had called a halt to excavations at all the Killing Fields throughout the country as they already had enough evidence to prosecute the people involved. By this time the excavations had already found 17,000 remains in the Phnom Penh Killing Fields alone. The remains have all been housed in a memorial pagoda which we could go into to pay our respects. The first thing that I noticed when I walked in was the damage to all the skulls that were on display. Our guide had explained to us that because ammunition was so hard to come by the soldiers had come up with alternative ways to kill prisoners which including disembowelling, hitting them over the head with a variety of weapons, including the thick centre of a palm tree leaf. And this was only the tip of the iceberg; there were many other methods that I won’t go into keeping in mind the range of age groups that might be reading my blog! Needless to say, we all left the Killing Field in a very sombre mood thinking about a lot of stuff that we had learned. Later that evening myself, Rosie and Joe headed out for dinner. The only reason I mention this particular dinner is because in the restaurant that we went to Joe had bangers and mash with actual real baked beans!! As in Heinz baked beans...something we have all been craving for awhile now!! The food was lovely though and I got some yummy mashed potato (not as good as Dads naturally!!) and a yummy chicken cordon blue with proper cheddar cheese! It was home comfort at its best and we loved it!!! We then all went for a walk along the beach front before heading home to bed.

The following day was another tourist day but slightly less heavy than the day before! A small group of us headed out to the Royal Palace. It was really nice but very reminiscent of the one in Bangkok, the main difference being that the royal family still do actually live there...and the king was home too as the royal flag was flying in the front garden! We also say the Silver Pagoda which was really disappointing to be completely honest! I had read that it gets its name because of the silver, engraved tiles that covered the floor of the temple. So we walked around the palace grounds in and out of different buildings and it was only when I was on my way out of one that I noticed a silver tile on the floor. So I looked around and discovered that we were in fact in the Silver Pagoda but that the tiles had been covered in carpet! I immediately presumed this was to protect the tiles and then saw a cordoned off area near the door where there was no carpet. So I went up all excited to have a look at the tiles. Only to discover they were really tarnished and most of them, even though they were in what seemed to be the “display area”, were held down by duct tape!! And really old tatty duct tape at that! So I was highly disappointed with the Silver Pagoda and we all felt then it was time to head off for some lunch. That evening we went to a place called Friends for dinner. We chose this restaurant as it is run as a school for street children. The idea is to get kids off the street and to train them in catering and hospitality so that once they have finished their modules over a 3 year period they will be fully trained to work in the hospitality industry in Cambodia or any other country. The service in the restaurant was amazing; they were really efficient, very polite and spoke really good English too. And the food was unreal! It is a tapas restaurant so rather than one main meal we got to choose a number of little dishes to try. Little dishes they were not!! They were the biggest portioned tapas I had ever seen but we all tucked in and pretty much cleaned all our plates as the food was gorgeous! It was cooked so well and the flavours were yummy! We were all raving about it and found that they have a sister restaurant in Laos that we plan on visiting when we get there in a few weeks!! So our last meal in Phnom Penh and Cambodia in general is definitely one that I will remember for all the right reasons!!!

And so that brings to a close this part of the blog. I had a great time in Bangkok and am looking forward to going back to Thailand to see some more of it!! Cambodia was also great but gave me a lot to think about after the trip to S-21 and the Killing Fields. And so we are now off to Vietnam. Really looking forward to seeing there and we get to see lots of different sides to it from busy cities to beach resorts and everything in between!!

                                                                                                                               

Nepal Part 2

So I left the last blog at the end of the trek while I suffered, not so much in silence, as very vocal agony!! The couple of days after the trek were spent not surprisingly doing very very little! I had 3 days in Pokhara after the trek and the most exciting thing that happened during those three days was moving to a nice new hotel courtesy of Triona who treated me for my birthday. The new hotel was lovely and had a fantastic view....although I made the mistake of getting a room on the 5^th floor and after all the steps on the trek, this suddenly seemed like a rather stupid idea! But as I said the views of the mountains were amazing so I won’t complain about my silly decision....too much anyway!! Pokhara was a nice place to relax after the trek, pretty much ate, drank and relaxed. We did venture to Old Pokhara one of the days and spent an hour or two wandering around but it didn’t get much more exciting than that!!

So we moved on from Pokhara and headed back down to Chitwan for another couple of relaxing days. It was back to the Mona Lisa Hotel for me and Madan from the hotel was meeting us from the bus station. When we got off and got our bags and got through the gaggle of taxi drivers wanting us to take us to a million different hotels Madan told us he had a surprise....and pointed to two camels just past all the vans and jeeps that were around. He said that the hotel jeep was out for the day so the hotel had arranged a special surprise and new experience to take us to the hotel. Myself and Joe immediately started laughing thinking it was a joke. I had spotted the two camels as I got off the bus and I thought that Madan had decided to have a bit of fun with us...except he wasn’t laughing anyway like me and Joe were...and then it suddenly dawned on me that the hotel did actually have two camels. And so we walked ever closer to them and the next thing you know I was on the back of a camel plodding down the road with lots of jeeps full of tourists passing us by. I thought it was great fun, bit jolty and the camels seemed to be rather hungry and constantly wanting to stop to eat. Joe’s camel wasn’t in a great mood at all and was being slightly stubborn...but that just gave me even more amusement!! After we arrived at the hotel I was sitting around relaxing when Madan shouted at us that there was a snake in the tree. I ran down to have a look expecting to see a little dinky snake and instead saw the biggest snake I have ever seen (aside from the big massive ones in zoos, but they don’t count in this instance cause this one was out in the wild!!). It was a white snake and had gotten its way to the top of the tree to attack a bird’s nest and eat the young that were in it. Then it slithered its way back down the tree and that’s when I saw it. Once I saw where Madan was pointing I got all excited and then as I kept looking and saw more and more of it going up the branch I won’t lie when I say that I took a step or two back. It was very majestic to watch it, especially as it got to the bottom of the tree and most of its body wasn’t in contact with any branches and it was almost floating in mid air...until it just dropped itself out of the tree in a rather inelegant fashion and plopped to the ground, and then it took off like lightening into the jungle! So within an hour of being back in Chitwan I was already having lots of adventures and remembering why I loved the place so much!! The rest of the day was relatively relaxing, as was the following day...that was until Rhino Day happened!! There were rumours that there were rhinos down by the river front so Pete brought me down in the evening as he had seen them earlier in the day. When I got there we actually couldn't see any of them and I was slightly disappointed but we hung around for awhile and then saw one sleeping through the grass. We had a little walk around to try get a better look and managed to worm our way into the long grasses but up on a bank so that at least of anything came running for us we had a slight height advantage!! So there I was taking photos of this absolutely huge, magnificent creature...and then another one came along!!! I was so excited to see the two of them. It was a mother and her calf but I’d say it was more of a teenager than a baby judging by the size of it!! I stood there for a good while just looking at them and watching them come closer to graze; luckily they walked the opposite direction again before they got a bit too close for comfort. But again it was another testament to how absolutely amazing Chitwan is!

The third day in Chitwan was my absolute favourite out of all the time I spent down there. Keshab, the owner of the hotel, is involved with a charity called Child Welfare Organisation. This charity is run by a woman called Miriam from Belgium and there was three nurses over from Belgium to go to a local village to provide them with a free medical care day. As there was a few of us from UKtoOz down in Chitwan we said that we would love to help out and they were delighted with the extra volunteers. We were up at 6am to head out to the village. The other guys who were down there, Rachel, Rhona, Brian and Pete had been out with Keshab a couple of days previous in a few of the villages but it was my first time to see that side of Nepal. As we drove through the villages I wasn’t too surprised, they were small and remote like Suaraha where the Mona Lisa Hotel is. But we kept on driving and next thing I knew we were driving through corn fields going out to the remotest part of Chitwan. We arrived at the village and there was nothing except little mud and reed huts where the families lived. Then we drove into a clearing and I was hugely surprised to see two big, blue, concrete buildings. One of the buildings was a school and the other a day care centre which had been built with the proceeds from the charity. The school was amazing, it was very basic by our standards but considering that the village consisted of almost nothing else this was an amazing thing from them to have. The classroom walls were covered in the alphabet and times tables and all that sort of thing. There was also posters and paintings sent from schools in the Netherlands and Belgium who had also done fundraising for the schools. Along with the two school buildings there was also a toilet block and a well. The toilet block is something that has helped the people of the village immensely. Most women in rural areas of Nepal don’t wash properly as they only have access to water at rivers or if they are really lucky at public wells. Because they are in public they don’t wash properly as they have to wash with their clothes on them so they often suffer from sores and infections. When the toilet block was built it gave the women, and of course everyone else in the village, the opportunity to be able to wash in private and as such properly look after themselves and try to keep healthy. The well also gave them a new quality of life as the villagers had access to pure clean water. The only problem with the well is that a lot of people from the village and surrounding areas have to put aside 6 hours of their day to get to the well, fill their containers and walk all the way back home with the heavy containers on their backs. I had a go at drawing water up from the well and after the first couple of dismal attempts where I didn’t even get enough water in the bucket to make a cup of tea I finally got the hang of filling the bucket properly. Of course once it was filled properly it was a lot of hard work on the old arm muscles to draw it up from the bottom of the 40 foot well!

Once I had had a look around it was time to start getting ourselves ready, and by 7.30 people were starting to arrive. The purpose of the day was to allow people to come and visit a doctor free of charge and to get any medicine they might need, also free of charge. We non-medical volunteers were to show the children how to properly wash their hands and once they had been shown they all got a bar of soap. At first the children were all very timid and reluctant to come over to the strange white people! But one by one curiosity got the better of them and they came over to see what we were doing and then started joining a queue to have a go themselves. It was absolutely amazing. I know showing someone how to wash their hands sounds trivial but to these people it was obviously something that was very important to them and something they needed to be shown. Everything is so dusty there that dust just sticks and when we were washing the kids hands, while the soap on our hands was relitively white, the soap on the kids hands ranged through many different shades of brown. We had a supply of 300 bars of soap...and ran out of that after a couple of hours!! We had kids of all ages coming up to us, some only about a year old and others up to about 12 years old. And once they had been shown they all stood and sat around to watch everyone else and just to see some of the fun we were having with the other kids.

While I was taking a water break I was talking to Keshab who told me a little bit about the village. He said that there used to be about 1200 families living in the village and up to about 8 years ago a lot of them lived underground in little dugouts as they had no materials to build a hut. He also said that if anyone unfamiliar to them came into the village or the surrounding area they would run away and hide as they weren’t used to outside people and they didn’t trust people. Keshab said that a lot of the people were living in the village as their homes had been destroyed by landslides over the years. The government had then started moving families to better areas but there was still something like 800 families in the area that still needed a lot of help to be able to live a proper life, which was why something like the medical day and the building of the schools were appreciated so much the villagers.

Overall out of the 800 odd families nearly 400 came to the medical day to see the doctors. There were a couple of heartbreaking stories. One woman had a large tumour on the inside on her left thigh. She had had it for a number of years but never had the money to go to a doctor. The doctors arranged for her to be brought to the hospital the following day to get it removed and checked. They imagined that the tumour would be cancerous but even removing it would have improved the woman’s life a lot. There was another woman who had a tumour between her fingers on her left hand. The tumour had trapped a nerve and had paralysed her left arm. Again it was arranged for her to go to the hospital to get it removed and the doctors thought that once it was gone she would regain some if not all movement in her arm. A story that particularly touched me was of a little boy who was about 4 years old. His grandmother brought him over to us when we were doing the hand washing to get his nails clipped and cleaned. When she first came over he was on her back and when she spun him around to her front so that we could do his nails he started to cry. His grandmother pointed to his grown and pulled on his shorts a little so we could see there was a large, hard growth between his groin and high. The poor thing was obviously in agony and we pointed out where she needed to bring him for the doctor. Seeing the little boy in so much pain affected me quite a bit and it dawned on me that at home if that happened to any one of us or a kid we know it would be minutes before he was put in a car as soon as there was sign of a growth. This little boy however had obviously been suffering for a long time as he just doesn’t have access to any type of medical treatment. Keshab the next day when he was filling us in told us that the boy had been brought to hospital and that he was going in for an operation the next day to remove the growth and assess any damage that had been done to his muscles to see if there would be any lasting damage. Keshab also said that 8 other people were being brought to hospital for a full work up to diagnose symptoms they had but that couldn’t be diagnosed without further investigation with medical equipment. It was great to hear how the day had helped so many people, some in a little way and some in a huge way. And it was great to be part of something like that.

When everyone had been seen by the doctors we were all just waiting around to head back after cleaning up. There was still a few of the local kids hanging around and they got brave and sat down on the bench beside me and Rhona. We took a picture of them and then showed them the picture and their faces lit up. It was funny though because when we held up the camera their faces got all serious cause they didn’t know what it was but then once we showed them the picture they would start smiling and laughing. They then started getting brave and started inching closer to where I was sitting on the bench. I started messing with them and moving slowly closer to them too. Then a couple more kids came over to the bench and then next thing I knew I was playing a full blown game with them on the bench which then developed into me chasing them around the school grounds! They were smiling and laughing and even some of the women of the village were watching all the hi-jinx and laughing away. Two of the kids were absolutely adorable and myself and Rhona fell in love with them. When I was chasing them they would run to the opposite side if the yard. I’d then turn my back to them and they would start creeping closer and then I would turn around and chase them again. Then they started staying at the other side of the yard and then started turning around and wiggling their bums at us...which was something I used to do as I kid when I was playing chasing so it was amazing and funny to see these kids do the exact same thing I did years ago half a world away doing the exact same thing. We had great fun with them for a couple of hours and then unfortunately it was time to head back to the hotel. Driving away in the jeep broke my heart a little as even though I had only spent half a day there I absolutely loved being there and meeting all the people, especially the kids. The medical day or anything along those lines is not something I expected to experience while I was on the trip but it was a day that I will always remember and is definitely one of my favourite days of the trip.

That evening we all headed out to the Tharu Cultural Show. We had seen the stick dancing show the first time we were down in Chitwan with the whole group in the hotel grounds but every night the show is put on in a local centre. So for something to do we all headed down to check it out again. It was just as good as the first time and wasn’t boring in the slightest to see it a second time. We then all headed to a restaurant for dinner and a few drinks before leaving Chitwan the next day. The bus journey from Chitwan to Kathmandu was an interesting one. I wasn’t feeling particularly well and got stuck with the first ignorant Nepalese person I met sitting right in front of me!! He got on and told the people in front of him to unrecline their seats...and then promptly reclined his right back and jammed my knees against the back of his seat. Now normally I don’t mind people reclining their chairs but considering I wasn’t feeling well and had managed to position myself in such a way that I felt slightly comfortable I wasn’t really in the mood for taking anyone’s shit!! So I asked the dude who worked on the bus to ask him to move his seat forward so that my legs weren’t jammed...which he did...and then as soon as the bus dude walked away the gobshite reclined it straight back down again!! So I ended up spending the majority of the 6 hour journey pressing my arms against his seat so that I had a bit of space for my legs! Needless to say it isn’t the most comfortable of journeys that I have ever had!! One good thing that did happen on the journey though was bumping into some of the other UktoOzers! Some of the group had done a 2 day white-water rafting trip and randomly in the middle of absolutely nowhere at the side of a river, our bus pulled over and who did we pick up only Dee, Andy, Bui, Kev, Sally, Donald and Graham! Extremely odd bump into people you know in the absolute middle of nowhere in Nepal! Once we got to Kathmandu we got a taxi to Patan where we had decided to spend a couple of days before going to the madness of Kathmandu!

Patan itself is about 5 km outside of Kathmandu but feels like a whole world away in terms of how busy and noisy it is. When we were driving into Kathmandu on the bus all I was thinking was how similar to India it was; full of traffic, beeping, dust and noise. So to drive in and then drive straight back out again was definitely welcome! Patan was lovely but I wasn’t feeling great for the couple of days that I was there so didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have liked. I did manage to explore it thoroughly though and managed to fully complete for the first time all trip a Lonely Planet walk! This felt quite a feat as usually when we do a recommended walk from the Lonely Planet we get lost half way through due to directions along the lines of “past the temple, (a MILLION temples on every street in these countries!!) on the right hand side is a gated entrance to a courtyard with an old style wooden window. Look for the sign that advertises Opera Eye Wear”....so you can see why we might get lost from time to time. It was lovely to wander around Patan though and take in all the different temples and Durbar Square at the heart of Patan was lovely with all the old temples that were built there. There are a number of Durbar Squares across Nepal in different cities and towns. A Durbar Square is a concentrated mass of temples. In Patan most of the temples were built between the 14^th and 18^th centuries and contains 9 magnificent temples, the Royal Palace and Patan Museum. After a 2 day break in Patan exploring as much as possible when it wasn’t too hot and while trying to convince myself that I wasn’t ill it was time to go back to Kathmandu and meet up with everyone else.

Kathmandu turned out to be not as terrible as I thought it was going to be!! First impressions weren’t exactly favourable but where we were staying in Kathmandu was away from the big dusty hustle and bustle and was in the centre of Thamel, which is the tourist district. It was all little narrow streets with people getting precariously close in passing motorbikes and cars and full of backpacker shops and “hippy clothes” shops as I call them. At this stage I couldn’t deny that I was actually ill so I took it easy for the first couple of days in Kathmandu. And then a momentous day arrived for us UKtoOz people....we had found a cinema that screened English speaking movies and we were finally going to get to see HARRY POTTER!!!!  I know this may seem slightly out of tune with the whole overlanding life and considering the amazing countries and places we had been to seeing Harry Potter possibly shouldn’t have been so high on our list of priorities but we were all dying to see it and once we had sussed out cinemas there was no stopping us! Plus it’s nice to do something from “normal life” every now and then!! So off we all pottered to the cinema and had a nice day...helped that it was nice and air conditioned too!! We all really enjoyed the movie, though once again I had a small issue with putting 3D glasses on over my actual glasses...speccy 4 eyes doesn’t even begin to cover it!!! I really enjoyed the movie, though we all had a few suspicions that a few scenes may have been edited out so will have to investigate and watch it again on DVD somewhere!! When the movie was over we all headed to KFC...so it really was just like a normal Saturday afternoon out!

It was then time to head back to get ready for a big night out. I can’t remember if I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that we found out there was a chance we wouldn’t get to go through Tibet and China due to the borders being closed, which would have meant losing the truck and having to make a flight over the two countries. We were given the choice to just fly straight away or to delay the trip by 10 days to make an attempt at getting into the country, this was the option we went for and so we spent an extra 4 days in India and an extra 6 days in Nepal. So we waited it out enjoyed the extra time in the 2 countries and kept our fingers crossed. However on my second stint in Chitwan we got the really disappointing news that the borders weren’t being opened til much later than we thought and so we were informed that we were falling back onto our contingency plan which was to fly over Tibet and China and lose our lovely truck and Greg our driver. I was really disappointed as I had been looking forward to seeing Tibet after getting a little taste of it in McLeod Ganj in India. After some thinking about it thought I realised that as disappointed as I was about missing out on what would have been two amazing countries I was more upset about the fact we would no longer be travelling on our truck. Although we would still be overlanding as once we flew over the two countries we would be travelling on buses and public transport the whole way still, not having our truck would make it a different kind of trip. But there was nothing that could be done about it so after a few hours of great disappointment we started looking forward to a new kind of adventure and moving on to more countries in a totally different way. However there was still the great disappointment of losing Greg from our trip so on Harry Potter day we arranged to have a little send off for him. We booked a table in the Everest Steak House in Kathmandu and while everyone was in a bar having a few drinks myself and Rosie popped out to go decorate the table. We arrived into the restaurant and whipped out a bag of balloons...which the 5 staff members in the restaurant kindly blew up for us. We then waited at the restaurant for the others to arrive and Greg got a nice little surprise when he walked in. We had a great meal with plenty of craic going on. Myself and Rhona shared a Chateaux Briand (or something along those lines!!!) which apparently is the best cut of meat you can have for a steak! So after watching everyone else tucking into steaks since we had arrived in Nepal me and Rhona decided (on the trek a couple of weeks previous!!!) that we were going to share one (because they are MASSIVE...and we halved a half one too!!!). Not being a huge steak eater I was worried I wasn’t going to eat a lot of it....my God I devoured the big slab of meat that was put down in front of me!!!! Once the meal was over and a few drinks had been consumed we decided it was a great idea to draw a smiley face on Greg’s head!! So I whipped a purple marker out and next thing we knew he had a big smiley face on his bald head!! Of course the creative juices were flowing then and he suddenly had grey hair to match followed by a handlebar moustache and goatee beard!!! We then whipped the tinsel we had wrapped his chair in off the chair and around him and then left the restaurant and walked down the centre of Kathmandu!! We ended up then in an Irish bar for a few more drinks and frolics before finishing up the night and heading home. It really was one of my favourite nights out throughout the whole trip but was tainted slightly when I thought about why we were having the night out. The following day was spent sorting out posting all our extra stuff home as without the truck we know had to carry everything with us, so there were many bags purged of crap over those few days!!! We had been to the truck a couple of mornings before to go and get all our stuff, including tents and sleeping equipment off it. While we had been on the break in Nepal the truck was in a garage getting resprayed and all prettified for us as a surprise. When we got to the garage I felt like I did on the first day when I saw it! I forgot how big it was; it just seemed absolutely massive again. And with the new paint job it just looked beautiful sitting there. Once we had cleared all the stuff off the truck it was time to go and it was so so hard to walk away from that truck. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shed a tear as we drove away. I know it might seem stupid to get upset over a truck but aside from the people I am travelling with the truck was the only thing that was a constant for me on the trip. The places we were staying and the countries we were in were constantly changing but the truck was just always there. Don’t get me wrong I love the travelling and getting to see all these new places but it was nice to have something familiar all the time....it is pretty much the closest thing to what I’d call a home on the trip. So it was just upsetting to leave it and to know that I was never going to be on it again. We had some great times on the truck and even though I know there will still be great times on the trip still it was sad to say goodbye to what I guess I came to see as the symbol of my overlanding trip. But I have my memories and pictures and just hope that the people who have the truck next appreciate it as much as we all did!

Anyway that’s my little tearful moment over with! Back to the fun stuff!! Once I had sorted out all my postage myself and Kev went on a walk around Kathmandu. Since I had arrived in Kathmandu I hadn’t done a lot in terms of seeing the sights so we grabbed a few spare hours and headed off to explore. We went down to Kathmandu Durbar Square which was really impressive. The temples were much bigger than those in Patan, and they even had a couple of shrines that were completely ruined as they had these massive trees growing out of them! It was nice to just wander through the streets though as no matter what street we turned down there was always something to see, be it a temple, a shrine or just some random part of local people’s lives that it unusual to us. After a couple of hours we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our last dinner in Nepal. We were going back to a restaurant we had been to on our first night in Kathmandu where the food was amazing and I was really looking forward to it. However while I was packing up in my room I started to feel really unwell and a few hours later could hardly move as I felt so poorly. So I gave dinner a miss and stayed home curled up in a little ball on my bed! Needless to say I did not have a good night that night with a bucket within reach by the side of my bed!!! I had serious doubts that I was actually going to make it onto our flight to Bangkok the next morning! I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep and thankfully felt slightly better in the morning. So with bags on our backs and mini buses waiting to take us to the airport we said goodbye to Nepal.

I spent a whole month in Nepal and can honestly say that I loved every minute of it. Whether I was in the jungles of Chitwan or in the craziness that was Thamel in Kathmandu I absolutely loved it. And no when I say I loved every minute of it I don’t have a mental block on the week of the trek!! As I said in my last blog as hard as it was I don’t regret for a minute doing it and I saw some amazing scenery and climbed a Himalayan mountain, which I never thought would be something I would ever add to my list of achievements!! I met some amazing people in Nepal, especially the staff from the Mona Lisa Hotel in Chitwan who made us feel so welcome and really looked after us. And it wasn’t just looking after us as guests we had a really good time with them had nights out with them. And the most amazing thing I did with them was the medical day which is something I will never ever forget. That is definitely up there with the best days of both Nepal and the trip in general. So Nepal brought me elephants, rhinos, Himalayan Mountains, new friends and some absolutely AMAZING memories. It was where I celebrated my birthday in the most unusual way that I have probably ever celebrated my birthday and I think I can probably put it down as my favourite country so far. It’s somewhere that I can see myself going back to many times in the future as it is easy to see that I can experience loads of different types of holidays there, and mostly importantly things are constantly changing; case in point is seeing rhinos on my second trip down to Chitwan. Of all the countries to get to spend a whole month in I don’t think we could have been any luckier to have that country as Nepal.

And so we are now about to begin the second leg of our journey. This point was always going to be phase two after having our two week break but it is definitely getting off to a different start as we now have a totally different type of adventure ahead of us without the truck. So South East Asia awaits us and I cannot wait to see what it holds for us.

Nepal

So to say the Nepali border was the simplest one we have had so far doesn’t even begin to cover it! To get out of India we didn’t even have to get off the truck...we just gave Rachel our passport, she went to the exit desk (literally 5 dudes sitting at a desk out in the open at the side of the road in a little village) they stamped them and we were officially out of India....FINALLY!!! on to the Nepali side....fill out a form, go into an office (mosquito infested!) hand over passport, form, passport photo, get back on truck....15 minutes later (when the “big boss” was finished his dinner) we were all stamped through and officially in country number 14...Nepal. This all happened over the space of about hour and it was late and dark so we went to our bush camp site which was in the grounds of a hotel just passed the border. We all quickly pitched tents and then went to a nearby restaurant for some food. I think the staff were slightly flummoxed when a group of about 14 walked in half an hour from closing time and ordered food...but we were all too tired and hungry to care so we sat, ate and went back to the hotel...only to find that they had locked the gates!! So after a bit of rattling the gates Rhona came to our rescue and got a dude from the hotel to let us all in. What followed was a hot, sticky night in a tent! We were due to leave camp at 8.30 the next morning...those of us who camped were all pretty much up and ready by about7 because it was like staying in an oven if we didn’t get out of the tents! I put the time to some good use by stitching up all the holes in my tent from the dog in Amritsar...though even at 7.30 in the morning a little bit of sewing proved too much exertion in the heat!

When we did leave camp we got on the road for Chitwan National Park. The drive was lovely as everything was just so green and clean...which was a huge difference from what I had gotten used to in India. The first thing that I really noticed was that within a 20k drive from the border I had seen 8 or 9 different types of school uniforms. There is a big emphasis in Nepal on sending children to school, rather than them being at home. We got lots of waves from the kids and they all looked slightly bewildered at what they were seeing! We got to our hotel in Chitwan at 12.30 so then had the whole day to chill out and find out what there was to do while we were there...and there was a lot to do! We all piled into the restaurant first for lunch....and that is when that day’s monsoon hit! So we sat and watched it lashing down rain...and decided that that night we were just relax at the hotel and not do very much! The following day though, most of the group was up early for one of two treks. There was a full day jungle trek, or a half day trek. I decided on the half day trek and am very glad I did! We set off at about 7.30 and walked down to the village first...and reached a river. Our guide proceeded to tell us he was going to sort out our canoe and while he did that another guy came over to us and pointed out the crocodile on the bank of the other river.... cue oohs and aahs. Our guide came back then with our canoe....which in actual fact was an old fashioned dug out boat, one that once you are in it the water is an inch from the top of the boat and any slight movement rocks the boat from side to side....which isn’t actually a good thing when you keep in mind the aforementioned point that the water is an INCH from the top of the boat!! Everyone knows I’m not great in water....so putting me in a dodgy boat that rocks around with a slight movement and then keep in mind that a dude pointed out a CROCODILE, you can imagine that I wasn’t overly enamoured with the prospect of getting in the death trap! But in I went...sat like a stone and managed to keep myself calm (except for every time the boat rocked I’d squeal a little!). Then we went through a patch of water that had lots of tiny (and I mean miniscule, but there were a lot of them!!) rapids and my “calmness” rapidly (no pun intended) evaporated!! There were a couple of occasions we got a splash of water over the side but we all survived the deadly white-water rafting experience!! After floating downstream for about a half hour or so the boat dude pulled us over to the bank and out we hopped...well I saw hopped but what I mean is we all sat as still as possible as one by one we attempted to walk up the boat trying not to fall in ourselves or rock the boat too much for the others still sitting in it!! Once we were on terra firma again we got all excited about our jungle trek. Before we set off the guide gave us a couple of pointers. We were told that on the trek there was a possibility we would see some rhinos, elephants and maybe a tiger, along with deer and lots of different bird species....the guide’s advice was in regards to what we should do should be encounter a rhino. The first thing to do was to run and climb a tree as rhinos can’t climb trees (no shit!!). Failing a tree that was climbable, we should find a big one and hide behind it (really??!!). If that doesn’t work we were to search for a log lying on the ground vault over it and lie down behind it as the rhinos legs are too short and stubby to be able to jump over it (eh hello, what about my short stubby legs??!!), and if there was no tree to climb, hide behind or vault over....we were told to run in a zigzag fashion as the rhino can’t change direction easily...and with that our guide smiled and told us to follow him!!! So off we went on our great jungle adventure. Unfortunately (or fortunately perhaps!) we didn’t encounter any rhinos, elephants or tigers. We say plenty of kingfisher and hornbill birds. We saw an abundance of insects and different types of plants (including one which the guide called rhino potato tree...which was rather lethal, as the little round fruits that grew on it littered the ground and made for some difficult terrain to walk on...think walking on large marbles!). In terms of more exciting animals...Dee saw a deer...the rest of us were looking at the ground, we saw a monkey. And I’m afraid to report that the closest we got to a rhino or elephant was to see their footprints and shit! And we saw so much of their crap that by the end of it our guide didn’t have to tell us if it was rhino or elephant as we had become something of an expert on the subject ourselves! The end of our trek entailed another short canoe ride but then it was time to relax for the afternoon. Some of us went exploring Sauraha, the little village just outside the Park...and our exploration rewarded us in the fashion of a bar with Happy Hour and steak!! So that evening we all toddled down the village for drinks and a tasty meal that didn’t involve chicken after a chicken overload in India!

The next day was easily the best day out of our few days in Chitwan and is referred to as Elephant Day by most of the group! We all got up and headed off early in the morning to go to the Elephant Breeding Centre. We were picked up at the hotel by jeeps and brought to the breeding centre....unfortunately there was a river to cross before actually getting to the centre so guess who got another trip in a dodgy canoe...with even more people in it this time to try keep as still as possible! We all made it across the river without an early morning dip though and after a short walk we were at the Centre. We first went into a small museum which told us a small bit about what they do at the Centre. Obviously the breed elephants but they also train elephants there for jungle safaris and that kind of thing. Some interesting facts about elephants; they have 40,000 muscles in their trunk alone and when they are feeding they smack the bamboo or grass off their ankles to knock off any dust or bugs before they actually eat it. When we were finished reading about the centre we went out for the highlight....the 2 month old baby elephant. In 2008 the centre had a set of male twins born (only the second set of twins born in captivity in the world, the other set being in Thailand). But the new attraction is the 2 month old. We all spotted it straight away and when we were at the fence he came over to investigate us straight away. I was standing at the fence and he came and had a little sniff, grabbed my hand with him little trunk and then got mud all over my shoulders. It was so cute and he would just stand there and let us pet him. We all stood there for quite awhile before remembering that there was at least 20 other elephants to go and see, including the twins! So we walked around the yard, saw all the other elephants, including some that were being trained, which I didn’t really like to see. In the museum I saw pictures of how they start to train the elephants which is to tie their two front legs together and then to a pole. They are tied so close to the pole that they have to have their head in the air and their truck sticking up in the air. We didn’t see it quite as bad as this but we knew which ones were in training as they had their legs tied together and were standing right near training poles rather than just stumps in the ground that the rest of the elephants were tethered to (the baby elephant was free to roam within the enclosed area and cause a bit of havoc). In the end we all ended up back at the baby elephant for the last bit before we were told it was time to leave (none of us very happy having to saw bye to the little one!!). Then it was back on the boats, then the jeeps and back to the hotel for a half hour before going to have a bath with the elephants. When we were told we could bath the elephants we all had visions of getting in the water with them and scrubbing them behind the ears with a brush....not quite the case!! When we got to the river bank we had to climb up onto the elephants’ back (by standing on its forehead, didn’t like that!) and then sitting on its back. Then the elephant’s trainer would shout a command and before I knew it I had a trunk full of water landing on top of me. My elephant had perfect aim...some of the others the elephant would swing either left or right soaking people from the side. My dude would just throw it straight over its head so it got me smack in the face! It was hilarious...and then after awhile he would get border and just drop in the river sending me tumbling off!! So to say I went to bathe the elephants is a slight bit of false advertising...it was more a case of the elephant bathing me!!!

Later that day was elephant activity number three, our jungle safari! We got picked up in jeeps again and got brought to a different area of the park. 18 of us went on the safari which meant a convoy of 5 elephants, 4 people on 4 different elephants and Derek and Donald got spoiled by only having 2 of them on their one! It took a bit of getting used to at first, learning to deal with the swaying of the thing we were sitting in as the elephant plodded along. I think a few of the lads had some issues along the way (mostly on the uphill or downhill parts) as we all had a wooden beam between our legs keeping us from falling out! The safari was great fun though. Again the most exciting thing we saw was deer and monkeys and a few birds along the way, though Joe did spot a crocodile a few yards upstream from where our elephants had just piled into the water! We went through some quite jungly parts where our legs were getting whipped to pieces by tree branches...I got half my body almost wedged in a tree at one stage. We also went through some shallow water streams and at one stage jumped (well not quite jumped...on an elephant after all!) into the big river (the crocodile sighting) and ended up almost with our feet in the water. Overall it was so much fun; I loved the safari and hated having to get off the elephant at the end. Overall I loved the whole day! Had so much fun being so close to elephants, made me realise how much I really love them!!

Elephant day was rounded off by a traditional Nepalese dinner and Tharu Stick Dance. The staff at Mona Lisa prepared an amazing dinner for us consisting of Dal Bhat, which is curry, rice, lentils and vegetables. The food was absolutely gorgeous, my favourite dish being the curried cauliflower and potatoes. When dinner was finished we went outside to the garden where chairs had been set up for us. Locals from the village came and did a demonstration of Tharu dancing. The first couple of dances involved sticks which was unreal to watch. The guys playing the music would be beating away on drums quite quickly and the dancing guys would be bouncing around hitting sticks off another dudes sticks. It is totally impossible to describe what they did, my advice is to you tube Tharu stick dance and see what you can find cause it will be the only way to know exactly what the heck I am talking about! They did a few different stick dances then one guy came out with a long stick on fire and starting twirling it around like a mad yoke! I have never seen someone move so quick and this guy would put the flame throwers that are around Templebar back home to shame!! Then the last dance was the one where they asked us to get up and dance with them. Cue immense hilarity and lack of co-ordination! Surprisingly it was the guys who got up first with Bui leading the pack and Andy and Joe following not far behind. What was even funnier for the rest of us though, was that they all joined the circle at the same point so were copying each other rather than the dudes who actually knew what they were doing! Not that looking at the proper people helped any of the rest of us too much! Those guys have serious rhythm, something which the rest of us for the most part couldn’t quite keep up with, though there was two movements that the guys seemed to be able to get down pat; the change the light bulb move (you all know what I’m talking about!!) and a hip shimmy that proved to be quite funny when we tried to imitate as best we could! It was so much fun to be part of it and to have a go at the dancing, and the guys who knew what they were doing seemed to appreciate the effort we gave to get the dance moves!!

We left for Pokhara the next morning and had a lovely drive up through the Himalayas taking in all the scenery. After arriving in Pokhara early enough in the day we all went exploring in the town...and our first discovery was a cafe that served cheese and ham sandwiches!!! Then that evening a big group of us went to the Everest Steak House and everyone got their first bit of beef in a couple of months after Iran, Pakistan and India! The following day we all planned on having a lazy day and exploring the town...but the weather had slightly different ideas and we got up to a wet, rainy day! But we did venture out that evening to celebrate Rachel’s birthday, firstly going for cocktails, then dinner and then on to a bar for some more cocktails and a few games of pool. It was a good night all round...topped off by the fact that I went home slightly earlier than everyone else so when I got back to the hotel I got a great internet connection and got to talk to Mam, Dad and Triona! The next day was a late start for everyone after the shenanigans of the night before and then an extremely lazy day with the most exciting thing being going for pizza and ice-cream in the afternoon!

The following day we decided to make up for being extremely lazy for the first few days in Pokhara and we decided to walk up to the World Peace Pagoda. The Pagoda was built by Buddhist monks from Japan and sits up at the top of a mountain, overlooking Phewa Tal, the lake in Pokhara (second largest in Nepal). We had planned on getting a boat across the lake and walking up through the forest, except someone told us to watch out for leeches which turned us off (little did we know what was to come in a few days time!!). So we changed our plans and instead got a couple of local buses to the bottom of the hill and walked up it “the easy way”. Holy mother of God, I swear I nearly died on that hill!! It was about 35 degrees and the hill was steep and windy and we were in flip flops! I’m usually too stubborn to give up on things, especially when it comes to hill walking and that but for the first time ever I said to Rhona and Rosie that I was giving up. Fair play to them they said we would just go to the top of the ridge and then assess how far away the Pagoda was. As it turned out when we got to the top of the ridge it wasn’t as far away as it looked and best of all we got to walk along a flat ridge instead of the constant uphill! So I persevered thanks to the girls and we got to the top The Pagoda itself isn’t much to write home about. It’s big enough, brilliantly (blindingly!!) white and has 4 very big, VERY gold statues in it! But what people go up there for and what is worth going up for is the views out over Pokhara and Phewa Tal. I didn’t realise that Pokhara was as big as it was until I saw it from the top of the hill and the mountains behind the town were amazing. We stayed up there for awhile and took a few pictures and then made our way back downhill, which was slightly easier as we came down the steps rather than going the scenic route which we had accidentally gone up! Nothing much else from that day to report except to say we went for dinner in a Japanese restaurant that night and I succeeded in eating my whole meal (bowl of rice and all) with chopsticks!!

The next day we all got up early in terms of the previous few days and went to Mike’s Restaurant for breakfast. It was lovely to sit by the lake and have a nice breakfast. Some of the guys got breakfast burritos...which would have easily fed a small family for a day if needs be!! Afterwards we hired a giant pedalo and pedaloed our way across the lake to Varahi Mandir, credited as being Pokhara’s most famous Hindu Temple. My thinking is that it is the most famous one because it is on an island in the idle of the lake. When we got there the first thing I noticed was that the place could rival Templebar Square with the amount of pigeons that were knocking around! They were everywhere! Once I got over that, the temple itself was slightly unimpressive. It was fairly small and seemed to be covered in henna dye...which is probably down to the pigeons rubbing against everything and then landing on the temple. We didn’t stay there too long and all piled back on the pedalo. We still had a bit of time before we had to be back to we got ourselves out in the middle of the lake and then just floated and chatted for awhile before heading back.

The next day we met our trek guide Ram who had the task of getting 8 of us up and back down a mountain over the following 5 days! He gave us a rough idea of what to expect (failed to mention the fact that over the next 5 days we would walk up and down THOUSANDS of steps!!!). But what horrified us most about what he said was that on day 1 we would be walking for 6 hours....in complete contrast to the 2 and a half hours that the itinerary we had all looked at told us! We got slightly worried at that stage but he told us then that the rest of the days our longest walk would be 5 hours. We went out for dinner that night to get a good meal before we set off at 8.30 the next morning. We had a 1 and a half hour drive up the mountains before we got to our drop off point. We all jumped out of the van full of pep in our step, popped our bags on our backs and headed off on our big adventure. We walked through a few little villages first, across a bridge that went to nowhere (literally a big steel structure that ended at a brick wall!!) and then we were out in the Himalayas. I was walking along at my merry little pace and then we started to hit steps going up hill...my good God!! They killed me! We walked for a couple hours and then stopped half way up the steps at a little restaurant for lunch. Much to my surprise, it wasn’t a set meal or sandwich we were given for lunch, we were allowed choose anything we wanted off the menu so we were all happy! We were waiting for just over an hour for a food which was good in one way as it meant we got a little rest and got to rest our legs but as we were wet and damp from the rain and sweat (sexy!!) most of us ended up a bit chilly. Some of the lads had the great idea of talking off their t-shirts so they wouldn’t get a chill...which was a great idea until it came time to go and they had to put freezing cold, damp t-shirts back on them...fun for the rest of us to watch! Once we were ready and the lads were all fully dressed again we set off on the steps again...which was still another 3 hours walk of uphill. We eventually arrived at Ghandruk, our rest stop for the night. When we got to the little village there were sighs of relief all round...until Ram pointed out that where we were staying was a little further up the town...up meaning UP and so we had a last few killer flights of steps to get through before we could truly relax! When we did we got our rooms and went for a much looked forward to shower...only to find they were all freezing so it wasn’t so much a shower as a quick dash under freezing water and then an even quicker retreat! We then went down to the common area and got some tea to warm us up (yes I did just saw we ordered tea and yes I did partake in the drinking of it!! I had 3 cups of tea a day while on the trek...so after years of people telling me to try tea it turns out all you had to do was bring me on a walk up into the Himalayas and I will do it quite willingly!!!). We also ordered dinner when we got there...which turned out to be a good idea as it took nearly 2 hours to get it cooked (we quickly learned that food in the Himalayas takes a bit of time to cook...possibly because they don’t get many visitors so they like to keep people there as long as possible for a bit of company!!!). Once dinner was cooked and we were all finished we all headed off to bed...at about 8 o’clock!! The following day we had a 3 and a half hour walk and once again we were going up (I’m not sure why I was surprised by this...how else did I expect to reach the summit of a mountain!!). It was all steps again and big ones at that, my little legs struggled with a few of them but we all made it in the end. And we were all surprised when we got there as there was a guaranteed hot shower so we were all very happy and warm an hour or so later. The lodge that night was really nice, there was a big massive table for us all to sit around with blankets hanging off the edge of it so we could put the blanket over our knees (granny style) to warm ourselves up...but best of all the woman there put a big bucket of hot coals under the table so all our legs got nice and toasty! It was an early night again for all of us that night with us all heading off at about 7.30...turned out to be a bad idea for me as I was wide awake and it took me ages to get to sleep...not helped by the fact that even with my IPod in I could hear loads of bugs buzzing around the room!!

It was an early start again the next day and we started off downhill that day! It was a steep drop (down steps naturally!!) but then of course we had to make our way back up hill. I struggled a bit that day with my breathing. My chest felt really constricted so I was on a serious go slow that day (more so than the previous couple of days!!). We had another long wait for our lunch at the lunch stop and again we were all freezing cold! When we got going again it was 20 minutes uphill and then a downhill again to Ghorepani where we were spending the night. Our lodge that night was called Super View Lodge....and I’m sure it would have been a super view were we not constantly in clouds and mist for the whole time that we were there!! The lodge was lovely though, the nicest one we were in the whole time and was really cosy. The following day was our earliest start....up at 4.15am to leave the lodge at 4.45 to make it to the summit of Poon Hill for sunrise. It was an interesting way to start my birthday! Not sure I have ever been up that early on my birthday before....unless you can count coming in at that time after being out the night before!! I did ok on the steps for the first while, but about half way up I slowed down a little. I made it up to the top though and the views weren’t quite as spectacular as we had all been praying for. Luckily the rain that had been coming down all night did stop and the clouds on the tops of the mountains drifted along giving us the odd glimpse of other mountains...but it definitely wasn’t the breathtaking views I had hoped to see! I still appreciated what I did see though, even cloud covered the mountains were still lovely to look at and I loved watching the clouds just drift over them. It came to sunrise time and it wasn’t so much a sunrise as just a general lightening up of the sky. We stayed up there for about half an hour, took a few pictures to prove we did it and then headed back down for breakfast before setting off on a downhill track for the day. When we got back to the lodge I opened my birthday cards that I had been given before I left Dublin in April and have been carrying around since then (didn’t know I had that much will power!!!). I will admit I had a few tears, something I knew that would happen once I opened them. But I had my moment and then went down for breakfast where the guys gave me my birthday present (a UKtoOz t-shirt and string topJ). After breakfast we then headed off. That day we dropped from 3,200 metres to roughly 1,500 metres...pretty good going in one day. Except that it was steps the WHOLE way. I usually prefer the downhill to the uphill but I have to admit that day I kinda detested it! At first we were stopping along the way for our usually break for a few minutes...but as we kept going downhill stopping meant legs shaking uncontrollably and knees beginning to seize up...so in the end we just kept on walking no matter how tired or sore we were. My knees weren’t helped by the fact that I had taken a little tumble that morning and went tits over toes falling flat on my face and bruising my wrist and knee! When we got to the town we were stopping at that night we had a couple of draw bridges to cross which gave us some amazing views of some waterfalls. When we got to the lodge we all pretty much collapsed on a wall just outside it and waited to find out where our rooms were (up on the first floor of course!!!). We showered and hobbled back down the stairs to sit in the restaurant and wait for lunch. We could pretty much tell straight away that we were lower down as it was much warmer...and there was also lovely blue skies and fabulous views of the mountains (how typical is that!!!). Everyone had a few drinks that night to celebrate reaching the summit and we toasted my birthday too, then it was another early night in anticipation of being finished the following day!

Ram had told us the last days walk was “Nepali Normal”, a term he had taken to using to let us know that it wasn’t steeply uphill or downhill it was just a gentle up and down track...something we all appreciated! Though of course we first started off going down steps, something our legs did not appreciate after the previous day. It then changed to Nepali Normal and we picked up pace. We faced a couple of obstacles on what was supposed to be out “easy” day! Firstly we came across a little river across our path which we had to cross. We had come across a similar obstacle on our first day and everyone carefully took off their shoes and socks (I was wearing sandals so just waded straight in!) and stepped across. When we encountered the same problem on the last day everyone pretty much just walked straight in not caring how wet their shoes and socks got! Our second obstacle was to get across a landslide of lose rock and shale. When we first saw it we all had a moment of horror when we thought Ram was going to tell us we had to double back! Luckily though he expected us to be able to make it across the landslide without slipping down it and ending up in the river at the bottom of the valley! We all did make it across and it was quite fun doing it too. Joe came across last in the group and ended up being overtaken on the landslide by a 70 year old Nepalese dude wearing a pair of wellington boots!! We then trundled on and after a couple of hours Rosie spotted the bridge that went to nowhere.....signalling that we were very, very close to our starting point which meant we were very, very close to our little mini bus that was waiting to save us! We picked up speed and Joe even managed to run up the last uphill and race Ram to the top (Ram won!!). We then all piled into the van and let the driver dude and his clutch get us the rest of the way down the mountain!! When we got back to the hotel we were greeted by the staff who asked us how we were...to which they got a generally grunt and groan in reply! We all showered then ordered lunch and with that we had finished our trek! That night we brought Ram out for dinner and drinks to say thank you and to let him know that we appreciated everything he did for us...and to reward him for listening to us moan and groan for 5 days! I think it took him a couple of days into the trek to realise that for the most part we were joking and having a laugh when we were complaining about stuff and then he started to sit down with up cause he realised that we weren’t going to hold him personally responsible for the pain that we were in!! Dinner that night was really good and made even better by the fact that we were back in Pokhara and down off of the mountain with nowhere to walk to the following day!!

People keep asking me now if I enjoyed the hike. It’s a question that I can’t actually answer I’m afraid! I’m am very proud of the fact that I made it all the way to the top....and it made it a very special birthday too. I am quite pleased that for the most part I managed to avoid the leeches....only getting 3 throughout the whole trek. I came away lightly compared to the others. I think wearing sandals was a god send as I could see the little feckers on my socks (yes I did wear socks and sandals for 4 days of my life!!!) before they managed to burrow themselves through the socks. So when I did see them I could yank them off...and yes that does mean that I touched leeches...I touched a lot of them! Gone are my girlies days of tan and heels...I was a socks and sandals kinda girl for a week with absolutely no problem of touching a parasite with my bare hands and ripping it out of my skin while it sucked the blood out of me! Some of the other guys got pretty badly eaten by the leeches. Rhona even managed to end up with one in her head...only noticed when the fecker had dropped off after getting his fill and blood started flowing down her face! Everyone else would only know about their leeches by the massive blood stains left on the socks and legs after the leeches had dropped off. This brings me to the point that the leeches don’t actually hurt. For the most part we never felt them on us, every now and then someone would feel them but mostly they were there and gone before we noticed and only the marks left on feet and legs gave away that they were ever there! But I would take leeches over mosquitoes and day as they don’t hurt and don’t itch and don’t leave big massive red lumps where they bite!! Leech rant over, and back to what I started saying. I am glad that I did the trek, it was an amazing achievement but I wasn’t slightly disappointed as to the level of scenery we got due to the clouds and rain. I joked at one stage that I would be tempted to do it at some time in my life again...just to see the views I was supposed to get. Then I quickly talked myself out of it as my muscles seemed to sense what was going on in my head and started throbbing! But now that I am back a couple of days I think doing it again is a possibility at some stage in my life....I will just make sure I am fit enough and have trained for it so that the steps don’t kill me half way up!! But if I do do it, it will be far into the future so that the memory of the pain isn’t quite as fresh in my mind!!! It wasn’t quite what I imagined it was going to be and I think that is why I struggle to figure out how I feel about the trek. When I think Himalayas I think rocky mountain peaks with snow capped mountains. And I know I wasn’t going up high enough to actually trek on snow capped mountains but I still imagined that it was going to be rocky terrain. Instead we got step after step in a more jungly environment and as beautiful and breathtaking as that was I was still slightly disappointed that I didn’t get to see the sort of Himalayas that I imagined.

 Enjoyed the trek? Jury is still out! Glad I did the trek? Absolutely!

And here ends part one of my Nepalese adventure...many more stories to come as I still have two weeks in Nepal which includes a return trip to Chitwan and then a few days in Kathmandu.

India - Part 2

So our next stop in India was Jaipur. We stopped at the Temple of the Sun God of Galpa just outside of Jaipur, which is also known as the Monkey Temple...due to the fact that it is surrounded by monkeys! The truck parked at the bottom of the hill that the Temple was on and off we all set off...in the blistering heat...up a steep hill...to see a temple...yay!!! In all honesty the temple was a temple but we were all transfixed by the family of monkeys that was just outside the temple. When we looked over the edge there was about 40 or 50 monkeys monkeying around (really sorry but had to do that!!!). There was loads of little baby monkeys too...as in baby baby ones and toddler ones! And we even saw one that looked like it was only a couple of hours old...we guessed this partly due to the fact that the mammy monkey looked pure knackered and couldn’t move at all except to cling to the wee baby! Some of the teenager monkeys were quite inquisitive and were coming right up to us which was pretty cool. Once we had our fill of monkeys we headed back to the truck and had a short journey then to Jaipur...where we found a gorgeous hotel awaiting us!! And in contrast to the noise and dust of Delhi we had a nice hotel in a peaceful suburb with lovely comfortable rooms. We took it easy that night and ate at the hotel. The restaurant was a veggie one but I found loads on the menu to eat so had a lovely meal that night!

Next day a group of 14 of us headed off on an organised day trip. In Delhi I felt that I hadn’t done very much tourist wise because I was struggling with the heat so I had found out about this tour and decided to do it so that I could see some of Jaipur. My god see some of it...I saw all of it... in a day!! I was shattered by the end of it!! Jaipur is known as the Pink City after it was painted pink in 1876 to welcome Prince Albert to the city. Oddly enough it is more of a terracotta colour...something which our tour guide commented on himself!! We stopped first at the Birla Temple which had amazing marble carvings all over it and was set in a beautiful garden. After that we moved onto Albert Hall which is the Central Museum. It was built in 1876, again in honour of the visit from Prince Albert, and was a beautiful building to look at, and again it was set in a fantastic garden. Hawa Mahal in the centre of the town was our next stop. The Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds) is a 5 story semi-octagonal building that has 365 windows on it. It was built in 1799 by a Maharaja with the purpose of allowing his wives and other royal ladies to watch the parades through the city without them being on view to the public! It was the most intricately carved building I’ve possibly ever seen. Our next stop was Jantar Mantar which I found quite interesting. Jantar Mantar is one of 5 observatories built by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II throughout India in the 18^th century. It’s not an observatory in the sense that we know it; there was no massive telescope or anything like that. Instead it was all walls and structures that allowed people to study the movements of constellations and stars in the sky. And it still all works today, the sundial told us the accurate time of Jaipur down to a difference of about 30 seconds or so...fairly impressive I think!! People also use it a lot when arranging marriages as they believe a lot in star signs matching and that kind of thing. The families go to the observatory and get an astrologer to align the two peoples star signs and see if they are suitable and what is ahead for them in marriage in terms of children and their fortune. I will just say that even though India is still a country of arranged marriages there are nowadays a lot of “love marriages” where young people are finding their own partners rather than them being arranged from a young age.

After Jantar Mantar we headed into the City Palace which was in the heart of the Old City. The Palace had the usual house of Public and Private Audience as well as courtyards and loads of impressive gateways. Two marble elephants stand on either side of the entrance to the palace itself. There was also an armoury and weapons museum (which I gave a miss) and also a display of traditional art works where we could watch some of the artists at work as well as buy some of the art work if we wanted (something I didn’t do seeing as an being an overlander makes it impossible to buy a lot of stuff!!). I also saw an entrance in the Guinness World Records while I was there, two large silver containers that are credited as being the largest single pieces of silver in the world. There were absolutely massive and were used by the Maharaja to transport water from the Ganges when he was travelling and in battle! Jal Mahal was our next stop which was a palace set in the middle of a large lake. The palace was lovely and the view was amazing as the lake was so still it reflected the palace perfectly in the lake. Our guide told us that the palace was built as a summer lodge for hunting... but then the Maharaja decided he would also like to be able to fish also, so he got a lake dug out to surround the palace! Nice to be able to decide you want to have a lake around your house and for it to be just done like that!!

It was then time for our lunch stop which was up at Nahargarh Fort 600 feet above the city. We got some amazing views and the drive up reminded me a little of the drive the truck did on the way up to Nemrut Dagi in Turkey...as in it was narrow roads, extremely windy and a slow drive!! There was amazing views of the city and the Fort itself was lovely, although we didn’t have a lot of time to explore because it was a choice of explore or have lunch...so we chose lunch naturally!! Afterwards we went to another fort called the Jaigarh Fort. This Fort also stands overlooking the city. The main attraction at this fort aside from the views is Jai Ban, which is the world’s biggest cannon on wheels. The cannon has a 20 foot long barrel and can hold 100kg of gun powder. The cannon can fire up to 20 miles...it has only ever been fired once...which was a test shot, and once people heard of how accurate and the power of it, it seemed to deter people from attacking the Fort...so it worked without actually working!! After Jaigarh Fort we went to Amber Fort which was my highlight of the day. The palace itself took 2 centuries to build under the watchful eyes of 3 separate Maharajas. It is built in red sandstone and white marble. In the palace we saw the Sheesh Mahal which was the chamber of mirrors...where us girls became princesses as the story went that only princesses of the palace were permitted to look in the mirrors...so we all did of course!! The palace also had an amazing courtyard and was just pretty impressive overall! My favourite palace to date I think. At this stage we had been out for 9 hours so we were all extremely glad to head back to our hotel. We went for dinner that night at a rooftop restaurant and then we all collapsed into bed after such a busy day! The following day was an EXCEPTIONALLY lazy day!! I spent most of the day on the net catching up with people and making a few long overdue phone calls. Proof as to just how lazy we were that day lies in the fact that we decided we wanted Dominos pizza for lunch...so we got it...by ordering it on the internet and having it delivered to the hotel!!! The poor delivery dude got quite a shock when he walked into the hotel to deliver 6 pizzas and he got ambushed at the door by a group of hungry white people!

The following day we moved on from Jaipur to Agra and the Taj Mahal. The Taj is one thing that for some unknown reason I have been ridiculously excited to see the whole way through the trip. On the way to Agra we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri which was a preserved fortified city with all the usual palace/fort stuff. Then we headed to the hotel and started making plans to visit the Taj Mahal. The Taj was built by a Maharaja for his first wife after she died giving birth to their 14^th child. So next morning a group of us got up BEFORE the crack of dawn and headed into the Taj for sunrise. We were the first people in the queue and even though it wasn’t supposed to open until 6 they opened the gates at about twenty past 5 when we arrived. So we got the iconic picture of the Taj Mahal but with no people in the foreground which was amazing. Seeing it for the first time took my breath away. I found it hard to believe that I was actually standing in front of it. It was so beautiful and majestic and just absolutely perfect. The sky was the brightest blue behind it and it just glowed in the morning light. We spent ages looking at it and taking pictures and then started walking up to it...which is when it dawned on me just how big it actually is. We walked around it and went into it and then found a spot on one side of it to watch the sun come up behind it. The sky turned a lovely golden colour and the Taj looked even more amazing in that light. I could have sat there all day looking at it but unfortunately we were being picked up to go to the Red Fort. So we headed out to meet our tuk tuk driver and off we went to the fort. The fort again was lovely and a really impressive one, bigger than most of the ones we have seen and again in perfect condition. But what made it truly breathtaking was the views we got of the Taj Mahal across the water. It looked much smaller all of a sudden but still as stunning. When all that was done we headed back to the hotel and chilled out for the day after our early start. In the evening we went to a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Taj for sunset. We left a bit too early though and missed the sky changing colour unfortunately but we made up for it the next day by going to a different restaurant and waiting til it was actually turned to dark sky and we got the spectacular views that we were looking for.

Our next stop in India was Varanasi and the river Ganges. We had a very early start to get on the road and make it in one day without having to bush camp along the way. Varanasi was different to the other places we had stayed in. Throughout India on our drive days we would drive through little rural villages but once we reached our destination it got a feel of being more city like. Varanasi was different in that when we reached it, I didn’t actually realise that we had because it just felt like one of the slightly larger rural villages! We were due to camp in Varanasi in the courtyard of a lovely hotel. When we first arrived the hotel said there was no room available but then they found a few. I decided to stick it out and sleep in my tent...I got it pitched and then found out there was a few more rooms available. Even pitching the tent had made me pump sweat (sexy I know!!!) so I decided a room was probably a good idea for that night! And best of all the bed had a DUVET!!! I have not slept with a duvet since my last sleep in my bed so this was an extremely exciting thing...once again evidence that it is the little things in life that makes us happy!!

Our second day in Varanasi was a lazy day by the pool and deciding on options for our break in Nepal but the following day was jam packed! I got up at 4am to go on a sunrise boat trip on the Ganges. It was extremely peaceful when we got on the river. There was very few people around, only a small handful of people washing in the river or doing laundry. The boat brought us along many of the Ghats (steps) all the way up to the main burning ghat. Everyone knows that the Ganges is where people go to burn their deceased relatives as if they die by the Ganges they are released from the circle of eternity and won’t be reincarnated (which is why there are such a large number of elderly people in Varanasi). The guide told us that the funeral period is very short; when a person dies they are burned within 24 hours of them dying, which I found quite odd. Women are also forbidden from going to the Ghats and so it is only the men in the family who accompany the body to the Ghats. Looking at the ghat was a slightly odd experience. At first I was just looking at these fires and even when the guide pointed out a family sitting on the steps with a shrouded body waiting to burn, it didn’t hit me. However it did hit me when I was looking at one of the fires and I noticed (look away squeamish people) a leg from the knee down sticking out of a fire untouched at that stage by the flames. It really hit me then exactly what was happening right in front of my eyes.

However after this experience we then rowed back down the river and the religious significance of the river was slightly tainted as we saw people literally having a crap in the river, buffalos bathing and also a dead body floating in the river. The guide explained to us that there are 6 categories of people that can’t be burned in the Ghats and so they get a weight tied to their foot and are dropped into the centre of the river instead. The 6 categories are children younger than 10, holy men, pregnant women, people who suffer from leprosy or elephantism (not sure that’s the actual name of the disease but you get the picture) and people who have been castrated. The guide said that often the bodies lose the weights and so the float up. Every few days men go down the river gather up any bodies that may have come lose, tie another weight to them and drop them down again! When the trip was over we headed back to the hotel for some breakfast and then a few of us headed into Varanasi to explore a little bit. We went first to a cafe for some lunch where I had the wonderful experience of a mouse crawling across my lap while I sat eating my pizza!! Yes I did jump up, probably quicker than I had moved in a long time!! Then we went to walk down by the Ghats. We ended up without realising down by the burning ghat once again. It was an even stranger experience to be standing so close and seeing it. I looked but at the same time stopped myself from taking too much in because I was afraid of what I was going to see. We then started to make our way to the main street. We had to walk through lots of little narrow alley ways and came across 3 funeral processions on the way to the Ghats, the first of which freaked me out slightly as they didn’t have the face covered like the rest of them. To say Varanasi is a maze doesn’t even begin to cover it! It took us forever to find our way back to the main street and when we did for the first time in India there was not one tuk tuk in sight!! We walked for ages looking for one and we all started to get extremely pissed off. The beeping was absolutely nonstop, once again people were staring, there was even one guy standing beside a body waiting to go down to the Ghats with a video camera that was filming the 4 white people rather than the funeral he was attending...although why he was filming a funeral in the first place was something else that was completely beyond me. At one stage the 4 of us where standing on a street corner when a guy on a motorbike stopped at the edge of our circle and started beeping for us to move so that he could drive through the four of us and get down the alley. Now we were in no way blocking the alley, all he had to do was move a few inches to the left and he could have gone around us. But no instead the ignorant bastard sat on his horn until we moved, to say he nearly got pushed off his bike would be a gross understatement and the 4 of us could easily have killed the dude with Rosie’s parasol if we had been given the chance!! We eventually found a tuk tuk anyway and got ourselves the hell out of there and back to the tranquillity of the hotel...only to have a very quick turnaround as we were doing the sunset trip on the Ganges too!! So we showered quickly and headed back into the city. Having been up from 4am and then having the awful experience of the afternoon the last thing I wanted to do was go back into the hell hole but off I went and I’m glad I went. The evening boat trip was a completely different experience as there was a lot more people around and there are ceremonies held all the way along the river in the evening giving offerings to the river with people praying for different things. After 45 minutes of watching 5 dudes waves flames, and incense and bells around in a choreographed routine in the ridiculous heat I was well ready to get home to bed!!

Varanasi definitely wasn’t my favourite place in India by a long shot (the goes to Agra) but I’m glad I can say I saw it. I didn’t have the guts to touch the river itself, purely because I couldn’t get over the dirt and seeing someone wash their clothes in the river with water buffalo shitting in it down stream and a dead body floating up stream is a pretty fantastic deterrent!  I did row the boat for a little bit on the morning trip so at least I can saw I rowed a boat on the Ganges! Next day marked our departure from India and into Nepal. India managed to redeem itself after my Varanasi experience before we crossed the border. It was a slightly dull day with a dark sky and the roads were lined by trees and green fields...to be really honest if I looked out the front window of the truck and blocked my mind to the fact that I was on a big orange truck I felt like I was driving the roads back home and I got a bit of a happy thinking about that.

So random thoughts on India; Rory, you’ll appreciate this....all the farmer dudes driving around in their tractors all wear WHITE!!! As in head (turbans) to toe white outfits...and they somehow miraculously manage to keep them white even driving around in a tractor in the dust and dirt!!

Another random observation, you know they way at home in Dublin city we have the pedestrian lights that countdown to tell us how long we have to wait for them to go green, well in India they have the counting down lights for the traffic...and not only do they count down how long we’ve to wait, they also tell you how long they are staying green for...which oddly enough always seemed to be for less time than they were red!!

I think my memories of India will mostly be dirty, loud streets, blatant picture taking which got very, VERY old by the end of the couple of weeks. Having every person I walk by trying to sell me something... which reminds me of a funny story from Amber Fort. When we were on our way out we walked by some market stalls, one of which was selling traditional shoes. An Indian woman was standing there with a pair of the shoes in her hand looking at them. Then I (a white person with “loads of money”) walked by and the man who owned the stall literally grabbed the shoe out of the woman’s hand and started trying to sell them to me!! Now I couldn’t have looked less interested (eyes to the ground, increased pace of walking) but still he followed me for a few steps before giving up and going back to the woman who actually wanted to buy them! I just found it amazing that he completely ignored an interested customer to try flog them to me just because I was a tourist! So yes I think when someone asks me about what I thought of India I think my initial reaction will be to say I didn’t like it but I think if I put a bit more thought into it and when I look at my pictures I will remember the amazing things like the Golden Temple in Amritsar and the Taj Mahal. So yes India was amazing to experience and I saw some amazing things and experienced things I never thought I would (thankfully this doesn’t include Delhi Belly which I managed to avoid for the 3 weeks woohoo!!) but I think 3 weeks in India is more than enough and if I did come back I would be going to new places rather than revisiting anywhere I’ve been, with the exception of the Taj of course!!

Slightly shorter second part of India but to be totally honest I’m just about done with India and ready to move on to writing about my Nepali adventure which I am loving already!! So Nepal is the next port of call and all my stories from there will follow soon!!