Waving the white flag

After a torrent 6 day battle with Wooky for the title of Iron Gut (last to get sick) I've had to wave the white flag and admit that I've suffered a severe dose of Vitamin G (otherwise known as Giardia)... welcome to Varanasi.

In the last post we were preparing for an early morning drive to Agra to see the Taj Mahal at sunset. Sadly, this wasn't quite the brilliant spectacle we had been hoping for. It seems that November / December are the foggy (smoggy) months in nothern India. As a result there wasn't really a sunrise as such, more a gradual thinning of the mists. This in itself was rather cool. It was pretty mystical to see the white balk of the Taj slowly revealed out of the early morning fog. One other advantage of seeing the Taj at this time was that it was almost empty, I'm kind of impressed that we are the only ones in photo below.

Speaking of this, I thought it was about time to introduce everyone and what better way to do it than with a rampant tourist style photo (below). From left to right: James English, Nick Valmas, Daniel Woolhouse (Wooky), Me, Chris Rawling (english friend of James and Wooky's they met in Central America).

After the Taj we jumped on an overnight train from Delhi to Varanasi, the holy city on the Ganges. I must admit, the overnight sleeper trains are pretty good, crowded but comfortable, and cheap too.

Unfortunately, my view of Varanasi was a little clouded by the aforementioned run in with Giardia. Even so, it is a pretty impressive city. The Ghats (where people bathe in the ganges) are interesting to observe, especially the burning Ghats where Hindus burn their dead before washing the ashes into the Ganges. Hindus believe (i think) that if you are burned at burning Ghat in Varanasi, you will escape the cycle of reincarnation, so it is a very important place.

I'm still amazed that people swim that river though, it is pretty much the foulest water I've ever seen. Wooky made the comment "obviously none of these guys are microbioligists", otherwise they'd be staying as far away possible (as we were).

This evening we board a train to the Nepali border before continuing onto either Pokhara or Kathmandu. Looks like we'll have more time than we thought in Nepal so we are going to try and get in a good 6 or 7 day hike, which should be great.

Below are some photos from Delhi through to Varanasi:

The Main Bazzar road in Praha Ganj, Delhi. This is one of the major back packer centres.

Photo from the Train on the way to Varanasi.

The Ghats and the Ganges at Varanasi

Early morning on the river

Washing clothes in the ganges, I fail to see how this makes anything clean.

Let the fleecing begin...

After nearly 30 hours of transit, I was feeling scattered (to say the least) when I arrived at midnight in Delhi, hence I was in no mood to batter / haggle / get generally ripped off. So it was lucky that i had a pre-arranged hotel pickup.

The next morning, after meeting up with James, Wookie, Nicki and Chris, we head out into the maelstrom which is Delhi. The scene which greeted me was as hectic and crazy as I had expected and was hoping for. Delhi is a crazy city, the shear mass of people here is overwhelming and it is a pretty unique experience.

And unfortunately, everyone here seems to want something from you, especially at the Hotel Ajunta (our current abode). I'm sort of used to being hassled by touts and I don't mind haggling over prices, but the lengths the guys at the hotel will go to is ridiculous. Every single price is inflated by at least 3 and it's impossible to ask about anything without being queried about your future travels plans and whether you would like to meet there friend who runs a very cheap travel agency.

But I guess this is just all part of Delhi and apparently the rest of India is slightly better on this score. We've spent the last two days wandering the city and, for me anyway, adjusting to the general pace of life in India.

Tomorrow morning (1:30am!) we are off to Agra to see the sunrise over the Taj Mahal before returning to Delhi to get an overnight sleeper to Varanasi.

One final thing: I don't know if this is normal, but yesteday we were indundated with people wanting to take a picture with/of us. This may have been because i had a cricket bat sticking out the back of back pack, but who knows.

Bangkok Airport: traveller's limbo.

Welcome to Bangkok airport. This place kind of reminds me of Indooroopilly shopping centre if it was decked out in fake gold. I'm currently about half way through my 14 hour stop over. Earlier, due to lack of sleep, I decided to forgo a trip into the city and thought my time would be better spent hanging around the airport. Jury's still out on that one.

I had received a heads up that Thai airways had a transit lounge complete with full length couches which were perfect for sleeping on. Unfortunately, it seems that sometime in the last month these couches were replaced with... well, nothing. Dissapointing.

Not all bad though, after several laps of the airport I managed to find a rather out of place collection of padded seats opposite gate D5. These turned out to be quite comfy and i manged to get about 3 hours sleep. So, if anyone's heading to Bangkok for an extended stay, head straight to gate D5!

So, here we are. After two years abroad, I final decided to start up a Blog.

I'm about to embark on some needed extended traveling. Again, after two years away, this is the first chance I'll have to travel with out the shadow of work hanging over me and it feels great.

Down to specifics, the plan is as follows:

- Depart Brisbane this evening and fly to Delhi.
- Meet up with James, Wookie and Nicki.
- ....
- Depart Bangkok on the 25th January 2008.

Ok, so i'm a little sketchy on the "specifics", however, we do have at least a rough plan of how we are going to fill the coming two months.

The basic plan is to head through northern India via the Taj and Varanasi into Nepal. After spending some time around Pokhara and Kathmandu we'll head jump in a jeep and head for Lhasa, hopefully via Everest. This should bring us up to Christmas time (i think).

After this things get a little hazy. We'll probably head out of Tibet and down to Kunming in the Yunnan province of China. From there we have a choice, Burma or Laos. Given the current unrest in Burma, the choice may be made for us, but we'll have to wait and see about that.

After that, who knows. As long as i get to Bangkok in time to catch my plane, I'll be happy.

There you have it. If you're interest in following our progress, tune in and I'll update this as regularly as I can.


P.s For those of you who may not exactly where all these places are, here is a map or our intended route.