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Published: December 22nd 2009
Day 535: Wednesday 16th December - The sharks of Delhi
I have always strived to make my blog an honest and accurate account of my travel experiences. I must make a confession however readers that the last two months this has not always possible. Since I made the decision to return home in September I have at times omitted some of my thoughts and feelings as I did not wish to jeopardise the surprise that I wished my homecoming to be. Now, I can be full and frank for Delhi is to be my last stop. By the time you read this I will be home in England. After 18 months of non-stop travel I have decided to call it a day. This is not a sudden decision but something I decided three months ago. There are three things I now wish to share with you: 1) My thought process and reasons for deciding to return home 2) Putting the jigsaw together to return 3) My true feelings since making this decision.
First let me deal with the decision to come home. On September 6th I made a journey between Hong Kong and Japan. I commented at the time
that this was a journey too far. Having had several periods of homesickness through my 6 months in South East Asia, which I got over, this was the moment when I could no longer resist the call of home. A seed had been sown, I had an idea in my head which I worked on in my initial days in Tokyo. My plan then was to return home for Christmas for 6 weeks or so and then resume my travels at the end of January.
With every decision there are push and pull factors so let me explain these. The pull of seeing my family and friends back home was growing. After over a year on the road I missed them and the connection with them through e-mail and conversations on the phone I felt was fading. The other pull factor was wanting to spend Christmas in my own country with my family and friends. Christmas is a special time in England, for me the most special time of the year. It is the time I get to spend the most time with my family and friends. Those were the pull factors, and over time they were increasing.
The push factors were that my energy levels were starting to wane. I’d been on the road for over a year. Travelling is no holiday. It is the best way to see the world in my opinion, but I hadn’t spent a year on the beach. For over a year I’d been on the go non-stop. After travelling for so long it is harder for things to amaze you, harder for things to be special. You start to see the same things, duplicate experiences. The bar had been raised. This was my day to day feelings and I have often said that once travelling stops becoming special that then is the time to quit. I also was looking into the future. I had just had three magical weeks in China and very much wanted to go return to that country and trekking the Annapurna circuit in Nepal had long been a goal of mine. I couldn’t go home just yet it wasn’t the right time. I cast my mind forward to Christmas and couldn’t imagine spending Christmas in India, a country that doesn’t celebrate Christmas. India also held a special place in my heart, it was my favourite country and
I didn’t want to spoil my recollection of it my travelling the country half hearted. Some countries you can travel without you heart and soul in it but not India. I knew it would destroy my feelings towards India. I knew I couldn’t go beyond India.
That was the realisation that I had reached an end point for my travels. It was three months hence. My best friends usually celebrate Christmas by having a meal together the weekend before Christmas. This I thought would be the ideal time to return. I could have gone home sooner but I didn’t think the timing was right to return home and it would have meant missing out on many places I still wanted to visit. This was the perfect time, I knew it, I had to work it out. I checked flights, I worked out my travel plans and I came up with a perfect ending for my trip. I could do China, do Nepal and have a week in India to see a few of the highlights and remind myself what a wonderful country it is. A week I could manage, any longer and it would destroy my impression.
Planning
to return started in Tokyo. I checked flights, and flying from Delhi was much cheaper than from Kathmandu. That was decided I would finish in India. This was confirmed when I worked out I had enough time to travel Japan, China and Nepal and still have a few days in India. I didn’t book any flights but continued to monitor them. For the time being I would continue to think things over. During the next month or so in Japan and China, my thoughts were moving from booking a return flight and resuming my travels after a six week break over Christmas in England to stopping altogether. I realised that I’d had my innings and that I’d had a wonderful time but now had come the time to do something else. This latter view I maintain today.
During my time in Inner Mongolia a few key pieces fell into place. First, I managed to finalise the tour to Tibet. This was one of the places I always dreamed of seeing and was one of the places that was top of the wish list in the time I had remaining. I was always going to end this trip on a
high and I had secured one key component of making this come true. At the same time, I found out that my best friends had indeed organised to have their Christmas meal on the Saturday before Christmas. Up until this point I had been guessing now I knew. A couple of days later I returned to Beijing and booked my ticket home to London and then on to Newcastle. The price was the lowest I had seen, and I paid just £225 for both the flights.
Since this point, and before if I’m entirely honest I knew I was coming home the week before Christmas. Many people close to me have guessed when I was coming home and guessed correctly but I never gave the game away. I wanted it to be a surprise when I returned and I didn’t want a fanfare at the airport. I wanted to slip back quietly and surprise everyone. Whether this will be the case, and just how much I will surprise people I will find out in a few days. I’ve been fortunate, I’ve ended my trip on my terms and when I wanted to. Others are not so lucky. They run
out of money or maybe something bad happens and forces them home. I could continue but that is not my wish.
I said I wanted to finish my travels on a high and I believe I have done just that. Ever since I arrived in Beijing I knew I was on the final straight. I knew there were many great experiences ahead and indeed that has largely proved to be the case. Walking the Great Wall, riding across the grasslands in Inner Mongolia, Tibet, the Annapurna Circuit, Varanasi, the Taj Mahal and Amritsar - they’ve all been special. That said, much of my second visit to China and Nepal as well, both occurring after I had decided to return home, failed to truly excite. Had I travelled too long after deciding to come home? Was it my mindset or was it the places? In Nepal, I believed it was my state of mind but then I arrived in India and suddenly I was full of energy again. I was loving travelling, it was a new country and one full of rich experiences.
Completing the jigsaw hasn’t been without its complications. I arrived in Nepal and initially thought that
my 30 day Nepal visa and application for an Indian visa would provide headaches. That all worked out perfectly in the end though. In Japan, when I was planning my homecoming my thoughts had been on getting a six month visa. Indian visas are multiple entry so I could return to England for 6 weeks and come back on the same visa. By the time I had arrived in Nepal my mind had changed though and all I cared about was getting across the border. I found out that I could get a 15 day transit visa which was valid from date of application. If I applied on the 4th December my visa would be valid until the date I flew home. I got my visa, all the pieces were in place, or so I hoped.
They were on my part, but my brother and his girlfriend who is Chinese had decided to fly to China and spend Christmas and New Year over there. My brother mentioned the weekend of 18-20 December as the preferred date to travel. This was the weekend I was returning to the UK. Was I going to miss him? Should I tell him and
sway his decision? I opted not to and left it to the Gods to decide. So far everything had worked to plan, why shouldn’t this? Then, earlier this week I got a message from my brother that he was flying out on Christmas Eve. I was going to see him after all. My mum then threw a spanner in the works. She was performing in an anniversary celebration of the Sage Music Hall in Newcastle on the day I was coming back. This was a minor irritation I decided. I was proud of my mum for having the opportunity and didn’t want to deny her that, even though it conflicted with my return. Hopefully I will see her before her performance, if not after, but I am confident that Saturday will be the perfect ending. I will see my family in the afternoon and then surprise my best friends at their Christmas meal. The one part I have neglected to tell you is that I arrive in London on Friday and I have arranged to stay with another of my best friends that was at my going away party but now lives just 2 miles from Stanstead airport, where I
fly from on Saturday to Newcastle. He is the only one of my closest friends that knows I’m coming home.
The only thing I have omitted to say so far is how I have felt since I made the decision to return home in September. Never once have I wavered on this being the correct decision. This tells me that the time was right to come home. The only thing that has changed in my mind is that I won’t now resume travelling in the new year. I felt I needed some normality back in my life, I needed time to sit down and reflect on the last 18 months and absorb the many wonderful times I’ve had. The idea of resuming my travels no longer appealed as much. Once your heart isn’t fully in it, it is time to quit and go home. Many, many times over this last three months I have thought about home, my friends and family, and my return. Often my thoughts were as much on this as the travelling as I was doing. That said I don’t regret not coming home earlier. There have still been many highlights in the last three months,
and times that have been special and an absolute privilege. This now though I know in my head and my heart is the right time to return.
Back to Delhi, we arrive at 5am. I’ve been awake for four and a half hours now and am ready to take on the scum of this city. First, me and Bruno get a coffee to compose ourselves and get ready for the lowlife. My good friends Mike and Trudi had a bad experience when they arrived here 4 months ago and I’m more than prepared for some shenanigans. Bruno looks like a member of the Taliban with his turban on so if anyone tries anything I’m going to tell them my friend is a freedom fighter and that he has a gun!! That may seem a little drastic but you haven’t dealt with Delhi’s rickshaw drivers. We end up taking a ride with a Sikh man who gives us a decent price, if not the truly correct one as we later discover.
We get dropped off in Pahar Ganj, the area of the city where the budget accommodation is centred. Angie, the American girl who was on our Tibet tour
recommended me a hotel and we start our search for accommodation here. They have a room, but it is a heart-shaped double bed and as much as I like Bruno, I’m not quite prepared to share such a bed with him! We try half a dozen other hotels in the same street, all which have neither a twin room or are of sufficient quality. This is my last stop and I would like to stay somewhere half-decent. We take a cycle rickshaw to a street in the same area of the city where we find the hotels a bit more upmarket and after comparing several we finally at 8am have a hotel. One thing I won’t miss about travelling is choosing where to stay when you arrive somewhere new.
We take breakfast, get a much needed shower and relax in the room in the morning, still feeling the effects of having little sleep and our colds. As morning turns to afternoon we leave the hotel and go out and discover Delhi. Delhi is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world along with Varanasi and Damascus and I believe there have been something like 11 cities built
in the area of the current city. Today the city is split between Old Delhi, the Mughal city and New Delhi which the British largely constructed, moving the capital here in 1930 from Calcutta. Like Agra, I’ve visited Delhi before and from recollection I remember the new city being just another city, full of wild boulevards with an Indian twist and the old city being a true representation of India. Today we will visit the new city.
Delhi is a big city, one of the biggest in the world with 20 million people. It is too far to walk between most places so you depend on taxis, auto-rickshaws and cycle rickshaws. Getting a fair deal from the sharks is another matter. Along with Bangkok, I would rate the drivers of the said transport as the biggest cheats in the world. Unlike other Indian cities we’ve visited, the auto-rickshaws are metered. This doesn’t seem to matter one jot to the drivers who when we ask them to use their meter refuse. We don’t just try a few, we must ask 20 through the course of the day. They won’t use their meters because they want to cheat us out of
money. The bargaining is equally ridiculous. After a week in India we know what ball park the prices should be in and sometimes we are quoted double even triple this. I become frustrated and start to call a number of the drivers cheats. And they are, and yes I believe this is a national trait too. An honest Indian? Of course they exist, but too many that I’ve come across are dishonest and are looking to rip you off.
We take our first auto-rickshaw to Connacht Place where I was sure there was something to see but it is nothing more than a traffic circle and a park in the middle of it. It does have one saving grace though and that is that it has a prepaid auto-rickshaw rank, where we can get a rickshaw at a fair price and also find out what we should be paying for our other journeys. We take the auto-rickshaw to Gandhi Smitri, the place where Mahatma Gandhi lived in the 5 months prior to his death and where he was murdered one fateful day in 1948. There is a museum on the site which had a lot of information about Gandhi
and the Indian independence movement but it is secondary in interest to Richard Attenborough’s film of Gandhi. If you’ve seen the film, which I have, the museum doesn’t hold too much interest.
After visiting Gandhi’s memorial we walk towards Humayun’s tomb. We walk because the auto-rickshaws outside Gandhi Smitri want stupid prices to go there. I embarrass one driver into turning his back on me when I call him a cheat and for being a hypocrite to his religion when he tells me he is a Hindu. I might not agree a price but I gain a moral victory against the sharks. We walk half way there before a Sikh man on an auto-rickshaw picks us up. He also tries it on before realising he is dealing with a tourist who knows the right price.
Humayun’s tomb is a real surprise. I didn’t visit it on my previous visit to Delhi and wasn’t expecting much from the new city but the Mughal architecture is particularly impressive. It was built about a century before the Taj Mahal and you can see how it would have inspired the building of that monument, and it has been called the prototype of
the Taj. It is surrounded by immaculate gardens and is definitely worth the visit. On the way out we get equally ridiculous offers for auto-rickshaws so we walk to the railway station a kilometre or so away where we will have more choice. Again, no one will use the meter because we’re tourists but we manage to bargain in the end to get a decent deal, not before we lock horns with a few more sharks who I try to embarrass at every opportunity.
In the evening we eat in one of the local restaurants. Restaurant would be pushing matters, but I can’t quite think of an alternative word. Hygiene isn’t top of their agenda and after the meal, Bruno and I are both on the toilet within half an hour of getting back to the hotel. I have a korma, a vegetarian one as eating meat in India is not to be recommended. Korma’s are normally quite mild but this one isn’t and would probably be the equivalent of a Madras or Vindaloo back home. My nose is streaming but maybe it might help my cold? I love Indian food but I have found food in India poor.
A few meals aside I think I would rather eat western food than Indian food. I’m surprised to be honest. In China, I found Chinese food better than it is in the restaurants back home, which is what I would expect. In India, the opposite is true. The quality of meat and hygiene are the main factors. Most Indians eat mainly vegetarian food as meat is comparatively expensive.
Day 536: Thursday 17th December - Old Delhi
Having seen the little of interest in the new city yesterday, today is the turn of the old city. It is just about in walking distance and we make our way there passing numerous bazaars on the way. This is the real India I know and love and much more like the other cities I have visited on my return to India. It is pandemonium in Delhi’s congested streets as people and vehicles fight for every inch of space. The bazaars are a headspinning assault on the senses, with a mindbending array of things to see and an aromatic muddle of flowers, spices, urine, incence, chai, fumes and frying food, all discernible in one whiff. We arrive at Jama Masjid, India’s largest
mosque, and another architectural gem of Shah Jahan, the man behind the Taj Mahal. I have seen the mosque before, on my previous visit and it doesn’t seem as impressive second time around. The same can be said of the cycle-rickshaw ride we later take down Chadni Chowk, the main thoroughfare through the old city.
I can’t point to any one event in my life or even one person that inspired me to travel. It was a feeling inside me that grew, and grew until it was too hard too resist when the conditions in my life were right. My trip to India, 8 years ago, my first outside Europe was certainly a strong influence. As much as the star attractions of the Taj Mahal, the beaches of Goa and the Amber Fort it was the intensity of city life and its assault on all the senses that captivated the imagination. This was life at its most colourful and the other end of the spectrum from ‘civilised’ England, but in a good way. One of the most memorable experiences of city life was taking a cycle rickshaw down Chandni Chowk. There is a kind of symmetry about taking this
same journey eight years later at the end of my round the world trip, a trip that it helped to inspire, albeit in a small way. However, like Jama Masjid, the second time around it fails to really excite me. I’ve been here before, I’ve taken countless similar journeys through chaotic cities, and I more than Chandni Chowk have changed.
The rickshaw drops us at the Lahore Gate of the Red Fort. Eight years ago the Red Fort was a military garrison so I had to be content with seeing it from the outside. In the intervening years, the military have departed and it is now open to tourists. The Red Fort is much more impressive from outside, particularly when stood in front of Lahore Gate. Inside there is not much to see and as the last sight I will see on my trip around the world it ends on a disappointing note. We walk back to the guesthouse from the Fort even though it is several kilometres and the streets are horrible to walk down. We’ve just had too much, both yesterday and today with Delhi’s cheating rickshaw and taxi drivers.
With it being our last night
in India, and last night travelling together, me and Bruno make a night of it. We start in the room with a bottle of rum and then walk to a guesthouse in Pahar Ganj where we get a nice curry on the rooftop restaurant enjoying a few beers to wash it down. Bruno has been great company over the last six weeks and has a warm and fun personality which has helped to sustain me when my enthusiasm was on the wane, particularly when I was sick in Nepal. I will miss meeting people like Bruno, people from different countries, and different walks of life from me, and which without travelling I would never hope to meet.
As for India, would I come back? Absolutely, 100% yes. When I arrived in India 10 days ago I had mixed emotions that my visit was going to be so short. I wanted to see more of the country but I also was ready to return home. There is much of the country I still want to see but the last two days in Delhi have confirmed that it is the right time to go home. I’m not ready to take on
the intensity of India for a prolonged period. Bruno asked me yesterday morning whether I was excited to be going home. I told him 95% of me was, but the other 5% wanted to stay in India. After Delhi, I know that I don’t want to stay in India, not this time. I do want to come back and see fully this amazingly colourful country, the most multi-dimensional one in the world. Travelling on a budget definitely leads to a different experience than the last one I had when I was staying in 4 and 5 star hotels. Maybe the middle road is the way to go in the future? But I’ll be back one day for sure and this time I’ll see the country properly on an extended stay of several months or so not just a couple of weeks. I don’t know if it is still my favourite country, but one thing I can still say is that India is still special.
Day 537: Friday 18th December - Back to England
After breakfast we say goodbye to Delhi and the two of us take an auto-rickshaw to the airport. We are unsurprisingly charged double what the
meter finishes at but some justice is meted out in the fact the driver has to pay a 100 Rupee (£1.30) fine to a policeman at the airport. We never quite work out what our driver is in breach of, and I suspect that the police are as corrupt as the city’s rickshaw drivers. The driver drops us off at the international airport, which Bruno then discovers is not the right airport for him as his flight to Thailand is via Kolkata in the East of India. This is where we part, we say our goodbyes, hope we meet again, wish each other luck with our respective journey’s and then embrace before we wave each other goodbye. I’m on my own again, and the next time I will see a friendly, familiar face I will be in England.
The flight is delayed because the flight which originates in Kathmandu is two hours late arriving in Delhi. They announce it is due to fog in Kathmandu. Having been in that city recently I believe that the authorities must be mixing up fog and smog, because it is pollution which envelops that city not the vagaries of the weather. It is
a nine and a half hour flight back to London, during which I finish Nelson Mandela’s enthralling autobiography: A Long Walk to Freedom. A man that has inspired a nation, and countless millions of others around the world by his life. One of the true greats of the last century. I choose to mention it not because I have anything in common with Nelson Mandela but I think my own journey has been a long walk to freedom. I have always been free, I was born in a country where the people are free and for the last 18 months I have lived my life in one of the freest ways possible. It was me that defined the parameters and probably put up barriers in my own head which stopped me fully realising my potential. I go back with a blank piece of paper, but the next chapter has no boundaries.
I arrive in London at 7:30pm and then must take another hour before I am reunited with my bag. I walk out to the arrivals lounge and there is Steve, the first of my close friends and families that I have set me eyes on in eighteen months.
It is great to see him if a little surreal. We drive around the icy M25 Bishop Stortford where he lives and over a takeaway and a beer we catch up on the last year and a half with each other. We are still talking after 1am, which with the time difference feels to me like I’ve stayed up throughout the night. I could talk longer but my eyes keep shutting so in the end I go to bed and get 5 hours sleep before I must be up to catch the plane.
Day 538: Saturday 19th December - The perfect ending
Steve drives me to the airport at 7am to catch my flight from London Stanstead to Newcastle. In the airport waiting lounge it strikes me that it is the first time I have been amongst such a concentrated number of my fellow countrymen since I left England. It feels a bit strange, no longer do I stick out like a sore thumb, no longer am I the focus of interest. The plane is delayed slightly, but at least the flight isn’t cancelled as many are over this period of weather warnings in England. As I wait
I think back to the last time I was in a London Airport - waiting in Heathrow to fly out to Mexico and start my trip. Then I was full of excitement as well as nervous apprehension. Today it is largely excitement. I have played this day through my head a thousand times since I decided to come home, and I know what to expect beyond today, although today I am wondering if my well laid plans will work out.
I can’t get any sleep on the hour long flight as I think I’m too excited, my mind is working overtime. I touch down in Newcastle, my home city at 10am. There has been heavy snow in the North of England as well as the south, and I am struck by how beautiful the countryside looks covered in snow as we drive towards Prudhoe, my home town. When I left Delhi yesterday it was 24 degrees, today in England it is -2 degrees. The weather isn’t the only big difference. The roads in Northumberland are so much quieter and civilised than those in Delhi and the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Whether I’m distracted by the view of the
countryside or my own thoughts, I fail to spot the correct turn off on the A69 and we end up driving 5 miles past where we should have. I’ve managed to find my way around the globe and then on the last journey, in the land most familiar to me, I can’t find my way! There is a sense of irony in that.
And so to the first moment of truth as the taxi pulls up on the street where my parents live. I don’t know whether I will find my parents at home, but I decide to try here first. As am getting my bags out of the boot of the taxi, I spot my dad walking along the street. He’s heading in my direction, towards the garage, and I can see from his body language that he is wondering who it is. As he gets closer he realises it is me but I don’t think he can believe his eyes, he is surprised. I go in to the house with my Dad and we sit talking for 10 minutes or so. My mum isn’t at home but my dad says she won’t be long. She soon appears,
but walks into the kitchen first where my bags are hiding so doesn’t get as big a shock as she may have done. She still looks stunned. It is great to see my family again but it feels strange and it feels a bit surreal, for all three of us I think.
The reason I wasn’t sure if my parents would be in the house is because my mum had told me she was performing at the Sage music hall in Newcastle to celebrate its fifth birthday. She is performing in the early afternoon, so I join my dad in going along to support her. Whilst waiting for her performance I take the opportunity to walk along the Quayside area of my home city spotting all the famous landmarks - the Tyne Bridge, The Millenium Bridge, The Sage, The Baltic Arts Centre. Normally these icons of Newcastle instil a sense of pride in my roots, but on this icy afternoon it all somehow doesn’t feel real. I watch my mum play the steel pans - a mix of Christmas and the Caribbean, along with a few other steel pan groups before we drive back to Prudhoe.
The next
people to surprise is my brother and his girlfriend Kelly. When he opens the door to me standing there he gets the shock of his life. He is another person who suspected that my homecoming was this side of the new year but another person who had been thrown off the scent by my misleading comments. I don’t apologise for misleading people, maybe I was not 100% honest and open, but it is because this is how I wanted my homecoming to be: a surprise. My brother and his girlfriend have been staying in my house whilst I have been overseas and it is weird to walk through the front door of my home, and after a journey of tens of thousands of miles to be truly home. We sit talking as a family for the rest of the afternoon, before my parents leave and the three of us get ready to go out for a Christmas meal.
The Christmas meal that my friends have, usually the Saturday before Christmas, was perhaps the key influencing factor in choosing the exact date of my return. I knew I would get all of them at the same time, in the same
place in a festive mood just ahead of Christmas. I have played this scene out many times in my own head, the look of surprise, the shouts of joy, the happy reunions, the drinks that flow......Talking with my brother though, I change my mind on how I will make my appearance. The meal is not booked in the restaurant until 9pm. If I wait until then before turning up I am as likely to have fallen asleep as anything. Do I trust my brother can keep it a secret for a couple of hours before I turn up? In the end I decide to walk to the pub with him for 7:30pm. I hope that all my friends will be there already but I expect that they won’t all be.
On the twenty minute walk up to the pub my heart is beating strongly just as it was when I surprised my family earlier. I walk into the pub behind David and Kelly, they move out of the way and then my friends look on in amazement as we shout at each other loudly and excitedly. Lots of hugs, kisses and embracing ensues. Over the next hour, more of
my friends walk into the pub and get a shock to see me sitting there. It feels strange and weird for me to be back home after so long away and I think my friends and family are feeling the same way. My return although not a total shock has taken everyone by surprise and was not expected. Some may have guessed but no one really knew.
After a few drinks we walk to the restaurant. It is an Indian restaurant, which is a bit ironic after spending the last 10 days in India. The food is good, a definite improvement on Indian food in India, but the service is shocking and it is an hour before we even get some poppadoms to eat. I end up sitting at the end of the table next to a couple who I’ve never met before, the only people I don’t know out of the 18 of us sat around the table. On one hand I am a bit miffed at the seating arrangements and not being amongst all of my best buddies but on the other I like meeting new people and I discover that Dan and Gemma have travelled before,
the only people here tonight that have so we have some common ground and can talk about our travel experiences in New Zealand.
Everyone is keen to know what my future plans are but tonight I ban any talk of my future. That can wait, tonight is about the present and the past; enjoying my friends company for the first time in a long time. Of course with so many people there isn’t that much opportunity to have in-depth chats, but that can wait. I find the evening a bit disorientating. It is strange to be back, it does feel a bit surreal and I am definitely suffering jet-lag. I talked before in my blog about ending on a high and today has been that. I have learnt that it is people not places that really matter, and what better way to end my trip than being reunited with all those closest and dearest to me in a matter of 24 hours. This is the perfect ending.
In a blog often packed with superlatives which I admit to being guilty to overuse, I will if you excuse me end with a few more. To finish I wish to
say it has been a truly, truly, incredible experience. I have visited some amazing places, seen many of the wonders of the world, had some special experiences and met some wonderful people along the way - both travellers and locals have enhanced and often made these experiences. I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to live my dream, and travelled a path that I’m sure many others around the world would aspire to do if only they had the financial means to do so. For that I count myself very lucky and thankful to have been allowed this opportunity. This is the end of one chapter of my life, one of the best and maybe the most rewarding. Now to put my feet up before embarking on the next chapter...............
Final note: I will write one last blog in the new year, to sum up the last 18 months of travelling, an afterword so to speak.
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Paul
non-member comment
So, did you find your zihuatanejo?