End of the 8 month saga....

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Hi there from Dehli, and as it turns out, the last port of call of this Asian journey. Originally, the plan being to continue from here thru Pakistan and onto Iran then Europe... but due to the turmoil in Pakistan at the moment I have decided to take up an offer from Carolyn in the States and visit with her family for a couple of months, to catch my breath and fly onto London for a friends wedding in May then continue with the cycle plans thru southern Europe.......Heres a recap of the trip from Nepal to here.....

The trip from Katmandu with Sarah, Carol and Mel down to Darjeeling and up to Sikkim took a week or so, Darjeeling being a chillout mountain town with modcons such as good coffee shops and a cinema where we watched 2 more Bollywood favorites and drank copious amounts of cappacinos....We were then fortified enough to tackle a 10day hike up to the glacier at the bottom of Kangchenjunga, the 3rd highest mountain in the world at 8620mts. At 5000mt and a low temp of minus fifteen degrees,we were glad of our snow pants bought in Nepal and all our merano woolies....the scenery was fantastic and we were blessed with great clear skies, good food cooked by our porters and a good guide....a great 10 days covering 90kms. We then returned via Darjeeling on the last of a 5 day general strike, to find our favorite eating and drinking houses closed so left next day to continue down to the Indian plains and travel into Bangladesh.....which remains one of the highlites of the trip......

Bangladesh.....160 million people living in a country the size of the North Island,NZ, one of the poorest nations on the globe and yet one of the friendliest and happiest places u could hope to visit. I highly recomend that if u get the opportunity to go there, dont hestitate...There is not much in the way of natural attractions but the riverlife and the villages make it an interesting destination. For the first week in the north we spent an average of $5NZ a day including everything... saw very few women...all shops, hotels and buses domminated by men.. were approached daily by well spoken English speaking younger men wanting....Please, may I ask your good country and what is your profession.......Oh, NZ, very good cricketers.....and rattled off all the NZ cricket team.....We were fortunate to visit with World Vision, a village where my friend sponsers a family and spent the day there with the family, bought them a cow with funds raised by Sarahs school in Auckland, went on a siteseeing jaunt around the area and had a great home cooked meal....the 4 of us came away that day feeling pretty humble after seeing how little a family can live and be happy with. Would definitly promote World Vision as a great humanitarian organisation.....Dacha, the capital was as busy, dirty and noisy as we were told, but still enjoyed the mighty Jamuna River city and the shopping was the best...the markets have all the end of runs of all the great label clothing from around the world for so cheap that we all sent home a couple of kilos of clothes at great postal prices...althou still waiting to hear that they have arrived! Took the train down to Chittagong on the west coast to visit the great ship breaking yards, Sarah and I managed to talk our way to the back entrance,(no visitors are allowed as its considered one of the worlds worst enviromental disasters...all the oil on the shore). Sneaked a quick photo before being shooed away. Coxs Bazzar followed, this being the longest and widest beach in the world. After Thailand and the Carrebean, the beach was nothing special and as Bangladesh is mosleum we couldnt sunbathe let alone swim (althou Mel swam in her clothes), the highlite for me was coming across a Scout jamboree of 5 nations of 8000 young people next to our hotel. After making it known I was a leader in NZ during the 90s, I was invited to their campfire with Sarah and entertained all evening, had our photos taken by dozens of Scouts and introduced to all the bigwigs.....I managed to buy several badges if anyone out there is intersted, email me and I post one to u....We then bussed down to the southmost point of the country to travel out to what was to be the highlite of the country for me, and where I hoped to spend a week on white sandy beaches, get a tan and swim all day...ST Martins Island, mentioned in Lonely Planet as comparable with Great Barrier for snorkling and diving. Dont beleive a word of it....dark brown sand, rocky coastline, murky water, windy, thousands of gawking locals etc etc. It was also a public holiday there so accommodation was difficult to get so after 2 nights we went back to the mainland and night bussed back to Dacha where Mel and Carol said their goodbyes to us and went back to India, Carol to Andamans and Mel to Goa. Carol and I had been traveling together for most of 7 months so it was a sad goodbye, Sarah and I had also become very fond of Mel and was sad to see her travel off as well. Sarah and I visited a school there to give a donation to under privalaged children and found a school for working children which was started by a NZder in 1970 and has educated over 4 million children since. All are slum children from 10 to 14 who work partime. We spent the best part of a day at their school and training institute, taking to the teachers and the children. they have a 98% success rate with their programe which is sponsered by the Danish and NZ people....another worthwhile charity to suport.. After 3 weeks in Bangladesh, Sarah and I headed to Kolkutta for xmas but after 1 night, as time was short for her, we trained to Varinassi to visit the ghats, then onto Khajaraho to see the Karma Sutra temples (which were beautiful but less explicit than we thought they would be.) We were here on xmas day and were very lucky to meet a lovely local family who invited us for xmas dinner. That night, inside their rooftop kitchen, Manu ,the mum, and I made chapitis and egg curry and shared a great dinner with her extended family. One of the more exotic xmas dinners I have ever had....and boy, was that curry HOT...From here we made a flying trip to Jaipur for 2 nights and spent 4 nights over New Year at Pushkar where we relaxed after several hectic weeks. We bussed overnight to here in Dehli and after 4 more hectic days of shopping and siteseeing, Sarah departed last night for Mayalsia on her homeward trip and I tried to talk my way onto the already full flight to USA with no luck, but hope to be lucky tonight.

Well, this concludes exactly 8 months to the day of a mammoth but very exciting trip sice leaving NZ, around South East Asia, Central Asia and Northern India.I have to say that the highlights would be Tajikistan,(hitching over the Pamir Highway and walking down thru the Wahken Valley) Bangladesh,(meeting such friendly wonderful people) Nepal,(having the chance to show Sarah how beautiful the Annapurna trek is and introducing her to trekking life) and all the great friends I meet on the way. so to Sarah, Carol, Mel, Stef, Claude,The French Canadian family in Pushkar, Manu and her family and everyone else met on the trip, a big thank you and a happy New Year. All my love Kay xxxxx

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