Bangkok Beijing from Bulwell

We concluded Benny's visit with a trip to the beach. Well, we went to an island called Diu in the state of Gujarat. We saw what looked a little like a beach - kind of sandy I suppose, a little small perhaps, probably a little too stained brown from the dirty-looking water washing up on it every few seconds for my liking though. Very 'India' I felt. I wouldn't let my dog play in it. Hardly the pinnacle of the trip but this is the whole point behind seeing new places I suppose, they're not all going to be great. We did bribe a bloke to let us into a small water park though so all was not lost. We had a flight booked out of Mumbai for the 17th July so left Diu to board ... read more

We were joined in Delhi by Benny (real name, honest) which after a trip of over 4 months now with just two if us feels a little strange. India was sure to blow his mind and I'm not sure it was exactly what he was expecting. Still, when your second day in the country involves visiting the Taj Mahal you can't really complain. We all decided to pay up front and have a tour for 9 days that included all our hotels, transport and most of the meals. So we hit the tourist trail of the Indian 'Golden Triangle' - Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. I could type all day about what we've done and in what order and it would get old pretty fast. Instead I think it's more interesting to talk about Kashmir, the destination ... read more

Success at last! Our Indian visa came in and the next day we got the first bus from Kathmandu to Sanauli, the border town with India. A quick word on Kathmandu, I don't feel it's really been given enough coverage which is remarkable considering we spent so long there. Kathmandu is pretty manic (at least at the time I thought it was, now I'm typing from Delhi it doesn't seem so bad) but everything is there for you and at low prices too. Obviously like all tourists we stayed in the Thamel area so were constantly indulging in every cuisine known to man and finishing it off with chocolate cake. Things did get samey after 10 days or so whilst we were waiting on our visas and boredom kicked in. So with four days left we ... read more

I had mentioned previously that to experience the great things, sometimes you need to overcome great obstacles. Unfortunately for us overcoming obstacles was more than simply scaling mountains (if only). Most people, those with brains and money among us, fly into Lukla from Kathmandu and avoid the ridiculously difficult Jiri to Cheplung stretch. We fit into neither category so found ourselves passing Lukla on day 4 - not bad to say it was supposed to take us a week. Immediately it's as if we'd reached some form of civilisation - the path was walkable all of a sudden, there was tea-house every 30 mins or so, and we saw more trekkers in our first 10 minutes there than in our previous 4 days. All armed to the teeth with walking sticks (proper ones not old fogey ... read more

The best things in life come for free, so says Luther Vandross. Well I'd like to prove otherwise as this particular chapter of two muppets stumbling their way across Asia will show. Blood, sweat and tears (almost), sickness, physical and mental pain and severe financial shortcomings went into making it to the Base Camp of the tallest peak of our planet. The next two entries to this blog reveal just how difficult it is, and just how much more difficult we made it, to give an understanding of our achievement (which I must say, under the circumstances was fantastic). Simply typing about it sends a shudder down my spine. So I digress... We appeared to be doomed from the beginning. We arrived in Kathmandu bus station in good time only to be greeted by at least ... read more

One of the great aspects of this trip is the way in which plans can be changed, quite literally over breakfast. In Kunming over a full English breakfast (you have to, don't you?) it was decided that instead of spending 2 months in China we would keep it to 1 month and avoid the ridiculously expensive Tibeten tour trip. We decided to fly from Beijing to Kathmandu and do our trekking there. One problem, now it means we need to get to Beijing sharpish before the visas run out. Unfortunately this meant culling Chengdu (and it's loveable Panda reserve) and heading straight to X'ian - a 30 hour train journey north. Thankfully we landed a soft sleeper and enjoyed a cabin to rival a lot of rooms we've endured so far. The reason for the stay ... read more

China, a land where beauty meets the beast. It's probably not surprising that in this instance the beasts are human beings. Although it's unfair to tarnish all of us with the same brush as I don't think I've ever seen anyone, anywhere else with the same willingness to ruin a good thing as the Chinese. From Dali we hit the road once more and landed in Lijiang - A town similar to Dali in some respects. They both have delightful old towns and plenty of great surrounding scenery but there's one not so subtle difference. Lijiang appears to have been turned into China's answer to Ayia Napa. Clearly once a quaint, picturesque little old town with wooden buildings and cobbled streets, it now moves to the sound of naff Chinese pop music blasting (do the Chinese ... read more

Well, well, well. If you want a whirlwind of thoughts going through your head every minute of every day, just go to China. Every moment makes you wonder what's going on. We endured a 19 hour train journey from Guilin to Kunming which actually wasn't so bad, except for perhaps sharing a sleeping area with a fat Chinese fella who made himself at home by instantly taking his shirt off and spitting on the floor. Maybe it's a way of marking your turf over here. We arrived in Kunming and for once managed to find the hostel (amusingly called 'The Hump') with no problems at all. Pretty good as well - It reminded me of hostels I'd stayed in Australia, large communal areas with a bar and a sun terrace. Not bad for 20Y a night ... read more

After the debacle of Guangzhou we could be forgiven for thinking that two months in China was going to be one hard slog through chugging polluted city streets with what seems like millions of other people. Thankfully, upon arriving in Guilin our worst fears were dispelled immediately. Finally we found ourselves a reasonably small city (a 'small city' in China is one with less than two million inhabitants it seems) with a stunning array of dramatic limestone peaks dominating the horizon in every direction. Finally, it seemed, we'd arrived in the China I'd been reading about. One other thing we noticed too, was that all of a sudden we were cold. It was around 13 degrees C but walking around in sandals and shorts after 2 months in SE-Asia left us both shivering as we located ... read more