Well, we have arrived in a country that the Lonely Planet guide describes as "a challenging country, particularly for the first-time visitor; the poverty is confronting, Indian bureaucracy can be exasperating and the crush of humanity sometimes turns the simplest task into an energy-zapping battle. Even the most experienced travellers find their sanity frayed at some point, yet this is all part of what makes India a unique travel destination." I don't think we could sum it up any better than that. Delhi was shocking - it's true that nothing can prepare you for it and it feels lik [View Full Entry]

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(Bronia typing) Gail (Dave's sister) and her boyfriend Paul arrived Sat morning to spend a last Manning family weekend together. Then Dave and I went for one last 10km run in Sutton Park. It's a fabulous 2500 acre park which is 5 min run from the Manning's house and Dave and I have had great runs discovering bits of it. The park was given over to some Lord by Henry VIII as hunting & fishing grounds (there are about 5-7 lakes in it). Underfoot is soft earth and beautiful leaf trails to run on with spectacular views as you round [View Full Entry]

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(Bronia typing) Here is our Itinerary - planned as much as we can to give structure and a general direction, but still giving flexibility for us to change our minds about the length of time we spend in any one place. This framework of dates is based on pre-booked key flights (bold text) that we have booked and our idea of how long we want to spend in any one place. The rest however could change as we go along. Where we refer to a flight that is not in bold text, it means is not booked yet. We start [View Full Entry]

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(Bronia typing) We had to go back down south from Sutton Coldfield to Billericay, Essex (Jan 5-8) as we had final visits to Doctors for travel antibiotics, malaria tablets as well as 3 final vaccines for our trip. Dave and I feel like walking petri-dishes or lab specimens with the amounts of disease samples that have been pumped into our arms over the last few months. Talk about testing our immune systems! Who would have thought that your body could cope with creating immunity for rabies, Japanese encephalitis and Hep B ALL at once?! - The nurse however assured us [View Full Entry]

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(Bronia typing) Ok, so it sounds corny, but it's true - The one thing that Dave and I keep saying to one another at the moment is: This time a year ago who would have thought we'd be doing this?" This trip; across Asia, down through North and South America is one of those realities that you just think won't happen. The kind of thing you talk about amongst your friends but you just never get around to doing because jobs, mortgage, well life really, gets in the way. So it was a normal conversation that started one day between [View Full Entry]

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