Flying into Bangkok from India, I almost felt like I was back in America. The airport and customs was quiet, orderly, painless and well marked. Things made sense. I didn't have to haggle with the taxi driver about how much she would charge to take me to my hotel. She just turned on the meter without me having to scold her to do so, just as the "Metered Taxi" sign on top of her cab said she would. We drove in a big multilane highway, with billboards and tall buildings .... in I35-esque stop and go traffic. She was pleasant. She [View Full Entry]

---

---

Haridwar India become my official 2nd home as I was stuck there for almost 2 weeks. Every day I walked down to the train station and was told that the trains were all booked, but if I wanted to be put on a waiting list I would have a "50/50 shot" of getting a ticket. After 10 straight days of coming up on the losing end of "50/50", I decided the 50% was an extremely shaky estimate. There were still a couple of other places in India I wanted to see ... Varanasi, which is a famous holy Hindu city famous [View Full Entry]

---

---

I parted ways with my UK friends and drivers in Haridwar. Haridwar is about a 6 hour drive north of Delhi. I picked Haridwar for a couple of reasons. First, it's pretty far north and maybe I'll escape some of the blistering heat. Plus, it's strategically placed to several interesting locations. First, Haridwar is a holy hindu city where the Hindu God Shiva reportedly left a footprint and dropped some holy nectar. It's also where the Ganges (or Ganga, as they say in India) first runs from Himalayan melt off up north. Haridwar has a famous ghat (or holy steps) along [View Full Entry]

---

---

I lucked out on my flight from Istanbul to Delhi and managed to meet three guys from Brixton UK in the airport who were traveling to India. After swapping iteneraries it looked as if we were going to a lot of the same destinations, so they asked if I wanted to join up with them for the NE Himalayan leg of the trip to Manali and Shimla. We rented a "tourist taxi" with a personal driver and car to take us around, which sounds insanely expensive but can be actually quite cheap in India ... especially when you split t four [View Full Entry]

---

---

From Greece there was another overnight train to Istanbul, Turkey. The first sign that I wasn’t in a more mainland European city was that there was no sign of graffiti tags. The second sign are the prayer chants blaring over the loud speakers 5 times a day from the many mosques. Istanbul is another city where you could spend weeks and hardly scrape the surface of the sights, the history and the museums. At the forefront are the two giant churches … the Hagia Sofia and The Blue Mosque. Hagia Sofia was at the epicenter of the Roman Catholic Church during [View Full Entry]

---

---

Getting to Athens was an adventure in and of itself, which involved a 36 hour train ride through Romania, Bulgaria ... an over night layover in Thessaloniki Greece, and then another 6 hour train ride to Athens. From Paris to Athens, I think successfully milked every last dime I could out of my 30 day train pass. And Ive found that there isnt an alarm clock invented that will get you from sound asleep to up and spry faster than an East European customs agent beating on your sleeper car demanding to see your passport and what's in your backpack with [View Full Entry]

---

---

The overnight train ride from Prague to Budapest was hell. First, I thought I had reserved a sleeper car, but something was lost in the translation with the station ticket agent and I was booked in a 2nd class car with seats. The car sat 6 people, 3 people cramped side by side facing another 3 people. Like 2 rows on a cramped red eye flight facing each other. In our car was a drunk who apparently hadnt bathed in weeks ... and you know your B.O. is bad when you can make a backpacker gag, and about a 350 lbs. [View Full Entry]

---

---

I arrived in Prague refreshed after a lazy three days in Vienna, and ready to hit the town. I had to depart from the Euro and move to Czech currency. Prague isnt as cheap as it once was, but its still quite a bit cheaper than. Accomodation can still be pretty cheap as well. I stayed in a great hostel, and met several Americans including a couple of girls from Stephen F Austin college in Texas. I had my first run in with rain and bad weather since Edinburgh, but it didnt dampen the festivities any. Most of the time was [View Full Entry]

---

---

After a rocky overnight train ride from Venice in a sleepover car all to myslf, I arrived in Vienna at 7 a.m feeling a bit battleworn. Italy was a lot of fun, but I felt I was running on fumes a little bit. I also had a nice, quiet boutique hostel booked in Vienna as opposd to the Spring Break/college dorm atmosphere of my hostels in Italy. As such, I did a lot of sleeping late in Venice. Venice is a ciy of opera houses, cafes, impressive architecture and massive city parks (includng a carnival fair in the middle of the [View Full Entry]

---

---

I realized Rome was a city you needed two weeks to do, but that wasnt going to stop me from doing as much as I can in 4 days. You can easily spend 2 days just at the Vatican Museum, even if youre not Catholic or even particularly religious, as they have a lot of Roman, Egyptian and Persion historical artifacts from the last 2,000 years. It also contains an unbelievable amount .... blocks and blocks ... of art, the highlight being of course Michealangelos Sistine Chapel. The show stopper is St Peter's Bascillica, the most famous Christian Church in the [View Full Entry]

---

---