Caz and No

The drive to Battambang was ok, we had a nice driver who was actually a guide but during low season was doing some driving to help suppliment his income. We stopped for a toilet break at a sandstone stall along the road and have to say experienced the cleanest, best squat toilets ever. White, shiny, non-smelly, they made a pleasant change from the usual Cambodian standard. Once we had arrived and settled into our hotel we thought we would spend the afternoon during a light spot of sight seeing however it turned into a marathon of cramming in as much as possible. First was the Bamboo train, a train which is basically a platform made of bamboo and a two stroke engine curiously balanced over a centre hole providing the muscle. Strangely enough this odd contraption ... read more

Tired and exhausted from the usual luxury and gorgeousness of the Maldives we felt in need of a large dose of rough, hence a travelling holiday. Welcome one and all to our mini blog selection from Cambodia. Eva Air, London Heathrow to Taipei was our passport to the Kingdom of Cambodia and I must stress what a quality porthole it was. Big plane, lots of room, even for the sheep. Quality fixture and fittings and a clean toilet kept all of the group satsified for the whole ten and a half hours it took to touch down in Bangkok. A ten mile walk to the transfer gate and a bit of messing around on a bus we were onboard our rotary powered aeroplane heading to Siem Reap. Now, through an unusual lack of time prior to ... read more

Amritsar; boiling hot, dusty and chaotic but home to the wonderful Golden Temple. Being one of only free attractions in India we were able to visit the temple at several times of the day. The first time was in the middle of the day which was not the best time as it swarms with hundreds if not thousands of pilgrims. As with all temples off came the shoes on went the head scarf and as this is a Sikh temple you have to wash your feet before entering. Like the Taj the temple and complex are made of mainly marble with the temple itself coated in a golden metal said to be gold though I'm not entirely sure this is true. The temple is situated in the middle of a sacred pool and there is a ... read more

About a month ago several bombs went off in Jaipur and on the morning we had planned to get a bus over there to complete our tourist trail of the golden triangle we heard Gujjar protestors were blocking roads and train tracks from Agra. We decided to give Jaipur a wide berth and head back to Delhi and have a re-think. The new plan was to head straight into Himachal Pradesh and explore the valleys and mountains a few weeks earlier than planned. The dusty bus journey from Chandigarh to Shimla was awful, we had to change buses three times and the drivers seemed intent on getting as quickly to the top as possible around very tight, scary bends on the high mountainous roads. As soon as we arrived we headed straight for the first hotel ... read more

Kumily home to the Periyar wildlife sanctuary is thankfully situated at a highish altitude (1000m) and was a nice escape from the heat in the valleys. We arrived by bus as a continuation of our game plan to keep traveling short distances and were met by an auto-rickshaw who whisked us away from the town and to our accommodation, Coffee Inn, about three hundred yards form the park entrance. It was a quaint gaff that had a garden which doubled up as a restaurant over looking the park. The food was really nice however whenever we decided to eat there we had to factor in an hour of wait time as they were so painfully slow in bringing the grub out. The town was something of a reprieve from the rest of the places we had ... read more