Three huge bangs on the door awake me from my slumbers. I peel my eyelids open just enough to see that it's still dark outside. The purpose of todays task comes rushing into my head, and the trial begins - the Devil on my right shoulder whispering "Go on, go back to sleep, it's 6am! You don't have to get up now, you can always do it tomorrow", while the Angel on my left shoulder is saying "You know you gotta get up. If you don't get up now, you'll never get it done, and then there'll have been no point [View Full Entry]

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For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to jump in head first, by visiting India’s ‘Golden Triangle’ of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur first. I arrived in Delhi just after midnight, to find an earily deserted Paharganj, where a bomb had exploded in the main bazaar just a few days before my arrival. I was ready for a showdown. There’s so much hype associated with arriving in Delhi that it was bound to be a let down. One guy in Pakistan had been advising me to buy a cane to bring to India. Disappointingly though, it was a [View Full Entry]

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Visas = Hassle. No doubt. So it was I found myself in Rawalpindi, the twin city of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Quite possibly two of the most unattractive cities in Asia, for very different reasons. 'Pindi is a jam-packed, noisy, dirty city, with absolutely nothing to do. But it has the cheap hotels. That's why people go there. Islamabad is a 'new, planned' city, in other words, a hell-hole with no soul or character, where you must get a taxi everywhere. Every Pakistani in his right mind aspires to live there. But it has the embassies. That's why people go there. It [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in Gilgit, the capital of Pakistan Northern Areas, full of good feelings about the country and its wonderful people. Pakistan had not disapointed so far, but I was sure that the mountainous north, which I had heard so much about, would be a let down. First night in the hotel, I met Michael (Chitral) and James (Shiraz), the only Irishmen I had met since Sarajevo. We were all keen to see Nanga Parbat, the Killer Mountain, from the popular Fairy Meadows trek. With the Islamic holy month of Ramazan almost upon us, we set off. After a hairy [View Full Entry]

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So I found myself on the train, tearing through the heart of Pakistan - before sunset on the first day, we began to leave the desert, and when I woke up the next morning, the land was lush, green - we were in Pakistani Punjab! Gazing out the window, I saw buffallo heads bobbing on the rivers, while brightly coloured women patrolled the monsoon drenched fields. For the veteran traveller to the region, not much perhaps, but for a first-timer to the sub-continent, an image that won't be forgotten. I was accompanied by a Sindhi, an Afghan, a Punjabi and [View Full Entry]

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Or make that Baluchistan. And it had all been going so well. I had made an abrupt exit from Tehran on the night bus to Shiraz - a 14 hour slog on an old, 60's Mercedes bus. I had come to Shiraz primarily to visit the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, and believe me, it was worth the slog. Normally I'm underwhelmed by these kind of sights - for instance, I thought the Coloseum was crap. But Persepolis was different. Perched on a low hill overlooking the surrounding area, and backed by a larger hill with two huge tombs cut into [View Full Entry]

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There was no way around it. I was never going to find an Irish bar in Iran. In fact, I was never going to find an Iranian bar in Iran. With alcohol strictly off the menu, I was having serious doubts about the capacity for 'having fun' in Iran. I had arrived in Tabriz, the first major city after the Turkish border, in mid-afternoon, an hour and a half ahead of Turkey. The border crossing had been uneventful - as a foreigner, I was whisked ahead of the hundreds of locals, and through to the other side in under 30 minutes. [View Full Entry]

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Well, after our rest in Goreme, we finally managed to pull ourselves away, and plunge into Turkeys least visited region, South-East Anatolia, aka Kurdestan. The area is overwhelmingly Kurdish, with a couple of noticable Arab pockets, as you'll see. Turkish is spoken rarely here, as with English. Our first port of call was Mt. Nemrut, the image of which currently dominates the front of all the Turkish guidebooks. Again, I was determined not to take a tour up the mountain, but unfortunately we arrived in Kahta, the base town, on a Sunday when no Dolmuses go there. So with great reluctance [View Full Entry]

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Ah Turkey! That whole 'East meets West' thing! We arrived in Istanbul after a sleepless night journey from Plovdiv, and immediately settled into our hostel in Sultanahmet, the backpacker centre. A UNESCO World Heritage Sight, Sultanahmet caters for all things touristy, though it's a little pricy in certain areas, most noticably beer. Our first port of call was Istanbul's biggest attraction, the Aya Sofia museum. Originally a church, then transformed into a mosque, I was strangely disappointed by it. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I couldn't get past the general grubbiness of [View Full Entry]

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There's not a whole lot to report on our journey east from southern Albania to Istanbul - we travelled to Iaoninna in North-western Greece, through Thessaloniki, Greece's second city, and on to Plovdiv in southern Bulgaria. The route can only be characterised by a series of mishaps on my part. First, I forgot about the extra hour Greece has on Albania, and so, we missed our early bus to Thessaloniki, having already bought the tickets. We had spent just the one night in Iaoninna - an average sized city on a lake with a nice Old Town. Not much else [View Full Entry]

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