Dearbhail

Hello Kids I guess Bryan and I are now into our third part of the trip - the South East Asia part after finishing up in India on 8 May. India, true to form, did not leave us down for the final two weeks. Kolkata was fantastic. Bryan and I making a visit to Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity Mother house. We met some exceptional people there doing volunteer work including, we are proud to say, some wonderful Irish. We headed north of Delhi to visit the Corbett National Park and do some tiger spotting. India really has some amazing wildlife and we were really lucky and managed to spot two tigers. One Indian family had gone on eight safaris and not seen one. One of our safaris was on the back of an elephant through ... read more

Yes its still mad here in India. The last month through Rajasthan and UP have been an experience to say the least. Since the last blog we left Pushkar and headed eastish to the blue city of Jodhpur which has an excellent fort and we met lots of really lovely people here but that is the total of my positive remarks about that city (!!!) Then we headed north to the desert to Jaiselmer. This city is amazing. You actually get to stay in the old fort. The fort rises out of the desert so majestically you could imagine that it is a couple of hundred years ago. Inside the walls are little pokey streets and lanes filled with guest houses and little tourist shops and restaurants. But its also filled with peoples homes and children ... read more

Lads... this place is mental. The chaos started on the plane when we ordered the Indian Vegetarian dinner and nearly choked to death from the heat. The woman behind B started giving us tips on how to eat our food and deal with the heat. There were tears of both pain and laughter from the pair of us!! And so it began.... So what have we been up to since we left Sydney. We had to spend a week in Bangkok in the end waiting for our visas to come through and after my last adventure in 2002 I was more than a little anxious giving away my passport to a travel agent on Khao San Road. But it arrived when they said it would so happy days. The week in Bangkok was okay if a ... read more

Just arrived at Franz Josef Glacier and I can tell you the view is pretty good .. so why am I inside an internet cafe? Beacuse its too bloody hot. Can you believe it .. I have nothing but jumpers and rain coats in that rucksack and its been 20 odd degrees every day - I'd say its about 27 at the moment!!! We have our trip for tomorrow booked so we have an evening to do nothing for once. It was only a two hour drive from the last place we stayed. So I suppose I'm going to do some ranting about NZ instead of the whistle stop version I have been giving you over the last three weeks. We had a brilliant piece of luck on Sunday. We stopped to see the Pancake Rocks ... read more

HELLO ALL!! Well we're still in one piece and have managed not to kill one another so its all good. We've had a few bumps such as trying to put up the tent on Thursday night, full of enthusiasm for the first nights camping, and realising that there was no fly sheet in the tent bag!!! Whoops. Cold night by the beach, but the nice guy in Rebel Sports gave us a free one so its sorted now. The flight to Auckland was delayed by an hour or so while we were on the plane as all the power went so we just pretended that our flight was 4 hours instead of 2 1/2. We stayed in a hostel in Ponsonby called Verandahs and it was the best. Small and cosy and v friendly. Sent in ... read more