Ilsie

The Sunderbans Creeks and a Village The visit to Sunderbans started with a 3 hr drive from Kolkata and then another 3 hr boat ride to Jamespur village, where we stayed at Mangrove Resort of ADPL company. The Sunderbans are amazingly unspoilt - they retain their authenticity and charm. There are tricks to escape the "Xmas holiday noisy crowd from Kolkata" - for e.g. start your boat ride at 6:30 am instead of 10 am etc. Avoid anything the local tour operators will tell you - watch towers and canopy walks, interpretation centres, and other stuff like that. We stuck to a simple plan - Day 1- reach the resort, and go for a boat ride, visit the market, check out the drinks shop, buy as many masala peanuts and Lays chips as possible. Watched a ... read more

Think Vietnam and think ...... Hammocks - dark green cloth hammocks, at every roadside shop. have a glass of iced coffee and top it up with a nap! Boats of all sizes and shapes - with so much of Vietnam being under river water, boats are an integral part of life. Pets have their own seat on the boat. A pet dog will be staring into the sea for hours atop a boat, hammocks for the babies, radio connections, water storage urns, cooking stoves.. its a house almost to the people who use boats for their work. Pho - (pronounced as "fuh" as to rhyme with fum without the 'm', and not as "fo") - soupy rice noodles had for breakfas, lunch, dinner, snacks and any other time as well! Boat with 2 eyes - all ... read more

Exploring Vinh Long in Mekong Delta Vinh Long has been long advertised as the best place for homestays in the Mekong delta. (To reach Vinh Long from Ho Chi Minh city try the private mini buses of Mai Linh Express service (08.39 29 29 29 but prefix with HCMC code) - your hotel will help you take a cab to their city office and they will take care of the rest. Very popular with locals. A ticket to Vinh Long is 3.5 USD!) Why does anyone want to do a home stay? To feel like one has experienced the authentic stuff.... Thanks to Lonely Planet guides, most of them are highly packed with tourists and are hardly homestays. The cutlery and crockery on the table is better than at some of the hotels I visited. Hardly ... read more

The lake that never freezes - right across China - Gurudongmar - North Sikkim Gurudongmar offered surrealistic views, with vast tracts of barren land on which wild yaks roamed, searching for frozen roots to pull out and chew. Across the plain land was a barren set of mountains which nothing on them, except hidden bunkers in which hid Indian soldiers as they guarded against Chinese activities. Since the border land is quite unevenly divided across India and China, some of the bunkers were of Chinese soldiers watching into India! The lake itself is at 14000 feet above sea level, and makes you breathless! Sikhs consider it very holy, and so do Buddhists. Its claim to fame is that there is a part of it which never freezes though by all scientific thinking it should. You need ... read more

Nathu La Pass at 14000 feet is breathtaking in its beauty and the altitude. Watching the Indian soldiers make banter with the Chinese generals is kind of cute and unreal… I’ve never seen a Chinese soldier on duty … at the Chinese border… its kind of serious… friendly but not friends. You can shake hands with them. But do not overstep any area which is fenced by the military - its sensitive - and you’ll quickly have a soldier asking you to come back. You feel so proud seeing our soldiers at that altitude - maintaining the place for us ‘tourists’ to come and make a nuisance of ourselves - asking stupid questions, clicking snaps and doing things which make no sense. I felt like saluting the Indian soldiers out there and when they weren’t ... read more