We got into Jaipur in the early afternoon off the Rajasthani Express from Delhi and found our way to one of the hotels that was recommended in the Lonely Planet. They were full so we started phoning around and discovered that pretty much everything was booked up. What happened to traveling India in the off season? We did eventually find a nice place that would have been absolute luxury if the internet, TV and air conditioning worked reliably. There really isn't much to see in Jaipur, it is primarily a travel hub and administrative centre for Rajasthan. I'm sure there was some cool palace or temple that we missed but regardless we were happy to move further into the desert and on to Jodhpur. The train to Jodhpur was another interesting experience. The trip was only ... read more

We slept in the morning after our big road trip for a much needed rest. After dragging ourselves out of bed we headed down to a local cafe where we found breakfast and a great cup of french-press coffee. Good coffee has been hard to find in India. Actually, good coffee has been hard to find throughout our world travels, I guess we're just coffee snobs. After breakfast, we took a walk through the forest between Old Manali and Manali. This is significant because it is the first real strech of forest that we've seen in awhile. In the park we found the usual cows and goats but one thing that we weren't expecting was monkeys! These brown curious george looking things are the good monkeys in India (not the evil grey ones that harass you ... read more

We arrived in Leh after a comfortable one hour flight from Delhi. Leh is in the Kashmir region in the far north of India and we had heard that it was a place you can't miss this time of year. Well, it certainly didn't disappoint. The city lies at an elevation of 3700m in the Ladakh Range of the Himalaya Mountains and the high elevation desert scenery is absolutely beautiful. It's a popular spot in July and August as the weather can be tricky the rest of the year. Many people come to Leh for trekking but as we are not really set up for this type of travel this time, we decided that we would mostly take it easy while we were here. It's a good thing we didn't have any big plans because we ... read more

We got into Delhi around 2am local time glad to have arranged a taxi via our hotel for the trip from Indira Ghandi International. We grabbed our bags (so happy to see them!) and found the fellow holding a sign with Alex's name on it. Strangely enough we were surprised to find no seatbelts in the rickety van... Seatbelts have been invented right? Since it was now about three in the morning for our drive to the Hotel in the Pahargang district, the ride wasn't as eventful as we thought it would be. The next day we slept in a bit. Partly from jet lag and partly because we had just been traveling for 30 hours. When we did get out of our hotel the Main Bazaar was in full swing. It was overwhelming. The traffic, ... read more

We made a last minute decision to do the Blue Mountains first instead of heading straight to Sydney and it turned out to be amazing! We didn't realize we would have to take a cable ferry to get accross a river along the way and as we pulled up we were worried because we didn't have much cash on us. I was particularly pleased when we discovered it was free. We stopped for a picnic lunch just after the ferry and saw some maple trees. They really stood out because there aren't really many trees that change colour around here. We didn't get into Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, until about 4:30 thanks to slow roads initially and then nasty traffic as we got close enough to Sydney to battle with commuters. We found the caravan ... read more