The 18 hour train journey to Mumbai was quite enjoyable. I spent much of the time chatting to a young German policeman who had just begun his travels in India. The family opposite us did not speak much English, however, a female Indian student and another man added more interest to the conversation later in the evening. The man even offered around his interestingly spiced parantha bread. Mumbai is expensive. Admittedly I could have avoided being ripped off by the taxi driver on the way to the hotel if I had been a bit more awake and made more effort. Having [View Full Entry]

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Volunteering at Ladli enabled me to get off the tourist trail and this was one of the best experiences of my travels. Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, is a large, sprawling, polluted city. However, the house we were renting was just outside the city in the quieter suburbs. Prabhakar Goswami had arranged for us to rent his younger brother's house, a new purchase that he would be moving into in March but in the meantime was available for rent. The Goswami family are Brahmins, the highest caste within Hinduism, and the house was located within a newly developed Brahmin residential area. [View Full Entry]

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My desire to do voluntary work in India brought me back to Jaipur, where I had arranged to spend one month teaching English at Ladli. I arrived back in the city on 27 December after an 18 hour train journey from Varanasi. I did not know what to expect from the next month and did not even know where I was going to stay beyond the rather grotty and overpriced guesthouse I had initially booked myself into. Things all went well from the start. That day a phone call from Prabhakar Goswami, husband of Abha Goswami who founded i-india, phoned to [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone! Sorry that I have failed to write any blogs during my entire time in India - I shall tackle this task very soon since I have been keeping notes! Tomorrow I fly home, I am very excited! I brought my flight forward by nine days because I just want to return now and do not want to be phaffing around on the traveller's trail killing time when my heart is no longer in it. I am finishing my travels in Mumbai. It is a city of contrasts, of great wealth, high prices, thriving business, grand buildings and the heart [View Full Entry]

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As the tour drew to an end I realised that it was high time to get out the India Lonely Planet and work out precisely where in the country I was going to head next. My original plan to travel to warmer south India was now out of the question since I had arranged to return to Jaipur in January…so where else should I visit, and more precisely, where should I spend Christmas? I spent a few days in Delhi after the tour getting used to my return to solo backpacking…I swiftly moved out of the overpriced area the tour had [View Full Entry]

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So...here is a brief lowdown on the places I visited in Rajasthan: Mandawar. This fairly small town gave us our introduction to Havellis...large, stately and often ornate merchant houses. The first one we saw was the hotel we were staying in. The individual and sometimes decadent rooms surrounded an open air courtyard or the balcony above, and the surrounding rooftop hosted a restaurant where you could sit and gaze out at the sandy coloured town. The second night we had pre-dinner drinks on the rooftop of the town's castle and watched sunset. Except for the extortionate price of the [View Full Entry]

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Moving around: Local buses...these are fine if you are only going a short distance and can ignore the occasional man standing on the pavement masturbating at the sight of western women (luckily only a sight we were subjected to once on our first trip!) Not recommended for long journeys, however, since the seats are rock hard and designed for very small people. On the 8 hour bus journey between Delhi and Mandawar I was unlucky enought to end up next to the most heavily built Indian man I have seen, who was forced to squash himself into an itsy bitsy middle [View Full Entry]

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Where do I start? India, so far has been more or less as I had expected...vibrant, hectic, hassled, inspiring, tiring, polluted, colourful, beautiful... The only thing I hadn't predicted was just how cold winter in Rajasthan is! Gone are my evenings of wearing flip flops and flimsy tops and instead dawn and dusk see me wearing my new purchases...a thick woollen jumper, big wool shawl/blanket, socks, gloves, woolly hat and my resurrected trainers that have laid dormantly attached to my bag for the previous three months! India requires an open mind, thick skin, dogged determination not [View Full Entry]

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So I'm back in Bangkok sorting out the many things I need to do before flying to India on 23 November. Despite a lonely, tearful start when I was wishing I could go straight to India and miss out Thailand, I've had a great time, seen and done amazing things and met wonderful people. Now, seven months and seven countries down I am about to embark on the final and most challenging, vibrant country of my trip...India. Starting with a three week trip with Intrepid around Rajastan and the Golden Triangle region I will venture beyond...hopefully finding an opportunity to do [View Full Entry]

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When I was in Bangkok a fellow traveller told me that the best thing about the Chang Mai region is Pai...a small town in the far north. He didn't tell me why, he just said that I had to go and find out. So I did. The 3 1/2 hour bus journey is constant winding to and fro around the 700 plus bends of the mountain road into the highlands. Pai is how I imagined that the now sprawling, busy, polluted city of Chang Mai would be like. Small, traveller dominated, hippy style, laid back and friendly. Many chilled out cafes, [View Full Entry]

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