LukeNUFC
Luke Joined: January 16th 2008
Logged in: January 9th 2011
Logged in: January 9th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
One of the many stunning views
Being back at Qayum's was great, it had become a kind of home away from home. The day before the Shandur Festival we headed into Gilgit town to do a little bit of shopping and complete our 'local look'. A brilliant felt waistcoat and traditional Chitrali hat to go with my shalwar kameez and I was all set. In fact on the little Suzuki back to Qayum's some local guys tried to start a conversation in Urdu with me before reacting with great surprise when I told them that I was actually English. Job done. Due to the popularity of the festival we'd left it too late to get a space on the local bus, however we bumped into the English guys from the Fairy Meadows trek who said there was a few people at one ... read more
Jeep Ride Up
We stayed and chilled at Qayum's for 3 or 4 days. Just relaxing, chatting and sorting out rough travel plans. We jumped on the back of Suzukis (little pick ups with seats in the back) down to Gilgit most days, I bought a shalwar kameez (which apparently lead to me becoming indistinguishable from some of the locals) and we both bought some hiking boots, decent ones, for less than 15 pounds for a couple of treks we had planned out. Gilgit town itself had a really nice feel to it, surrounded on all sides by large rocky mountains, poplar trees dot the hillside and greenery lines certain areas due to the water running down from the irrigation channels. It has one long dusty main bazaar, the smell of kebabs wafting and fruit vendors shouting for business. ... read more
Monsoon in Mumbai
This has been a long time coming, I know I'm a long way behind but bear with me.... Arriving into Mumbai on the night of the 22nd of June I was struck by the immense humidity for that time at night and also extremely amused by the "swine flu screening area" at CST Airport. Sign a bit of paper saying you don't have any fluey symptoms, pass it to a very serious looking Indian man in a surgical mask and off you go. Met a nice English bloke from Bolton called Pete coming off the flight and as he had nowhere booked for the night too we decided to share a taxi down to Colaba and split the cost of a room. The taxi ride was pretty crazy, firstly as it was surreal to be back ... read more
Masaii Village
So 15 countries and 135 days since leaving home we've reached Uganda! It's great to be back, its such a fantastic and beautiful place! Since I last wrote in Arusha things have picked up and travelling has become exciting again! We spent our last full day in Tanzania on safari in the stunning Ngorugoru Crater. The day after I wrote last we (us 3, the 2 swedish guys and the 3 girls from devon) got driven 2 and a half hours to a small town a short drive from the crater where we set up camp for the night. It was nice to just be a small group who got on well, that night was Sweden's first euro 2008 game against Greece - both me and Rob have adopted Sweden as our team due to a ... read more
Apartheid Museum
I'm going to try and sum up the last month as best I can! I'm sat in an internet cafe in Arusha, Tanzania with 3 days left of the overland trip from Johannesburg to Nairobi, its been a long month but I'll try and fill you in! Its going to be a bit of an essay so I apologise! The mission flight from Sydney to Jo'burg (via.. DUBAI!?) wasn't as bad as we were expecting. The first leg - 16 hours went pretty quickly as I got some sleep and there was some good music and films etc, we had 4 hours to wait in Dubai which was mainly spent at starbucks and taking note of the cheap duty free to take advantage of on the way back to England (again via dubai). The next leg ... read more
Brisbane
I know this has been a long time coming, I'm writing most of this from Victoria Falls in Zambia but I'll start where I left off in Surfers Paradise. We spent 2 more days there which consisted of hiring surf boards and getting progressively better but still in general pretty terrible compared to the amazing guys you see going out there! On our second last night we went to the bar downstairs to make the most of our buy 1 get one free voucher and ended up meeting some cool French Canadian guys which was pretty interesting having only met the English Canadian's before! We went to some bar in town afterwards and had a laugh meeting some of the locals. The next day Katie went shopping and Rob went for an internet session so I ... read more
Getting High..
The evening before skydiving we decided it had to be a night off the drink and an early night too, so we went to the little cinema next door to the hostel and saw a reasonably funny film called forgetting jessica parker. After spending the afternoon watching byron bay skydives it was nice to have a bit of escapism to pass the time! We got to bed early and I had a surprisingly good sleep and next thing I knew it was 6.45am and we were awake and getting ready to go do a skydive.... None of us seemed to be that nervous but it was all a little surreal. It was an absolutely perfect day without a cloud. We got picked up outside the hostel and the friendly bloke gave us all forms telling us ... read more
Early Bus
This is going to be a quick one as I don't have too long and not too much has happened! Anyway we got up ridiculously early to get our 6am bus to Coffs Harbour. Going down to the lobby to check out was funny as all the die hard Liverpool and Chelsea fans were all still up watching the football live! Sydney sent us off with some heavy rain which was no surprise, we were glad to be getting out! The bus journey wasn't too bad, we slept at the start and then stopped at a hilarious service station shaped badly like Ayers Rock. We decided that now we could say we'd been. It was wet all the way almost and the terrain was really green and seemed to be mainly rural farming communities. To me ... read more
Harbour Bridge and autumn leaves
So basically we've been in Sydney this entire time just hoping for an improvement in the weather but it never really came. We have had an absolute laugh though its been hilarious. On the day I last wrote the weather made it a complete right off so we didn't do much with ourselves. Katie managed to sort out her online banking and transfered all the money she'd borrowed over the last month to me and Rob which was good to get sorted! We went food shopping again, me and katie got some ingredients for a spag bol which we were determined to make (we'd wasted a pack of mince in melbourne!). Slobbed out in the TV room for a bit with Matt the geordie watching a hilariously rubbish film called Slackers. We had a few games ... read more
Luna Park
Our flight from Singapore to Melbourne was alright, I started to feel really feverish and cold during which wasnt much fun, clearly coming down with something! We arrived at around 1am on the night of the 10th/11th and everything was really easy to negotiate. I thanked the customs officer and got a very Aussie 'no worries mate'. Yep, we'd definitely landed! In the arrivals hall my debit card didn't work for the first time as I tried to use an ATM. Apparently my bank had blocked it and checked with my mum if I was 'really travelling'. Riiight so after 2 and a half months of my card being rinsed in Asia it was only when I got to Australia that they got a little suspicious. Hilarious. Anyway it was supposed to be activated in the ... read more
