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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 as 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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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