http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/MatevzH/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from MatevzH en-us Sat, 26 Dec 2009 06:20:29 +0000 Sat, 26 Dec 2009 06:20:29 +0000 In San Pedro its difficult to get bored at least during first days of stay. All that you do is marked by 3 things. Heat lots of driving and early departures. And of course as any other tourist after an arrival to San Pedro you start contemplating different options and trips in and around. On the top of the list of all agencies is a trip to Valle de la Luna which includes sidetrip to Valle http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Chile/Antofagasta-Region/San-Pedro-de-Atacama/blog-365354.html What to do in San Pedro de Atacama during the night Party Nah... everything closes early... Sleep Not really... See the stars Of course... Atacama desert is famous also becasue of its weather what else hehe. They only have a few rainy or cloudy days and nights in the year. Usually from march do early december its completely clear... Also there is little light pollution. Therefore this des http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Chile/Antofagasta-Region/San-Pedro-de-Atacama/blog-365017.html Enough of big cities. Enough of resting. I wanna drive around. I wanna travel around And I got my dose of travelling. Bus cama to calama. And buses here are really wow. Size and comfortwise europan buses are really small against these. As I went travelling for around 24 hours i decided to get a bit more expensive bus to Calama bus cama which was really comfortable and around 55US aro http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Chile/Antofagasta-Region/San-Pedro-de-Atacama/blog-364017.html Back on the road. After 18 months of work and around 23 hours of bumping around on airplanes and airports I have finally arrived.I was on time in Zurich. Enough time to browse for a book yep forgot one at home but unpleasantly surprised. Very bad collection of english book in the international terminal. But anyway i didn't need a book on a Swiss flight. It was a nice flight and I thought I http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Chile/Santiago-Region/Santiago/blog-361414.html It was one late afternoon in late November... fed up with everything in desperate need of vacation... Started browsing my world map in the office and thinking where to go...So i immediately found a few spots in the world where would be nice to go in this time of the year... Northern Laos central India... Unfortunately there was a blockade of the Bangkok airport there were terrorist attacks http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Chile/blog-361407.html Last day in Delhi was nice. I rented myself a car for a few hours ok a taxi to drive me to posh district where the embassies are 350Rs however my lunch in this posh safehaven can be expensive... but hey still cheap...Flight towards Jordan was in early hours so no partying and big farewelling from Delhi. Don't know why the flight has to leave so early but i got to get up at 230 am. As http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Jordan/blog-358461.html After exciting drive first stop was Manali...Manali is actually quite agreeable place. This is one of the locations which is popular among indian turists during hot monsoon summer. Its cooler than in the plains of India and the effect of the monsoon is smaller and more pleasant. As a starting point for indian Himalaya and a gateway for Ladakh this is also popular with foreigners. Some also come http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/blog-358458.html It was an early morning... 330am and waking up with strong tea ...and time for... one of the most exciting roads in the world...The LehManali Highway is a highway in India connecting Leh and Manali. It crosses some of the highest mountain passes in the world including and Tanglang La 5325 m Lachulung La 5059 m actually this is a double pass a few km down road you have to go over a http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Himachal-Pradesh/Manali/blog-194848.html Finally... its finished... 11 days in a tent 11 days of walking around 100 kilometers on foot the highest point of the trek Gongmaru La 5250m temperature changes from 30C during the sunny days and 3C during the night lots of sun some rain and a few storms... thats a short resume of a trek... Trekking is finished. It was more difficult that i expected. Basically that was because as I wasn't http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Jammu-and-Kashmir/blog-194558.html So the day has come. A day to start trekking. But hey we won't start walking right away. First we have to visit a few monasteries... cool Basically we are now going up river on the road towards Manali. Well... then the driver says we have to go off road... reason he hasn't got an offical tourist licence as a taxi driver so he has to hide. There is actually a control just a few kilometres http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Jammu-and-Kashmir/blog-192115.html On my itinerary today was a short excursion towards the west on the road towards Srinagar along the Indus up to Alchi monastery ...The village of Alchi in lower Ladakh is to be considered one of the most important cultural sites throughout the Himalayas. Consisting of four separate hamlets the village contains numerous historic monuments of different ages and in various states of repair the http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Jammu-and-Kashmir/Leh/blog-192092.html What can I say... new morning brilliant sun in Leh...Better mood already and some facts about Ladakh and Leh... Ladakh is a highaltitude plateau north of the Himalaya situated geographically in Tibet. It's a miniature version of Tibet the people are Tibetan in their culture and religion and there are many Tibetan refugees. The Ladakh and Zanskar regions of India although not politically part http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Jammu-and-Kashmir/Leh/blog-190372.html Another morning of early rising... damn... i will slowly get used to it... at 245am My lowcost airline Air Deccan time of departure from Leh was at 520 so... before I get from Karol Bagh to the domestic airport checkin... well it is time consuming... Anyway as international terminal looks like a proper airport this domestic terminal looks like a bus station no offence to readers http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Jammu-and-Kashmir/Leh/blog-190366.html Its was a cold November morning. My alarm started ringing at 430 am with the song L'ombelico del mondo the belly of the world loudly. Anyway it was a short night as packing was done into long night hours. So i picked up Adi some 30 minutes later just as he was just getting his hair cut at 5am in the morning hehe... actually he didn't even go to sleep funny straight from work but h http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Greater-London/blog-145099.html Africa... first stop... Entebbe... where the hell did I hear that name from Ups... some decades ago an abducted plane landed there and some people never left Uganda... Again since the beginning of 80th this should be a relatively safe country. One thing struck me... the african heat when stepping out of the plane during our one hour stop. Soon we were in the clouds again passing Victoria lak http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/East/Dar-es-Salaam/blog-145097.html We woke up early. Yep mosque effect... Actually we started taking it out easy... we decided not to catch the first bus but the one at 830 am. Why should we go so early as everybody says its only 78 hours to Arusha... Oki at least we can have a proper breakfast.Of course... bus didn't leave at 9am. It left when full at 930am... We got the best seats thats infront either because we overpa http://www.travelblog.org//North/Arusha/blog-145192.html Lets go to safari. The car came for us in time. Driver was only like 10 minutes late and that was excellent in african time... Jeep was quite big made for 4 tourists including the driver cook and a guide... Well... there were 6 of us so we had to squeeze a bit. Other 4 tourists consisted a couple from UK he did some voluntary work for a few months in a village near Moshi and two girls from http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/North/Serengeti-National-Park/blog-145334.html Ngorongoro crater NPFinally we came to Simba Camp on the crater rim. Ngorongoro is a huge crater 20km in diameter... From rim you have great views on the crater and mountains beyond. We were quite high as I believe altitude was around 2700m above sea level. Besides we had the best hotel a thousand stars one... 61514 I thought on the rim will be quieter than in Serengeti... how I was wrong.. http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/North/Tarangire-National-Park/blog-145422.html We came late night back to Arusha... so we have some for planning our future trip. Let's climb Kilimanjaro... Cool lets do it... And it hit us... well guys... basically you cannot afford it... it costs 500US for just a few days and you already spent almost half of your budget in the first week... damn... what a disappointment no Kilimanjaro... Mount Meru is cheaper and lower but the we http://www.travelblog.org//North/Arusha/blog-145331.html Last night it was raining so Arusha transformed into Finland a land of thousand lakes well all the potholes were full of water. It was an early start as this time we decided not to make again a mistake of starting late so departure was around 630 This time we got an extra baggage... a guy presumably one of the owners of the safari agency that we went with is also going with us to Za http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/East/Dar-es-Salaam/blog-146167.html