Between Nepal's trekking capital, Pokhara, and it's actual capital, Kathmandu, sits the small town of Bandipur. With it's winding, slate paved streets that wrap around a high ridge and cheery people who greeted us with smiles and “Namaste”, Bandipur was the most welcoming and relaxing place we had been to so far. We filled our days with long hikes over hills and through fields, always ending at a spectacular view point for sunset. The bad weather from Pokhara was lifting but the mountain vistas were still haunted by cloud. Once the sun had set the towns lack of electricity m [View Full Entry]

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Our crossing from India to Nepal came at the end of a gruelling twelve hour bus journey and the start of the most important days in Nepal's Dasain festival. Whist we filled in our imergration forms the cheery Nepalese officials (a marked contrast from the surly Indian ones) explain the festival and advised that the country was almost at a stand still was everyone visited family. There would be no buses for a few days and all shops and banks would be shut. Rather than spend days in a grubby border town waiting for a bus, we throw some money at [View Full Entry]

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Having “agreed” to return to India on our way to Australia, we arrived in Delhi and spent a couple of days looking about. I'm not sure if it was my low expectations of Dehli or the fact that we know what to expect but we found the place to be much easier and less daunting than we believed it would be. After two days in the humid heat of Delhi we headed for the cooler air in the hills of Shimla. Our train journey out of Delhi was a joy, until we reached Kalka where we should have transferred to the [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in Sucre, Bolivia's administrative capital, was a breath of fresh air. Mainly because it was only 2750 meters above sea level. We were no longer getting out of breath after walking up a flight of stairs due to lack of oxygen. The Sucre's main plaza was a pleasant tree lined square ringed with bars and cafes which provided the perfect spots to watch the world go by from the sunny balconies over looking the streets. Just out of town was a cement factory that had discover a massive fossilized mud bed whist digging for raw materials. This mud bed contained [View Full Entry]

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Potosi is a lovely town in Bolivia which sits at the base of a hill containing huge silver reserves. This silver has been mined for hundreds of years and has meant the town has many pretty churches and plazas built by it's wealthy, and lucky, residents. To better understand what these miners go through to extract the silver from the hill we went out to mines. After putting on our protective clothing we dropped in at a market to buy the miners presents of dynamite, soft drinks and bags of coca leaves. Then we made our way up the hill to [View Full Entry]

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Rurrenabaque is the jumping off point for adventures into Bolivia's portion of the Amazon jungle and wetlands. We decided to start with a three day trip into the jungle, so packed lots of insect repellent and climbed aboard a boat as it sped up river. On the way to our jungle camp we stopped off at a sugar cane planation and collect freshly picked oranges off the tree. Once at our camp we begin our jungle training with bow and spear practice, before heading out on a trail for a three hour hike. Although it was early afternoon the tree canopy [View Full Entry]

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I was apprehensive about La Paz because of all the terrible stories of kidnapping I had heard but I'm please to say Tracy and I had a great time. Undoubtedly because we were stay right in the centre of the city so never got to see the harsher side of life, but I'm quite happy about that. La Paz has many restaurants severing food from all around the world and having been living on beans, rice and meat for a while we lapped up the different cuisines on offer. So much so that when a British Indian restaurant offered up the [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Uyuni from La Paz after getting no sleep on an overnight bus and went straight out on a three day tour of the area and it's salt flats. The first stop was was a train “graveyard” where lots of old trains were left to rust. Because the climate is so dry the trains had been sitting there for seventy years and will undoubtedly be there for another seventy at least. Then we drove out of town to the salt flats. They were amazing. All you could see from the bottom of your feet to the horizon was brilliant [View Full Entry]

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After recovering from the Inca trail in Cusco, we boarded a bus to Puno on the shores of Lake Titikaka. The journey through small villages and farms was lovely but as soon as we entered Puno the loveliness vanished. While not unpleasant, the town was similar to port towns throughout the world in being grimly and industrial. Waking up early the next morning we took a tour out to some of the Uros reed islands around Puno where small communities still live. Despite the fact that these islands seemed only to exist for us tourists it was still interesting to get [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Cusco a few days before we were due to start the Inca trail to meet Tracy's friend Liz. For the next three days, as we acclimatized to the altitude, we explored Cusco's markets, churches and old Inca ruins, whist visiting the occasional bar and having one or two beers on the sun drenched balconies overlooking the main square. Liz was brave enough to try roasted guinee pig which was served complete with tiny claws and tortured facial expression. Tracy opted for Chinese crispy guinee pig pancakes! The day we started the Inca trail we awake early and climbed [View Full Entry]

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