When we looked at the mapof Turkey we thought that there were basically 2 ways of approaching the task of having a look around: go west and south and then follow the coast for a while before heading up the middle to the Black Sea and then back to Istanbul; or, alternatively, head east before eventually turning south till we get to the Meditteranean Sea and then turn east following the coast up along the Aegean Sea and thence back to Istanbul. The decision was made on weather grounds. We wanted to give the area around the Black Sea the opportunity [View Full Entry]

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Having decided to duck Anzac Day at Gallipoli - all of the hype sounds just a bit too jingoistic and celebratory - we needed to make a large-ish jump over Gallipoli, Cannarkale and Troy and we decided to go directly to Denizli by air. The price of an air ticket was TL110 and a bus would have cost us TL50 plus and taken 12 hours. 45 minutes sounded a lot better. (We will come back to Gallipoli after most of the people have gone.) When we were quoted 15 euros each for a pick up at Denizli airport to go to [View Full Entry]

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I suspect that we were all just about ready to leave India. It is a great country. Incredible place, but you do get to a point when it is either time to stay on for a long time or move on. We moved on with the assistance of Qatar Airlines on a flight leaving Delhi at 5.00a.m. With the need to be there 3 hours ahead of departure time, a possible 1 and a half hour drive to the airport and the apparently pretty standard old people's need to be a bit early for everything, we decided to head out there [View Full Entry]

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The trip into the desert on camels deserves a post of its own, even if only to give our kids a laugh. We hadn't really planned this trip so we didn't leave time for it in our planning. Pat has been talking for a long time about a camel trip through Jordan and that is still on the agenda - more or less. She may have thought that a couple of days on camels would just whet the appetite. We were trucked out into the bush from Jaisalmer about 40 kms. We didn't go to the normal places that tourists are [View Full Entry]

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This is a post that deals with the two visits we have made to Delhi. We came here first for a few days on the way from Siliguri through to Rajasthan, went off there for a time and then back to Delhi for a few days before we head out on a flight to Istanbul. So I will deal with the whole Delhi experience here. I will also do a bit of a whole of country wrap up so this could turn into a long post. The train trip in to Delhi from Siliguri was on the Rajhani Express. After I [View Full Entry]

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I like deserts. The stark, harsh beauty of the landscape. The all powerful weather. When it is hot it tends not to muck about, winds blow largely unchallenged by the land and lift dust where the grass cover is gone. when it is cold the cold is deep and definite. The people who live in deserts match their environment. Tough, hard people who have to work harder than people in any other environment to survive. Some may even prosper, but it is hard to do that in a desert unless there is something under the ground that others want. I don't [View Full Entry]

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Sikkim was probably worth a lot more time than we gave the place. It wasn't on our original list probably being knocked off because it needed a special permit, is a bit out of the way and seemed really all about temples and gompas - which don't really hold that much of an attraction for some of us. There are some excellent looking treks that leave from here and it would have been nice to try one but, no time this time. So, to make up a little for not spending enough time I decided not to roll this into the [View Full Entry]

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I have always enjoyed election campaigns - fighting them, watching them and talking about them - so it is an added bonus to be in the biggest democracy in the world while its election campaign is in full swing. I claim no expertise in Indian politics and I wouldn't, therefore, presume to offer any more than some impressions that I pick up reading papers, talking to locals and watching the local current affairs channels, some of which are devoting their entire programing to the election. In a country of over 1 billion you would expect, hope even, that there would be [View Full Entry]

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Our welcome to Chennai set the scene for the rest of our stay. As we were checking in to the YWCA the receptionist passed the phone to Tony. It was the mother of a friend of ours from Australia. She was checking to see that we had arrived all right and to let us know that she would come around tomorrow morning to say hello. It was a lovely welcome and very much appreciated. There were those amongst us who had not been in a shop, seriously that is, for many days - while we were on boats or moving pretty [View Full Entry]

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We have done some longish drives on the trip so far. Not far in kilometer terms but the hours are a different matter. The road from from near the boat landing at Allepi/Allaphuza took us across Kerala to the Tamil Nadu border and then on towards the Eastern coast. It was about 390 km I think, but I can't be too sure of this. The map did not always accurately reflect the roads and we didn't actually come to towns in the order that they appeared on the map so I would not be too sure of the distances mentioned. (I [View Full Entry]

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