Steve Lou

Oh well...here it is - the last blog. It's Sunday evening - the day before WORK !!! Six months off....it feels like going back to school after the summer holidays :O( Anyway....we came back from travelling with a month to go, and whilst we were away we hatched a plan to go and see a bit more of the UK. It's funny - but whilst travelling, it's very easy to romantise about being 'back home'. Talk of pubs, and the BBC, and simply being able to cook up some beans on toast are a common occurrence. So...we decided rather than sitting at home - we'd get up and go again - and here's a few pictures of our UK road trip. It was a great couple of weeks...as you'll see we had some great winter weather. ... read more

So...Bangalore...the silicon valley of India. What a cool town. Stuffed full of ultra cool bars and quality restaurants, with tree lined avenues and parks and pavements that people use, and if we are not mistaken, a few decibles less on the horn usage. It feels like we've been on an Easyjet weekend rather than visting an India city. Steve would surely like to come back for work and live it up on expenses. Intially though, we had real problems finding a hotel ..everywhere we called was full, even the seriously cheap....we found out that some spritual guru was in town for the weekend and 2.5 million! people had converged on Bangalore to see him. We ended up finding a great room though, a suite in fact, with great views of the city, smack bang in the ... read more

So we're back in India. Chennai/Madras is quite a shock to the system after Sri Lanka...it is the dirtest city we have visited so far...the dust, heat, smells and poverty are all ten fold. It's great to be eating Indian food again though...we found a great veg restaurant for our first lunch. There are hardly any tourists in the city, so you the food is very authentic (but no Madras. Steve was gutted!) We paid a rickshaw guy to take us round the sights for a couple of hours. We visted the amazing Kapaleeswarar temple, an ancient Shiva temple, the biggest in Chennai, the Santhome Cathedral Church built in 1504, said to house the remains of St. Thomas the Apostle (only two places can boast that they have remains of an apostle, and the other is ... read more

So our next adventure was a safari in Yala National Park on the South East Coast. We stayed in a lovely little hotel called Vikum in Tissa and the owner arranged a full days safari, with a great guide and just the two of us. We had been warned that it was very difficult to spot the Top 3 animals: the Leopard, Elephant & Sloth Bear....but we were extremely luckily and saw all 3! the leopard bing the hardest to spot, lying high up in a tree (especially when you have shit binoculars!) plus lots of beautiful peacocks, crocs, mongoose, deer, bee-eater birds, monitor lizzards etc etc. On our way down to the beach front we managed to find a male elephant which decided to charge at us, but - and this is a top tip ... read more

So…Adam’s peak. The guide books describe it as a stunning climb up a pilgrims mountain (apparently it’s the place where Buddha first stepped on earth). We decided to give it a go…sounded like fun. Oh boy ! Talk about hard work !! It turns out Adam’s peak is a 2,500 meter tall perfect 45 degree mountain peak. The nice people of Sri Lanka have built steps all the way up…but that basically means a stiff climb up over a vertical kilometer…stairway to hell more like !! Oh..and just to cap it, it turns out the best thing is to see sunrise - so that means a 3am start. Perfect. Anyway…it was great fun (once complete) and the sunrise and views are simply stunning.. hopefully from the pictures you can see how cone perfect the peak is ... read more