Hello Friends and Family Since we last wrote we have once again left civilisation and as I write we are sat in just about the only internet cafe in the small town of Gorontalo in Sulawesi, Indonesia. We have been rushing around in the last week and covered quite a lot of ground (and water)... We arrived in Bali in the middle of the night last week to find the 1st Asian Beach Games had come to Kuta, but managed to find some crummy accommodation for the night. The next day we moved to a much nicer hotel with a swimming [View Full Entry]

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Hello Lovely People I hope you are all well. Since we last wrote we have left the quiet town (relatively, for India anyway) of Bundi in a taxi (yes we copped out of public transport yet again) for Pushkar. Pushkar is a holy Hindu city with a sacred lake, supposedly for bathing but it was far too dirty and smelly for that and we didn't actually see anyone in the water thankfully. It is very much a tourist town and it was nice to have a choice of relaxing places to eat and hang out. Being such a Holy town there [View Full Entry]

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Hello Avid Readers I hope you are all well, and thanks for reading our blog! After leaving Jodhpur we heard there was stampede at a mosque the night after we left, with over 100 people killed. We were at that temple only 2 days before and saw all the scaffolding set up to separate the men's and women's queues. Rest assured we are not so keen as to be up at dawn to visit a temple, which is when the stampede happened! Still, seeing the pictures in the papers (which are a lot more graffic than pictures in UK newspapers) we [View Full Entry]

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Hello All Jaisalmer was dry and sandy coloured and right in the middle of the desert. The fort is perched on top of a hill in the middle of the city and looks just like a big sand castle, even down to the little triangular flag on the top! It was really very hot there (compared with everywhere else which is just very hot!) and we were forced (!) to spend a lot of time lazing around in the shade on the rooftop of our hotel overlooking the fort. We also took a trip one afternoon, 40km out of town to [View Full Entry]

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It feels like a long time ago that we were in the relative peace and cool of the mountains! In Haridwar we watched a big puja celebration by the Ganges (a daily even in the pilgrim town) which culminated in some chanting, cymbals and drums and sending small baskets of flower petals down the river with candles on top. There were a few thousand pilgrims lining the banks. As the river was almost bursting its banks following heavy rain, the flowers and candles didn't float down quite so serenely as usual and lots were lost in the rapids just downstream! We [View Full Entry]

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Hello again I don't mean to bombard you with emails about our trip as I'm sure you will soon get bored of them (please feel free to delete!)) but as apparently there was a bomb in Delhi at the weekend I thought I would just send a quickie to say we weren't there! Instead we were trecking through part of the Himalayas to a place called the Valley of Flowers (around 4000 m above sea level), which sadly had very few flowers in bloom (July/August is the time for that) but was still very beautiful and had stunning views of some [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone (or Namaste as everyone here seems to say!) I hope you are all well and happy. Just thought I'd write a quick note to say we've made it to India! We arrived in Delhi on Monday morning and left on Tuesday afternoon, having seen as much as we wanted to - it really is as hot, busy, noisy and dirty as everyone says! We have now retreated to Rishikesh in the foothills of the Himalayas which we thought might be a little cooler but is just as hot and dirty although a little less busy and noisy than Delhi! [View Full Entry]

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