Travelling Fraggles

East Timor is so untouched it is a travellers dream; we had morning tea with the UN Pakistani peace keeping contingent and lunch with the President of the Democratico Party while he was on the national election campaign trail. We've seen a wild orang-utan in Borneo and stayed in a Bidayu tribe village high in the Borneo mountains who in a couple of years will be moved due to a newly completed dam. In Burma we took a boat down the Ayeyarwady River, visited more temples than we could count, rode in very squashed pick up trucks and on the back of motorbikes and flew through a monsoon storm. Mongolia we bounced around in a Russian Jeep, rode camels in the Gobi Desert, stayed with nomad families and rode half-wild Mongolian horses and drank/eaten every yak, ... read more

Nepal issues visas on arrival. After landing and filling out the visa form we joined the queue with every other foreign tourist. It took an hour, the slowest immigration queue by a long way. When you get to the front you pay your visa fee and get issued with 2 reciepts, you stay in the queue and at the counter behind pass your passport, arrival card and visa stuff to the first guy in a row of three. He does what he needs to, then passes it to the next guy who does what he needs to and passes it to the third guy. The third guy hands your passport back with the visa sticker in it and finally the job is done. We changed a bit of money and went to the pre-paid taxi counter, ... read more

There was much confusion over the time of our flight out of Paro to Kathmandu. When we booked flight time was 2:45pm but it is important to reconfirm Druk Air flights as having a monopoly they can basically just do as they like. Pensoc had made a call a few days earlier to get them reconfirmed but hadn't bothered to follow up with the office until the day before. It was at dinner that he finally got a text saying that our flight number was departing at 8am and another flight was leaving at 2:30pm. We were disappointed to think we'd lost the morinng in Paro, particularily as we had nothing on our itinerary for the morning so we were hoping to be able to be dropped in town and go free range. However, with our ... read more

We retraced our steps back to Punakha and on the way managed to catch both an archery and darts match. We clambered down a steep muddy path from the road to get a closer look. We had been wanting to see the archery (the Bhutanese national sport). There was a distinct smell of spirits in the air as the archers fired shots at the target 150m away (these are very small targets not like the ones we would know and that is twice the olympic distance) with their very expensive USA made bows and arrows. Still dressed traditionally it was strange to see these farming folk occupying the only piece of flat grass in the village using such modern technology. We wondered how they could afford it. The dress, cammeraderie and banter, general piss taking and ... read more

After breakfast we caught the school assembly which is held outside and we could see from our balcony. School children regardless of age all wear the traditional dress and lessons are given in English, as is school assembly. Today's speeches were on dealing with change and working with others. We left Haa and followed the river northbound, the road clinging to and weaving around the valley. On the way we went to Lhakahang Karpo (a temple) where the monks were practicing for the coming festival. They formed a large circle in the courtyard at the front of the temple and accompanied by the cymbal were turning and ducking in what looks like it will be an energetic mask dance. Two temporary tents were also set up out the front. One reminded us of a ger with ... read more