We spent one last night in Srinigar before departing on a long and convoluted journey to a small area in the mountains in Himachal Pradesh, called McLeod Ganj (about 10kms outside of Dharamsala). McLeod Ganj is the home of the Tibetan government in exile and of the Dalai Lama, although he wasn't there for our stay. It has a largely Tibetan population and is like a different country altogether. There were also a lot of tourists, which was strange because we had encountered so few up to that point. It is situated on the edge of a mountain and is covered [View Full Entry]

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We departed Srinigar on the 20th and began the 100km drive up into the mountains north west of Srinigar, for a tiny village called NaraNag ("The Temple of Spring Water"). With us at that point was out driver and our chef...yes, our chef. The village was indeed tiny and everyone, especially the children were soooo friendly. Everywhere you looked there were people waving out there windows and children asking for pens and sweets! We were introduced to our guide and his family and ate lunch in his house, where i had my first squat toilet experience...i survived, narrowly... We spent the [View Full Entry]

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So we were brought against our will to an "official" tourist information office where we booked a trip to Srinigar in Kashmir against our better judgment! We basically paid for a flight, 3 nights full board in a 'deluxe' houseboat and all transfers- departing the following morning... Of course, we went home and consulted the Lonely Planet, which only served to reinforce our fears that we had booked a one-way ticket into a war zone and would be lucky to escape either unharmed or- at best- having not been ripped off or conned somewhere along the way. So with great suspicion [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in New Delhi early on Saturday and managed to not get ripped off taking a taxi from the airport to the city! We got dropped off at the bottom of the Main Bazaar and it was quite an experience walking the few hundred meters to our hotel; The Smyle Inn (grand hotel all things considering, our rooms were very clean and the staff were very pleasant). ...The whole place smells of incense, curry, cow manure and urine and there are people everywhere. Literally everywhere you look there are hundreds of people just standing around. If you could freeze frame [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Vientiane following a 12hr night bus journey and the first thing i noticed was that there were mosquitos everywhere... not a great start. Things deteriorated when we realised that the accomodation in the capital is quite expensive but, thankfully, after one night in a decent hotel we managed to find a cheap crappy one that suited our budget! Vientiane is not particularly nice and is probably my least favourite destination so far (excluding Mumbai- which I am working on forgetting!), which is a shame since the rest of Laos has been so great. It was also a shame [View Full Entry]

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