Wilko
Sam Wilkins Joined: November 23rd 2006
Logged in: March 13th 2009
Logged in: March 13th 2009
Travel Blog Posts
Elephant in the distance
...sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and the baby makes an even twenty. Twenty people in the van. Its hard to tell how many people it was designed to take, but the most generous estimate is about 13, which includes three accross the front. Amanda and I are crammed in the back, the worst seats for comfort becuse you never get to move, but the best place for observation. The other eighteen people are of various shapes and sizes. Two brothers who were dropped off in the middle of nowhere, an older lady carrying food back from the market, a teacher, a small family, etc. The central figure however is a large bald man whose face seems built to smile. He sits in the middle, facing backwards. I cannot understand the conversation as it is in Chibemba, but ... read more
Lillies
Its just stopped raining and Oats and I are playing cards. I'm teaching him spit- its not an easy game but he's learning quickly. "I am not fast enough!" he says. Of course, it is only after we have decided to turn back that the sun comes out. And of course, it is only on the one day that we planned to travel into the Delta- the main attraction of our visit to Botswana that it rains at all. Perhaps Amanda and I had been singing too much Toto. Oats keeps forgeting that the picture cards go Jack, Queen, King then Ace, or maybe he is just cheating when he piles them all down on top of eachother. The Okavango Delta is the worlds biggest inland delta. Its 800,000 Square Kms of more than a swamp ... read more
Cordoba
Seeing the sights of Mendoza only took a couple of days, so on monday we took a bus to Cordoba, the second biggest city in Argentina with plans to go to Rosario after. I should mention that I´m writing this on an extraordinarily crappy keyboard, so if there are letters missing that is the reason. The buses in Argentina are awesome. I think I forgot to mention that on the one from BA to Mendoza, they handed out bingo cards and the entire bus played for a bottle of wine. A very fun experience and a good way to practice some spanish. The one overnight to Cordoba was just as good, no bingo, but lots of space and a smooth ride. We rolled into the bus station at about 9 in the morning and walked about ... read more
Drinking time
Hola This is my first entry for South America 2007/08. I fear that I´ll get too lazy to keep up every location that i go to. So, if there start to dry up, or get condensed into entries of five cities, thats probably the reason. For those of you who dont know, it´s me and Amanda this time. The other guys are around as well but we´ll be meeting up with them later. Hopefully this change of company will result in much better grammar and spelling than previous blogs. After a 31 hour (series of) flight(s), we finally arrived in Buenos Aires (BA) in the afternoon on the 28th. I was somewhat dissapointed that our two stop overs in South Africa had not presented enough opportunities for me to laugh at the accent, but it was ... read more
Palolem beach
I'm going to have a lot more difficulty with this blog considering that in the 11 da I was in Goa I really didn't do anything. This was the appeal of the place even before we arived there. I remember being stuck in busses, in hot rooops and cold showers dreaming of this perfct beach on which I could do absolutely nothing. After over two months in India, I feel that I'ev seen enough tourist sights, taken enough photos and so forth. Right now it's all about relaxing with the sun and sand. We bussed into Panaji from Mumbai- not a bad one as far as sleeper busses go. We actually had enough of us to close off two of the compartments and have a bit of a slumber pary atmosphere. Here we played trivia (it ... read more
Monsoon Palace
Rajasthan was the one of the two places in India (the other being Varanasi) that have seemed to meet my expectations pretty clearly. The image i had was of a lot of small towns, rural surroundings, hot weather, desert sands and big forts. These were all there, but despite it's predictability, I still really enjoyed my time here and managed to pack five destinations into twelve days. Pushkar We had arranged for the first stop to be Jaipur, but as we found out that an old school teacher was leading some people through India and was planning to be in Jaipur on the 9th, we decided to kick on to Pushkar first and then go back to Japur then, so it was onward to Pushkar. Our first impressions of Pushkar were snapshots of a tiny town ... read more
Main Bazaar at night
Apologies for leaving these blogs until three weeks after i leave the place that i'm writing on- i really need to get better at that. I Haven't written in my own journal in a fair while either. I'd hope that this doesn't reflect the fact that the little things about India are not as appealing as they used to be, although I do think that being around them for over a month now makes everyhting seem a lot more tame. Oh well. Anyway, we're in Delhi now for the second time and we're about to leave. My impressions of this place are fairly good- i like Delhi. Why? People seem to always complain that the place is just big and noisy with no real tourist sights to compensate- i disagree. It is big and noisy here, ... read more
Rishikesh Ashram
I've now spent more time in Rishikesh than in any oth part of India. There's not really a whole lot to see, so i won't really spend a lot of time writting on it. I did however find a place with a trully chilled out vibe relaxed atmosphere. Th train ride up was itself something special (as they often are). This time we were booked on the Shatabti express, one of the all AC trains that runs from city to city through the day. This was crazy, we were treated like we were on an airliner. People in uniforms would come and offer drinks and give us bottled water free. Every stop there would be an anouncement in English and Japanese explaining what the town was known for - quite something for the tourist who was ... read more
Taj Mahal
After four days, Nick, Chris and I are just about to leave Agra for Delhi. My impressions of this city are mixed. It's reputaion amoungst travellers as a postcard city (the city built around the Taj Mahal as one of our friends described it) was partially true, indeed it is fair to say that without the cities tourist attractions it wouldn't be worth the visit. However, we've still enjoyed our time here and i think i'll come back if i get the chance. This time the train was four hours late arriving. This actually turned out to be a blessing as Chris (who we had planned to meet in agra under the detailed instruction 'lets meet in agra on the 14th') ended up arriving at the station from delhi at almost exactly this time. After a ... read more
Dawn cruise down the Ganges
We've been in Varanasi for two days now. After coming in by two hour train trip from Bodhgaya (the trip was nothing special this time), it took us about and hour to be almost ripped off twice. The first time was from the driver of the Autorickshaw. He greeted us as we left the platform and asked us where we were going. Usually i wouldn't even answer because the drivers who leave the pack of others offer higher prices, but this time i said 'Assi Ghat'. '60 rupees' he said. This was a fairly good price and i looked a bit surprised for a second and said ok. As he was driving us to our reliable midrange hotel- hotel haifa- he stopped and pointed to some police on the road and said that the road was ... read more
