We've spent another happy and relaxing day here in Dharamsala (McLeod Ganj) and we CANNOT believe how easy it is to be here!! Both of us are really amazed at how really friendly and humble the Tibetans here are. Everyone is so peaceful and lovely, and everyone is always smiling - the old people are always walking around, grinning. I love the Tibetan children as well - the babies are adorable, so cute and chubby, and the toddlers even want to shake your hand. We got a beautiful photo of a little wee Tibetan girl wearing a bright pink hat and [View Full Entry]

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Amber: (delightedly) Is that a cow swimming in the river? Guide: He die. Amber: Oh. We've now left Kashmir, and are in one of the main Himalayan hill stations of Dharamsala or, more specifically, McLeod Ganj, which is just slightly outside Dharamsala. It's where most of the tourists end up and where the Dalai Lama lives. We've asked around but he's not doing any public audiences at the moment, so unfortunately we won't get to meet him. There are tons of Buddhist monks everywhere though, as Dharamsala is the main community in the world for Tibetan refugees. Both Paul and I [View Full Entry]

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We arrived a few days ago in Srinagar with relatively little fanfare (although the lines at the airport in Delhi were insane... I had to go through the Women's Only line at security, although there seemed to be a coed line, so I'm not sure why there was a difference!) The flight into Srinagar was gorgeous - probably one of the most scenic flights you can ever do in your life. We were able to see K2 (world's second highest mountain to Everest) from the plane, which was pretty cool. Srinagar is gorgeous - right in the middle of the Himalayas, [View Full Entry]

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And if we weren't, I'd have been very, very surprised. Of course, as soon as we arrived at the airport to check in for our flight to Srinagar, they announced the cancellation. Which was the most obvious outcome of yesterday's travel plans, considering we'd been seeing news of blizzards and flight cancellations to the region all day. So now we're booked in to go tomorrow, which probably works out better, as it is now sunny and all the flights are actually arriving. Think we were luckier than the flight ahead of us that had to turn around and go BACK to [View Full Entry]

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Didn't think I'd be online so quickly, but we're waiting to leave for the airport for our flight up north (if we actually get on it... already delayed and a lot of the flights in the region are cancelled, and I'm not confident that it will even be flying due to snow!) so we thought we'd log on for a moment. I keep forgetting to post a link to Paul's travel blog, which he is also keeping updated with his stories... check out http://paulcooknz.wordpress.com for all of his anecdotes! [View Full Entry]

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... in order to have written things like "surreal to flight over Kabul" and write words like "unbennounced" which do not even exist in real life. We've finished our first full day in Delhi, and are now in a new guest house. Go us! The guy who dealt with the first bit of our trip to the Himalayas convinced us to switch as, apparently, for the exact same price (GASP!) his hotel was "much more luxurious." He was right, actually, so we're glad we moved. The first place was okay, but a bit gross, and I couldn't sleep for awhile, breathing [View Full Entry]

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Well, here we are in Delhi. What can I say: it's exactly what I expected, and also not at all what I expected, if that makes sense. Our flight was okay - reasonably smooth and only slightly delayed at Heathrow as there was some "passenger confusion" (??) but it was fine. Fairly long, of course, as it is over 8 hours, but we had Entertainment on Demand! which meant I could watch episodes of Frasier and Jack the Ripper documentaries as much as I desired. It was also slightly surreal to flight over Kabul and Jalalabad and other places that are [View Full Entry]

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And we'll be on our flight to India! Ah, how I hate flying. So we've been keeping ourselves relatively busy over the past few days. Yesterday we spent a very fun and touristy afternoon at Madame Tussaud's, which was highly amusing. It would have been extremely expensive though: regular price is £25 PER PERSON, which is unbelievable. Fortunately we got a two for one deal though, so it wasn't quite as horrifyingly extortionate. I always get a laugh out of wax museums, and the figures at Madame Tussaud's are (scarily) well done. Prince Charles was especially lifelike, although I'm not entir [View Full Entry]

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So we arrived in London on Wednesday night, after the world's LONGEST bus ride from Oxford. It actually wasn't so bad, there was just a ton of traffic on the highway, and as a result it took us ages to get into the city. We were in no particular hurry though, so it was fine. We're now staying at Cheyne and Denise's place in Putney, and we're having a somewhat amusing time with the sleeping arrangements. They've got a spare box room with a single bed, and Denise bought a single air mattress for the floor for one of us. Unfortunately [View Full Entry]

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We've now touched down in Oxford, home to people with suddenly different accents, and apparently there's some university around the place as well. It's quite funny: you can almost immediately identify who the academics are. They're white-haired men with beards and mustaches, riding around town on bicycles. They also wear tweed. I'm not being funny. It's true. I often like to look at university professors and students and try to determine their discipline based on their appearance. Sometimes it can be misleading though: when I was doing my degree in political science, the students were either a [View Full Entry]

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