claire b
Claire Boulter Joined: September 9th 2006
Logged in: January 22nd 2012
Logged in: January 22nd 2012
Travel Blog Posts
hair clinic poster
Wednesday night: 4-day weekend! It’s Dusshera tomorrow (well, technically today as I have begun writing this at past midnight) and the next day so we have Thursday and Friday off as well as the weekend. And it can’t come soon enough..it feels like an age since the summer holidays.. Anna and I are continuing our once-a-month-getaway from Bangalore by making a trip to see the Ellora Caves and anything else in the area. To do this we have to fly to Mumbai, then to Aurangabad and use that as a base from which to travel to the caves around 30km from there. At this present time I’m sitting in a rather uncomfortable black chair, one of many joined by the arm here in Mumbai airport at nearly half-past midnight. A 6-hour wait here in Mumbai airport ... read more
dusk over Varanasi
Day 1: The sun is setting to my left; I can see its dulling rays behind the buildings next to me. A cup of masala chai is also on my left on a table, still steaming away even though it was poured over ten minutes ago. I’m sitting on the rooftop terrace of Kedareswar Bed ‘n’ Breakfast, whose sign I can see below me stating ‘our aim is to keep always neat and clean’. I like the fact they are honest; being neat and clean is their aim, not a bonafide guarantee. The ghats of the holy city of Varanasi are opened up before me as I sit here, laptop on knee, listening to the sounds of Arcade Fire. At school we’ve been granted a long weekend, so we have this coming Monday off. One of ... read more
Street shave
I've been meaning to write this for so long..and now it's almost 10pm on a Monday night and I should be doing some work for tomorrow but.. I'm writing this a good 6 months after my trip to Mumbai/Bombay. Anna and I decided to explore the city for 2-3 days and met up with our friend Bhavna while we were there too. I've been curious about it since seeing my first Bollywood movie in B'desh and also having finished 'Shantaram' at Christmas.. Anna found a decent hotel online and it turned out to be in a great location. When I can remember its name, I'll enter it here.. While we were in Mumbai: -We went to the Elephanta Caves, which are on an island an hour or so by boat from Mumbai. I got thrown up ... read more
cup of steaming chai on the way to Ooty
This school term has been the longest so far. We started on January 10th and have just broken up on 25th March with one long weekend. One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to go somewhere different once a month, i.e outside Bangalore. Anna (who I teach with) and I had decided back in January to go to Ooty for this one long weekend we’d have, which was at the end of February. She booked a driver and pretty fancy air-conditioned-with-DVD-player car (!) and at 6am on the Friday morning we set off, my Lonely Planet in hand to help us decide where to go as we’d decided not to book anywhere. The drive was pretty smooth as it’s the same route part of the way to Coorg, so I recognized all the Café Coffee Days ... read more
elephants at Dubare Elephant Camp
I ended up going to Coorg twice in under 5 weeks; once with my parents visiting from the UK and the second time on a school trip with around 25 M1s (11-12 year olds)..so I’ll cover both trips! Coorg is around 6 hours’ drive from my current home in Bangalore. Through a travel agent I used for Sri Lanka, I booked a small Tata taxi and luckily my parents, our luggage and I managed to all fit in. I’d looked in my Lonely Planet previously and booked us to stay 3 nights, 4 days at Golden Mist Plantations in Coorg, a Dutch-owned plantation. The road to Coorg wasn’t bad until we got to Madikeri area; up til then the road was pretty smooth with lots of Café Coffee Days dotted along the road every few miles, ... read more
view from McLeod Inn, Kandy
Up until a few weeks before my December holiday (I’m a teacher and at my new school, new country, we had 3 weeks off...sooo well-deserved..) I still hadn’t decided where on earth to go. I wanted to stick closer to home and somewhere not full of expats, specifically drunken expats (I have British people in mind when I think of those two words together) and somewhere not too cold but not boiling hot either. Having spoken to a couple of people about recommendations for that time of year, I settled on Sri Lanka, somewhere I’d always wanted to go..preferably during the elephant festival but I’m always going to miss that as long as I’m in this part of the world as that’s when schools start back. Anyway so a wee bit of research later and I ... read more
view from Hemakuta Hill
A week's break from school stretches out in front of me, as does endless choices of where to go in this massive continent that is India. A few days before the holiday starts, I decide upon Hampi, and with a friend's help (as the internet site wouldn't accept my India ING bank card), manage to book a train ticket on the Hampi Express, leaving on Sunday night, arriving after about 8 hours, early Monday morning in Hampi. Day/Night 1: I've booked a taxi to take me to Bangalore City Junction, where I went the day before so that in theory, I'd know which platform the train left from. I queued (elbows sharpened) in the 'general enquiry' queue and eventually was told that it'd leave from Platform 7. It takes about 45 minutes to get from my ... read more
a tiny part of City Market
I've been living in Bangalore for almost 2 months now and before I head to bed I thought I'd try and write a little bit as I have had no time at all to write about my time here so far. I could go to sleep right this second but think this may be the only point I'm motivated to write so better do it now! I'm sitting in my bedroom at 11pm on a Saturday night (it's a training weekend this weekend, so I have to be at school all weekend, so no Saturday night fun for me) with a vanilla candle burning, my cup of vanilla white tea (so yum) steaming next to my bed and my ipod murmuring in the background..Tori Amos 'Spark'. Outside it's quiet save for the odd dog barking. Loads ... read more
Ardmore Round Tower (and view)
Much as I would have liked to travel further afield this summer (having recently completed a teaching qualification I've had over 2 months off) but my meagre funds have not allowed this (too many shoes perhaps?!), so I decided to go to Ireland for a week, staying at my family's cottage in Ardmore, in the south of Ireland. My paternal grandmother who was born not too far from Ardmore bought the cottage around 25 years ago so my family - and friends of the family - have been using it ever since. Ardmore (in Gaelic, 'Aird Mhor', frequently seen on signs around the area) is a small village in County Waterford. To get there you've got a few options; this time I went by plane as I get seasick and if you've suffered from seasickness, you'll ... read more
church (can't remember which one!), Cambridge
Hello, I don't write this blog much nowadays as I don't deem being back in the UK exotic..however I have moved around 3 cities in 6 months thanks to my teaching placement, so here are a few photos of where I've been living most recently: Cambridge. I've 3 weeks left til I finish my course and leave..no idea where I'll go next so we'll see...... read more
