josh and ariska

From Lhasa we took the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, with the line topping the 5072m Tanggu-la pass, and with 80% of the Golmund to Lhasa stretch being over 4000m, this is the world’s highest railway. It’s 160km of bridges, the costs only $4.1 billion so far!! The train ride was probably the best we had since our start! It was only 24 hours and for the first 12 hours we had the coupe for ourselves.. There were duvets and nice soft pillows! And even extra oxygen if we needed!! The next morning we arrived in Xining.. Thinking we could extend our trip to Xi’an straight away, but no!!!! Josh jumped in the queue with all the other Chinese to get us a ticket to Xi’an as soon as possible! We kinda made a mistake with Xining.. Thinking last ... read more

Chitwan NP! Finally the time arrived to go to Chitwan Np! Early morning (06.15am) walking with our backpacks on through Thamel to find our bus on the side of a street!! Interesting but no problems at all!! Smooth bus ride again!! Our bus was smooth.. some vehicles that weren’t that lucky!! 4 cars, busses, trucks where upside down on the road and that in a space of say 100 kilometers!! We booked a “package” with Sapana Village Lodge (www.sapanalodge.com) for 5 days/ 4 nights! Packed with excitement!! Arriving in Sauraha we got picked up with a jeep at the busstop..Really nice to expierence..Cause normally we have to find our own way. But it was all organised really well! Sapana Lodge was overwhelming for us... It's quiet with all little sitting areas everywhere..The room we got was ... read more

Our travels from India, to cross the boarder, wasn't as smooth as we wanted it to be! Our train to Gorakhpur should go at 00.35. We where there at 23.30 cause sometimes the trains come early! Just 5 min before the normal arriving time an anouncement came over the speakers!! "train blablabla to Gorakhpur is delayed by an hour" and after an hour it happened again! "train blablabla to Gorakhpur is now delayed by 2 hours" and yes one more time after half an hour "train blablabla to Gorakphur is now delayed by 2.5 hours"!!! So at 3 o'clock we finally where on our way! And we can tell you its freezing cold on the trainstation.. Millions of people are just sleeping on the floors, waiting for their trains to arrive! The next morning with another ... read more

Another early start for us! 5.30am the alarm went off! Sad to leave Mcleod Ganj, but ready for Rajasthan.. Just another 19 hour train ride to make it to Jodhpur. Unfortunatly we couldn't get a 2AC train and we had to take a 3AC. Meaning we shared our area with 6 indian dudes.. Not all to happy about that! We had to get used to the staring again.. Not just for 5 min.. but hours and hours... It doens't help if you ask them to look somewhere else! Grrrrrr.... Jodhpur Arriving at 6am in the morning the city was still a sleep... Getting in our rickshaw we got welcomed by the fumes of piss and poo. Jodhpur the "Blue City" really is blue! After waiting for our room for 4 hours we finally had a shower ... read more

The North Yes, the north!! Different for sure! Our flight went really smooth, but Delhi.. No words could descripe this city! With all the stories we've heard we decided to wait at the airport and then go straight to the New Delhi train station. Good desicion cause everywhere they tried to rip us off! Arriving at the train station they tried to tell us that our train was delayed for about 9 hours! And that we should buy a new ticket for a train from Old Delhi.. Us not taking this, they said we should wait in in the waiting room on the other side of the station! Probably reading this it sounds like so "obvious", but being there and 5 really confinshing indians telling you all the same story you start doubting! Luckely we didn't ... read more