The final of the three J's of my Rajasthani experience was the best of all - Jaisalmer. Situated on the edge of the Thar Desert, near the border with Pakistan, Jaisalmer is a magical little desert town. As in Jodhpur, the town is centred around a fort, although Jaisalmer's fort is nowhere near as imposing and dominant as Meherangarh. From a distance, it looks a bit like a beach sand-castle. Ninety-nine circular bastions, (just like the ones kids make with little beach-buckets), form the perimeter of the fort, which is perched atop a steep-sloped pile of pale-yellow sand. Just abo [View Full Entry]

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To give you some idea why Rajasthan - the Land of Kings - had always been a big part of my India travel plans, here are some quotes from the LP guide. (Also known as The Book by travellers - make sure you pronounce the capitals - and "your Bible" by sneering touts.) "A legend come to life... magical towns and cities... whimsical, magnificent palaces and forts... collection of small, fierce kingdoms... living by ancient, violent codes of chivalry and death before dishonour". How could I resist that?! My travel plans changed a lot as I read through The Book, but [View Full Entry]

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And I'm off!... Almost a full month to travel around the north-west of India, in a hectic attempt to take in as many fascinating cities and landscapes as possible! As I mentioned in my last entry, the first leg of my journey was an overnight train to Agra. Unfortunately, this was heavily over-booked, so finding a berth to get some sleep was fairly tricky. After hours of shifting here and there, a kind family took pity on me and harangued the ticket-collector into giving me a berth of my own. I did manage to nod off for a few hours but [View Full Entry]

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Bas! Finished! The twelve weeks of my placement draw to a close tomorrow! I've made a lot of very good friends here, whom I'm unlikely to see again for a long time, and I'm really going to miss them all. But I'm definitely ready to move on from here and am really looking forward the next month's travels. I don't know what I'll do without Baby though, cooking me three delicious meals a day and brewing her special blend of chai for me! After a final cup of it tomorrow morning, I'll say my final goodbyes and then catch a local [View Full Entry]

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Eight down, four to go! The twelve weeks of my placement are slowly dragging by, although at times it feels as if each successive week lasts longer and longer. I'm comfortable here now - and grateful for how God's helped me adjust to this very different culture - but I constantly find myself itching to swing my pack up onto my shoulders and head back out into the big, wide world! I have to keep reminding myself what an amazing opportunity this is, and am trying hard to suppress my impatience and make the most of this experience while it lasts. [View Full Entry]

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While I'm always grateful to accompany the EFICOR staff here as they work, and fascinated to learn about what it is they do and why, there haven't been many opportunities where I'm able to actually be of much help to them, (mainly due to the language barrier). The main exception to this has been what little technological know-how I have - I've helped Jitu learn to use the new office camera, continue to give Sujal frequent computer lessons, installed a CD burner on the office computer, and yesterday succeeded in setting up internet access in the office! So I'll now be [View Full Entry]

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Namaste to you all! ('Namaste' is an interesting Hindi greeting which means something like 'I recognise the divine within you'.) Thank you very much to all who've been emailing and messaging me, (my Indian mobile number is +919860659764), over the past month! My access to the net is infrequent and always very brief, but when I do get the chance, I really look forward to reading through your emails and finding out what you've been up to! I'm just sorry I haven't had more time to be able to reply individually just yet. Anyway, I'm now almost four weeks into my [View Full Entry]

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In my emails home, the word I generally use to describe my flights is 'uneventful'. It certainly doesn't apply this time! As both of our flights left the same night, Joel and I went to the airport together. Mine was the earlier flight, so I checked in well ahead of time, located what I thought was my boarding gate and then went back to wait with Joel. After a leisurely dinner and coffee, we wandered down to the gate, reluctantly said our tearful farewells (no, really there was just a lot of manly back-slapping and hand-shaking!) and I passed through my [View Full Entry]

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It's been a little over three weeks since Glenn and I stumbled out of Don Muang Airport at midnight, into the smoggy streets of Bangkok, and a lot has happened since then! But don't worry, I'm not going to try to give a full account of all our travels! Instead, I'll just pick out some of the highlights. First week (Bangkok): Glenn and I used the time til Joel arrived mainly just to relax and explore Bangkok. Or, more honestly, to explore some of Bangkok's shopping centres. =P We ate a lot of very good and very cheap food, moved hostels [View Full Entry]

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As the cliches suggest, my travels so far have taught me a number of important truths. Foremost among these (a truth my friends have been aware of for a long time) is that I am a notoriously unreliable correspondent. =P The general trend seems to be that I neglect to write at all for months, before suddenly filling my unsuspecting friends' inboxes with a torrent of detailed travel narrative and photos. Hopefully this travel blog will help remedy all that! Those of you who are interested can check back here every now and then to see what trouble I've gotten myself [View Full Entry]

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