One of the most fascinating aspects of going to New Zealand was our almost total ignorance of our destination for next five weeks. Apart from the well known facts that the Hobbits live there and there are more sheep than people, we knew very little. Who's the prime minister of New Zealand? Not a faintest idea. Which party or parties run the country? Not a slightest clue. What have been the moments that define the nation in the history of NZ? Beats me. On our way to Auckland from Melbourne we data-mined our memories for anything related to the kingdom of Aotearoa. The list we could come up was embarrassingly scant. It is the first country in the world granting women universal suffrage. The locals get their knickers in a twist about rugby and their national ... read more

To mark the occasion of our hundredth day on the road, we felt like treating you to a retrospective mélange of random curiosities and occasional insights. We will leave our Outback odyssey for the next blogging, once we have made it back to the civilized world. We are now in Alice Springs finding out what a summer in the desert is all about. The idea was to post this on the exact date of the 100th day on the road but due to the Australia Day, the national day of Oz celebrating the landing of the revered First Fleet, all internet cafes are closed today, hence a slight delay. By the bye, for the indigenous people today is known as the Invasion Day, not warranting much to feel festive about. 100 days spent on the road, ... read more

The French had notorious Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana, a disease-infested tropical penal colony, where they sent their worst criminals and basically anyone opposing the king too vocally. Hardly a single convict sentenced there came back, at least alive. Still more humane than guillotine, I suppose. But the Brits, giving the French a bloody nose in pretty much everything except in gastronomy, took the concept onto an entire new level and went large,more precisely extra-super-large, even more to the point, full frontal bloated obese-large, and had an entire continent set up as a penitentiary. At the outset, the continent seemed almost to be designed for this purpose - vast void of inimical land, that happens to be the driest, flattest, most infertile and climatically aggressive of all inhabited continents. What's more, it has ... read more

To get our frost bitten bodies warm again, we decide to change the scenery from mountain walls of the Himalayas to bustling jungles of Chitwan. Enduring another 6 hour bus journey in a crammed bus with Bollywood music blasting away, we are relieved when we finally reach the gates of Chitwan and are looking forward to having a rendezvous with some feisty beasts. Chitwan, a UNESCO world heritage site, is the oldest national park in Nepal and is home for a multitude of endangered species including the king of the jungle - the Bengal tiger, a lean mean killing machine a.k.a. the jungle pussycat. We learn that our best chance to have a close encounter with wild animals is having a jungle safari on foot, although it comes naturally with a considerable risk factor since some ... read more

Arriving in Pokhara after Kathmandu feels like a trip from hell to heaven, a Nepalese version. In Pokhara we are greeted by a calm lake with lavishly green hills at the background. Familiar to some? Yes, a scenery similar to the one we enjoy in Lausanne. Unfortunately the weather is crying, and we do not see any mountain peaks at the horizon, but there are lot of promising post cards in the bookshops along the lake. Lake's name is Fewa, it is the second largest lake in Nepal, lying at an altitude of 784m, it is not very deep though, just 9m in average. We have a few things to go through with. First, yoga. No, actually, not, we will have our most important date here, the date of our wedding. Here, in Pokhara on 11.11.11 ... read more