In Allahabad now - all is good. stayed in a bit of a nicer hotel last night - had a hot shower and watched Bruce Willis on TV, what a man, what a vest! I now have a cold Christoff is hap as larry goooood x x x x x... read more

So here we are, safely arrived in India and now a stones throw from the Taj Mahal. We were late arriving at Delhi airport (45 mins) and even later getting our bags (2h45) so the pre-arranged pick up from a hotel driver failed and we had to organise our own transport into the city itself by taxi. We spent two three nights in Delhi acclimatising and despite some serious scaremongering by the lonely planet found the place to be entertaining and friendly albeit dusty, congested and very, very noisy. All the advice of taxi drivers, hotel staff and touts trying to rip you off left right and centre certainly didn't materialise for us and generally people were honest and good fun. This may well have a lot to do with it having been the run up ... read more

Bonjour, We dragged ourselves away from the hustle of Cotonou on Tuesday and in two legs (first stopping at Abomey) are now in Parakou. The journey north, facilitated by the now mandatory Peugeot 504, was without hassle (by African standards) and we soon remembered how different things are up here as the thick forests petered out into harsh, quite barren scrubland. Things are definately heating up with the hot, dry air doing little to cool the cramped interior of the 50 year old car (4 in the back, 2 in the fornt passengers seat). It will not be far north now until, like in Mali, the vegetation dissapears altogether and the harsh Sahel region will be back. The difference this time is that our plan is to push even further north and properly enter the Sahara ... read more

So we left Ghana a while back now and after entering Togo on a river-bed type road where the delapidated border posts were filled with mountains of corn on the cobs (don't ask - I don't know) we have headed south through Togo and then crossed at a slightly more uptempo border into Benin where we now reisde in the eastern most town and capital of Porto Novo. Togo was very small but very beautiful, the town of Atakpamé our highlight which was a small town with a real French colonial feel to it, Peugeot 504s rolling down the cobbled streets to a backdrop of wide leaved vegetation that gave me a sense of an Indian Jungle. We took a trip higher into the mountains early in the morning, the mist still hangin in the valleys ... read more

Since we were with you last, and we are well aware that was an almost obcenely large amount of time we have done the following: -Been away for 100 nights -Crossed from Burkina to Ghana in a dugout canoe -Got shouted at by Ghanian immigration officals -Been in the road for 20 hours in one day -Waited 5 hours at the side of a dusty road for a lift -Walked with a travelling salesman complete with a sack of dried cows feet -Walked on a rope bridge 40m above the rainforest floor -Saw a chameleon -Wasted a week lazing on a perfect beach -Ate burger and chips -Got diarrhoea from eating overspiced kebabs -Saw a marine pig -Met the most inept man in the world -Saw a dog doing an impression of a snake -Had rice ... read more