Ko Lanta was like taking a holiday from travelling! It was very relaxing, the scenery was beautiful and the people were lovely. We stayed in a beach bungalow place called Strandbaren, which translates as Beach Bar in Swedish and was owned by, you guessed it, a Swedish guy. The island had a huge Swedish population, they even had a school with 180 children, so we're guessing Ko Lanta is Thailand's little Sweden. Our beach bungalow was great, thatched walls and roof. The bathroom was all decorated with shells and stones from the beach which was 10 meters from our front door. After spending the first two days relaxing on this beach we hired a bike and went further afield in search of beautiful beaches. The first bike outing wasn't too successful as we got completely lost! ... read more

Both of us here! Malaysia is fantastic! We flew through the night and arriving felt like going on holiday. It was so warm when we stepped off the plane at 5am, all the warm clothes got put to the bottom of the bags immediately. We took the very efficient public transport to the hostel and checked in at 7am, then slept till midday! The hostel was very clean, there was a lady there all day just constantly cleaning. This all meant that Malaysia felt worlds away from India. After our lie in we decided to stay local and had a stroll around Chinatown to the Central Market which is (in Malaysian terms) quite old. We had our feet eaten (sucked) by fish, and sought refuge from the torrential rain. We had dinner at a place called ... read more

In Delhi now but were going to split the blogs up so this one will be "Agra and Khajuraho" written by me (Jamie), and I'll get Laura to write on Varanasi and our return to Delhi, which to keep you in suspense has the worlds best apple pie, a hair raising tale of running through the small streets of Varanasi past lots of guards with machine guns and a rickshaw driver that almost killed half the population of Varanasi to get us to the station. Went to Agra, where we saw the Taj Mahal among other things. It was alot like seeing a celebrity because it's such an iconic image. We were worried that it might have been a disappointment because its talked up so much, but it was actually very impressive; worth getting up for ... read more

Hello, Laura here. We have had a fantastic time in Jaipur. Our train journey from Delhi was much better than expected. After hearing several horror stories about the Indian Railways we were concerned about our first journey. However, the train was on time, comfortable, relatively clean and even had a choice of 'indian style' or 'western style' toilet! Jamie and I began playing cards, a couple of Indian men next to us were watching and seemed to understand the gist of it so I offered to deal them into the next round. Our ability to communicate was very limited though. At the next station a lady who worked in a call centre for vodafone boarded the train and sat close to us. She became a translator and we spent the rest of the 6 hours chatting ... read more

After a whistle stop tour of Mold, Sheffield, Lancaster and Ashbourne we are packed and ready to go. Our bags are surprisingly light, with some space leftover, which is making us think whether we should pack some more! However, we do want some space leftover for things we might pick up along the way. We fly tomorrow at 3.50pm from Manchester to Delhi and then 8.50pm we board our flight to Delhi to arrive there at 10.40am local time. India is 5.5 hours ahead of the UK. This will be our travelling blog for the next 4 months or so. If you subscribe, you will get an email notification when we update this blog, or you can keep checking back, its up to you! See you in 4 months!... read more