Tim and Sam...

We're home

tim_and_sam — Wed, 9 Apr 2008 22:23:00 GMT

So we made it back in one piece. At some point we may finish the blog but for now we are busy with trying to find somewhere to live. I'm not sure what the collective noun for letting agents is, perhaps "an incompetence"?

Gallery: Russia

tim_and_sam — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:21:00 GMT

From Russia with Love

tim_and_sam — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:51:00 GMT

As we boarded train 005 a storm whistled in from the Gobi and cloaked Ulan Baatar in a cold, gritty cloud of yellow dust. Peering from the window of the train we were glad to be out of the action and not exposing ourselves to the sand blasting that the tearful relatives of our Mongolian travelling companions were receiving. The weather had been kind to us in Mongolia but seemed to be on the turn.

The freezing temperatures outside mean that Mongolians and Russians have a real knack for heating things. They like to keep the inside of their homes, offices, shops and particularly their trains uncomfortably hot. The result is that a peculiar and, we find, very amusing train boarding ritual has evolved. It goes something like this: Having satisifed the provodnitsa (carriage attendant) of your identity you may board the train. On entering the compartment one must stow ones baggage and swap shoes for carpet slippers. It is then polite to sit down and briefly greet your fellow travellers. Salad vegetables, smoked fish and sausages are arranged on the table before gentlemen vacate the compartment to allow the ladies to change their clothes for what is often an astonishing set of garish, ill fitting pyjamas. Ladies now reciprocate, allowing the menfolk to change into wife-beater vests and tracksuit trousers. The provodnitsa then collects tickets and distributes bedding. Having made their beds passengers either crowd into a single compartment to drink and make merry, or simply submit to a heat induced narcolepsy.

The provodnitsa is the boss. Get that straight at the start and your journey will be a happy one. Hairdos that wouldn't look out of place in a cabaret club and frequent costume changes prove to be a strangely fascinating part of each journey. A formal suit with long fur coat for greeting passengers, a nylon tabbard with miniskirt and knee high boots for cleaning and, of course, ill fitting pyjamas for kicking back between shifts. Crucially, she who must be obeyed also controls the lock on the toilet door and making a good first impression may result in unhindered access to a clean toilet that is usually out of bounds.

Petty smuggling of goods from Mongolia to Russia is a popular pastime and as we travelled towards the border our fellow passengers busied themselves with removing the tags from piles of clothes and blankets and distributing them around the train. We were keen not to be complicit in anything that might attract the attention of the customs officers but still ended up with a few bottles of vodka, several thousand cigarettes and twelve identical quilted jackets stuffed into our compartment. I reached for the phrasebook and memorised the russian for "that is not mine". As before, we reached the border at night and the crossing seemed to take forever. The smugglers in our carriage survived the zealous search by Russian customs but some further up the train were not so lucky and got thrown off at the border.

We arrived in Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia feeling rather drained and attempted to buy the rest of our train tickets from the service centre in the station. There seemed to be a problem. All the stoney faced lady would say was "nyet". We had heard tales of Russian customer service and were not entirely surprised when the very helpful owner of our homestay arrived and helped us to successfully purchase what we needed. It wasn't that the tickets weren't available, it was simply that the attendant didn't fancy selling them to us. Happily the Russians are fair handed and it seems that the same, basic level of service is also offered to the locals, so at least we didn't feel that we had been singled out.

From Irkustsk we made a trip to Lake Baikal, a 600km long lake that contains 20% of the fresh water on earth. Baikal is on a rift between two tectonic plates, is over a mile deep in places and the water is drinkably pure. After a long Siberian winter the surface of the lake had frozen solid and the ice was thick enough to walk, and indeed drive a Lada on. We stayed in a village called Listvyanka. In summer Listvyanka is a playground for Siberia's nouveau riche, but off season it is a silent and hauntingly timeless place. Tumbledown wooden cottages and rusting boats dotted the shoreline and across the ice the views of the distant mountains were rendered a cool blue. We had read about the opportunities for dog sledding and Sam was keen to give it a go. We made some enquiries and booked ourselves in for a short ride through the woods on a five dog sledge. It was great fun and surprisingly fast. I was doing well until the last corner when my feet slipped off the runners and I ended up being keel hauled through a frozen river. In retrospect I'm not convinced that being tied to the sledge by a "safety" rope was a great idea. Apart from some interesting bruises on my knees I escaped without injury. Sam's turn was less eventful as after my tumble we had a misunderstanding with the dog man and she ended up doing just a little driving at the end. Still, one more to cross off the list!

Train 037 left Irkutsk for Yekaterinburg around lunchtime. This was the nicest train we had been on so far and we were lucky enough to have the compartment to ourselves. That is until two drunk Russian army men hammered on the door and came to join us. Trains in Russia all travel on Moscow time. In a country that spans eleven time zones this means that it is tricky to work out when you should be awake or asleep and when your meal will be served to you. Sam and I had both been sound asleep for a couple of hours, but this didn't seem to matter to our new cabin mates who still had several bottles of vodka and a preposterous length of greasy garlic sausage to get through. Russians are unfortunately generous in sharing what they have. In my dozy state I was not quick enough to decline and was soon sat in front of a large glass of neat vodka, a lump of sana (salted pork fat) and a chunk of garlic sausage. Sam managed to excuse herself from proceedings which was considered acceptable as vodka is a gentleman's drink. We made introductions and drank several toasts: "to friendship!", "to Queen Elizabeth II!", "to success!" and "to women!". Speaking a mixture of pidgin russian, french and english we covered some uncomfortable topics of conversation such as "Why are you friends with USA but not Russia?", "We think you are a spy" (a joke it turned out although the deadpan delivery had me shifting uncomfortably in my seat) and a few other topics that it would not be expedient to list here. With the first bottle of vodka finished I was feeling plastered and increasingly uncomfortable with the way the conversations were headed so when asked if I would like another one politely refused. However, they had other ideas and insisted on opening a second bottle as I still seemed too composed for their liking. I can't really remember what time I was allowed to go to bed but suffice to say the next day was not one of the best I have had on this trip.

We were both relieved when the train arrived in Yekaterinburg and we could say goodbye to our new friends. After a short wait and a change of trains we boarded number 327 to Kazan. This time we had better luck in the cabin mate lottery and found ourselves sharing with a couple of affable, rotund Russian gentlemen. "We're from England", we said. "Ah" he said "do you know Tupperware?". Assuming we had misheard we asked for clarification. "One minute" he said and ran off to the next compartment only to return with the Russian Spring/Summer 2008 Tupperware catalogue. He proudly explained that he and his companions were returning from the plenary meeting of the Russian National Tupperware Congress 2008. He waited anxiously, mopping his brow, while I perused the catalogue. Sam bit her lip in an effort to avoid laughing. I nodded my approval and he beamed with delight. I gave him back the catalogue but it seemed that I had missed something important as he gave it straight back and enthusiastically directed me to a page of vegetable peelers. "They're great" I said. I think he may have had a tear in his eye. "Do you like to drink vodka?" he asked. "No, I'm sorry. I don't drink alcohol" I replied.

Gallery: Mongolia

tim_and_sam — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:39:00 GMT

Trains, trains, trains

tim_and_sam — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:08:00 GMT

Train T22 left for Xi'an on a cold, clear morning from an almost deserted Lhasa station. We both felt sad to be leaving Tibet and would have happily spent more time exploring a country that we both count as one of the highlights of the trip. It was certainly a fascinating place, with perhaps the friendliest and most resilient people we have ever come across. However, the impacts of the Chinese invasion are all too clear, and painful to observe. It was strange to be in a place where we were not free to move as we wished and could not talk freely with the people we met. We are safely out of big brother's intense gaze now and it would be all to easy to slide into a lengthy polemic, but I shall resist the urge.

The train ride back over the high altitude Qinghai-Tibet plateau was stunning. We had passed through this dream-like desert in the night on our way up to Lhasa but this time we traversed it in daylight hours. Along the way we were treated to sightings of wild ass, antelope, yaks and a tremendous frozen lake in which the water had expanded, pushing great slabs of broken, blue ice into a wall along its shores. While the railway is a further nail in the coffin for Tibet and should probably not have been built, you have to take your hat off to the Chinese for completing what must be one of the most implausible civil engineering projects ever undertaken. Some of the facts and figures listed over the speaker in our carriage beggared belief. It also relayed some other nuggets of information: heaters were installed in the portaloos so that the construction workers could go to the toilet at night without getting a cold bum, and during its construction no worker died of "plateau disease" or the plague. Thank god for that.

During the journey the train passed through some of central China's poorest provinces. The scenery was bordering on post apocalyptic: a deeply scarred landscape of endless brown terraces punctuated with trogloditic dwellings and belching factory chimneys. These were places that we were very happy to let pass by the window. After 36 hours we arrived in Xi'an, an ancient city that is home to the terracotta warriors and a bustling muslim quarter. The ancient has, of course, been either bulldozed or rebuilt but we had only a couple of days there and it was a pleasant enough place to pass the time. Having had our fill of dynastic history and mutton kebabs we spent our last few hours wandering the markets. Sam got rather over excited in the fake handbag stalls and there is a container load of knock offs working its way to the UK, that is unless HM Customs and Excise decide they look too fishy.

We battled our way through a scene of quite extraordinary chaos at Xi'an station and boarded train Z20 for Beijing. Given that there were only eight or so trains leaving Xi'an that night it was unclear what the thousands people outside the station were queueing for, but the train ride was a good one and we arrived in the capital on a bright and crisp morning. We visited Beijing in 2005 and saw the major sites, so this time we had a few days to relax and explore the less touristed areas. A highlight was a day spent at 798, a sprawling area of modern art galleries and workshops based in a disused, german industrial facility to the north east of the city. Much of the art was a little obvious, for example legions of Mickey Mouse characters battling with Chinese Lions and banks of Mao iconography, but there were some genuinely interesting pieces and we even wandered into the studio of the Gao Brothers and saw them at work. All in all a very new-China experience and a breath of fresh air after months of peering at pagodas and monasteries.

Time had come to leave China and start on the journey home. We woke before dawn and caught the first tube train to Beijing Station where we spent a grim hour in the malodourous waiting room. The Chinese government have made a concerted effort to convince Beijing residents to stop spitting ahead of the Olympics, but people haven't really taken it to heart. Stepping over the puddles of phlegm and piles of half eaten food we boarded train K23 for Ulan Baatar, Mongolia. Our carriage was decorated in an appealingly 1980s style: blue seats, red tubular steel fixtures, polyester anti-macassars and a frilly table cloth. Signs in cyrillic script gave an immediate feeling of having left the Orient and stepped into Soviet Central Asia. The other passengers on the train were mostly Mongolians, a handsome and tough looking bunch who were in high spirits and much better behaved than some of the passengers we have shared our journey with recently. The train headed north, at times giving good views of the Great Wall before heading through the plains of Inner Mongolia to Erlian, at the Mongolian border. Soviet rail roads use a different track gauge to the rest of the world so at this point, as well as pass through immigration, the train has to be moved into a shed to have the bogeys changed. It was late and this all took a long time. Having decided to stay on the train and try to sleep we were treated to two hours of banging, clunking and violent shunting. One particularly heavy thump sent the thermos tumbling off the table onto Sam's head, providing a rude awakening and causing her to nearly fall out of bed. The other thing we hadn't considered was that they had lock all the toilets so that the mechanics wouldn't get a nasty shower of filth as they worked. As a result of that and a few cans of Harbin lager we were both rather uncomfortable by the time we finally got rolling into Mongolia. Sleep came easily and the next morning we woke up trundling through a vast and beautiful wilderness of brown grasslands, sparsely populated by nomadic herdsmen living in traditional felt tents (gers). Winters are harsh in Mongolia, the average temperature in January is -26C and from the train we saw huge, black vultures picking over the carcasses of animals that had not made it through the long, cold months. By mid-afternoon the smoke stacks of Ulan Baatar pulled into view.

Ulan Bataar (UB) is not a pretty place, but it has surprised us both by being much more cosmopolitan than we had expected. Several free and fair democratic elections since the fall of communism in 1990 has given the Mongolian goverment access to a great deal of foreign aid from the west. Ties with Germany are particularly evident on the streets of UB, schnitzels and pilseners abound and the wurst are piled high in the state supermarket. We have been here almost a week now and have split the time between UB and the nearby Terelj National Park where we have been camping in a ger, hiking, peering at big Bactrian camels and charging around on horses. OK, trotting on ponies might be more accurate but in our minds we were Ghengis Khan striking out for Hungary.

The journey home is all falling into place. Tomorrow we leave for Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, Siberia. Sam is keen that we go dog sledding on the frozen lake, let's hope it works out better than the paragliding!

A Headless Cow

tim_and_sam — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:01:00 GMT

Today is our final day in Tibet so we thought we'd finish off with a recap of the past couple of weeks.

When we last wrote, we were about to set off on a trek between two of the major monasteries in the vicinity of Lhasa. The trek started off well with a trip to Ganden where we were lucky enough to catch a ceremony in the main assembly hall. About 200 monks were seated drinking butter tea and chanting. Sometimes this involved repeating incantations, at other times it was more of a gravelly throat noise that Tim does a reasonable
impression of.

From Ganden we headed down the valley to meet our yaks and yak-herder. Once they had been blessed with incense they were saddled up with what looked like enough equipment for a small army and we started off up the valley towards the first pass.

The first night camped at 4300m passed fairly uneventfully aside from being a little cold. The next morning we got going as soon as we could to defrost our feet and headed towards the highest pass on the trek at 5200m. We dragged ourselves up and over and made our way to the second campsite, a little higher than we would have liked due to not being able to find any running water, at 4900m. This one was really bloody cold, and despite having a dung fire after dinner we got into our sleeping bags almost before it had gotten dark.

At this point things took a turn for the worse. Choosing possibly the worst place to do so, I got some sort of food poisoning. Unpleasant at the best of times, when it is so cold your breath is turning into icicles on your sleeping bag you do not want to be running in and out of the tent all night and vomiting into a plastic bag.

Needless to say, we both had a pretty bad night that night and there wasn't much hope for me getting over another 5000m+ pass. Instead we opted to end the trek early via a six hour walk downhill to the nearest
village with a road. Fortunately this was a good walk and we got to see nomad encampments with barky dogs and yak hair tents.

Back in Lhasa we recuperated for a few days (by this point Tim had picked up a throat infection), finally braved the queues to get into the Jokhang Temple and enjoyed new scenery as it snowed heavily making everything look rather christmassy.

The day before yesterday we ventured out of Lhasa again on an early morning pilgrim bus back through the Yarlung Tsangpo valley that we had visited a couple of weeks ago. This time we stayed on the bus all the way to Samye Monastery (the one we should have made it to at the end of our trek) and despite a small boy behind me being violently sick all over the floor, we had a very pleasant morning. We took the bus back towards Lhasa in the afternoon, but got off at the side of the road 8k from another monastery we wanted to visit called Mindroling.

All the money we could offer wasn't going to persuade the bus driver to take his empty bus up the road to the monastery so we hitched on the back of a tractor. With a heavy load of Tsampa, a friendly Tibetan chap and Tim and I, the tractor overheated after a while, but fortunately we weren't far from the monastery so we continued on foot, arriving just before dark.

The monks showed us to the guest house, 'guest house' was probably stretching it a bit, but we had a bed and were brought hot water and some truly disgusting tsampa and rancid yak butter flapjack type things that looked like they'd been iced with candle wax. With my delicate constitution I didn't give them a try. Tim had to though. Most amusing.

After settling in we got talking to a group of Tibetan men eating thukpa (noodle soup). From my limited Chinese we managed to gather that they had come from Samye and were fixing the monastery prayer wheels. It seemed that they had been paid in kind, firstly with the god awful flapjacks, but also with a cow that they'd slaughtered just outside our room if the axe, blood and cow's head in a bag were anything to go by.

After a brief chat they were off back to Samye, one of them giving us a toothless grin as he hopped of down the hill, a bag of cow parts over his shoulder dripping blood all down his back.

The rest of the evening was punctuated only by various locals walking into our room, staring, smiling and walking out again. I'm not sure that many western tourists had come to spend the night before.

The following morning we took a look around the monastery and huge new white chorten before making our way back to the main road. We managed another lift on the back of a tractor and then hitched a ride with some
Chinese removal men (or perhaps burglars, we couldn't quite work it out) all the way back to Lhasa.

So now we are back in Lhasa again, getting ready for the next leg of our journey. Tomorrow we take the insane sky train to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors before heading to Beijing for a few days. We will certainly be sad to leave Tibet. Despite things not always going to plan, we've had a great time here. It's hard to do anything but like a place where the people are always smiling.

Sam and Tim.

Seven Days In Tibet

tim_and_sam — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:45:00 GMT

As the title suggests, we've now been in Tibet for a week and thought it was time to update this with our latest news.

We took the train from Chengdu to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet on the 3rd Feb. Of the 22 trains we are taking on this trip, this one will be the longest at 44 hours. The train proved to be considerably better than those we had taken around Southern China. The guards were pleasant, the dining car didn't have the air of a late night smoking den and our travel companions didn't spit their chickens' feet onto the floor. In fact, our soft sleeper berths even had individual TVs, although sadly without any English language channels, in fact, for the most part without any channels at all which does make you wonder why they bothered installing them.

As you can see from the photos, the scenery was surreal. Literally for days, we crossed vast open spaces, occasionally interrupted by a huge frozen lake or a house, miles and miles away from anywhere. The train passed over 5000m so they issue everyone with nasal oxygen tubes which you can see me sporting in one of the photos. They seemed to highlight the ridiculousness of building a train line across such a harsh landscape, and with most of the train sporting them at some point during the journey it made it feel a bit like a high altitude, moving hospital.

We arrived in Lhasa, heavily oxygenated, but still wheezing and out of breath, on the 5th Feb. Our first couple of days here were spent wandering around the sights of Lhasa and enjoying Losar (Tibetan New Year). It transpired on our first night that most of the shops, hotels and restaurants were shutting up shop for anywhere between two days and two weeks. Fortunately although the shutters were down, the city was very much alive. On the first night after a welcome Nepali dhal bhat, we followed the pilgrims around the Barkhor Circuit, the kora (holy walking route) around the Jokhang, the main temple in Lhasa. Once you enter this circuit it's easy to get lost in the crowds of people walking around, mumbling incantations and in some cases prostrating themselves on the ground as they take each step. Some of the pilgrims that make their way to Lhasa for Losar prostrate themselves all the way from their village to the capital. This can take a year if, for example, they live 900 miles away, which some of them do. It really is quite awe inspiring. The pilgrims wear cloth sacks to cover their clothes, knee pads and have scraps of something which looks like laminate flooring on the ground which they use to protect their hands. They also often sport a nasty red scab on their forehead from continually scraping it on the ground. Midnight Mass seems a little tame in comparison.

Back to that first night, where along with the prostrating pilgrims it turned out that the local tradition was to light huge bonfires and set off as many fireworks as they could lay their hands on. In some cases, this would mean chucking a box of firecrackers into one of the many bonfires, in others it involved shooting fireworks across the street at your neighbours. We ducked our way around these festivities without losing an eye or being set alight and made our way back to our hotel.

On Losar itself, after a breakfast of dried yak meat, biscuits and yak butter tea (not my new favourite foods) we spent the morning watching the Tibetans circling the Jokhang in their best outfits; furry hats, cowboy hats, stripy silk aprons, sheepskin lined jackets with gilt trims, shiny black boots and super long sleeved jackets worn over one shoulder with the sleeves tied up. In the afternoon we were invited to the house of one of the Tibetans who works in our hotel. Here we were given endless cups of tea (sweet rather than Yak butter fortunately) and more biscuits, dried yak meat and dried yak cheese. We were shown their house temple and, on leaving, were given silk Tashi Delek scarves as New Year gifts. The Tibetan people really are the most friendly and welcoming people I've ever met. Wherever we go we are offered tea, sweets and biscuits and regardless of the language barrier a 'Tashi Delek' seems to result in beaming smiles, hand holding and in the case of the little ones, fits of giggles.

On the second day after Losar we went out to Bumpo Ri, a mountain on the outskirts of Lhasa where, from daybreak, the Tibetans replace the thousands of prayer flags draped across the peaks. Streams of people work their way up and down with flags, juniper to throw on the fires and paper prayers which they throw into the air shouting 'Wooo Lassoooo' or something that sounded very similar. As you can see from the pictures, we joined in and now have our very own prayers fluttering on the hill along with all the others.

Having spent a bit of time in Lhasa seeing the Potala Palace, Drepung Monastery and all of the above Losar festivities (including Tim getting roped into a Losar drinking session with the hotel employees one night), we decided it was time to explore some of the surrounding area. Easier said than done, due to some relatively special bureaucracy, but we eventually managed to head out to the Yarlung Tsangpo valley yesterday morning along with a new friend Sam, a Canadian Chinese professional photographer that we met on the train from Chengdu.

After a few wrong turns and a totally baffled taxi driver we were dropped off by the side of a river where some boats were tied up and a group of kids with a tractor were putting up new prayer flays whilst doing some kind of ritual that, from where I was standing, seemed to involve chanting while holding spoons above a fire (not the same kind of ritual that they practice with hot spoons in Hackney). We eventually tracked down a boat owner and after helping a nun load a large amount of beer onto the boat we were off to our intended destination, Dorje Drak Monastery.

Half an hour later amd six hours since we left Lhasa, we arrived at the monastery nestled at the bottom of a steep hill next to the river, truly in the middle of nowhere. We were a little concerned that they might not let us stay the night, but we needn't have worried. We were met at the gate, by a Tibetan lady with a wicked laugh who threw off her hat and flicked her grey pigtails woven with blue thread over her head and into Tim's face (if she hadn't been about 4ft tall). She then took great pleasure in rolling down her collar to show us the enormous goitre attached to her neck, all the while laughing like a madwoman. We suspected she may have been a little tipsy and our suspicions were confirmed when an extremely grubby and slightly shifty looking chap came hobbling down the stairs towards us with two bottles of Chang (local beer that tastes like fizzy vinegar) in his hand.

Despite having the foulest breath that we had ever smelled, being completely hammered and only speaking Tibetan, we managed to convey to him that we needed a bed for the night. He swiftly dropped off the beer with the old ladies and took us upstairs where he unlocked the guestroom. I don't think they'd had guests for a while judging by the spectacular level of dust over everything, but we had beds, blankets and an outdoor, rooftop, long-drop loo with a fantastic view!

That afternoon, after a tour of the monastery from one of the few monks who hadn't gone away for Losar, Tim and I decided to take what the Lonely Planet described as a challenging kora up the hill around the monastery while Sam went off to take some photos. The challenging walk turned out to be more of a climb, but we did get amazing views of the surreal valley; spindly trees, sand dunes, low brown mountains and in the middle of it all, the red, white and gold of the monastery. We slid down the sand dunes and returned to the monastery in time for a candlelit picnic of Tibetan bread and pot noodles with a friendly monk who told us about the monastery and its living buddha. In return we taught him some English.

This morning we woke early to catch the boat back, this time with a car and two motorbikes on board. This is more impressive than it sounds given that it was little more than an overgrown rowing boat. Our intention was to hitch to another monastery 45k down the road. We bottled it however, as the wind was creating a hideous sandstorm throughout the valley, and unlike the hardened pilgrims we saw there still prostrating at every step on their way home from Lhasa, we didn't fancy hanging around outdoors in that weather. We hopped onto a Lhasa bound bus where smoking and singing along to the Buddhist pop songs on the stereo seemed to be mandatory.

So now we are back in Lhasa for a few days. Our next outing is a four day trek between Ganden and Samye monasteries. The trek passes over a couple of 5000 metre passes amd we're sleeping in tents so it's probably going to be fairly cold. On the up side we have two yaks and a cook which is pretty exciting.

Losar La Tashi Delek.

Tim and Sam.

Gallery: Tibet

tim_and_sam — Sat, 9 Feb 2008 21:24:00 GMT

Gallery: China

tim_and_sam — Sat, 2 Feb 2008 21:38:00 GMT

South West Whistlestop Tour

tim_and_sam — Fri, 1 Feb 2008 17:06:00 GMT

The time we could spend in south China was always going to be a little constrained. At one end we had the need to wait for visas in Hong Kong and at the other the need to escape to Tibet before Chinese New Year, a notoriously difficult time to be travelling in China. As a result of this, and not wanting to take any more flights, we have had to make something of a whistlestop tour of the south west provinces.

We crossed the border from Hong Kong to mainland China at Shenzhen. Shenzhen is the Milton Keynes of the east. Twenty five years ago it was just a small border town but with the spoils of big business it has ballooned in size and is now reputed to be the richest city in China, earning the status of Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The area around the border has a bad reputation for pick pockets and scammers so we didn't hang around long.

The night sleeper bus was an experience quite beyond praise. I am not sure if such vehicles exist outside china, but I'll describe the layout. Passengers are arranged in hip-width bunks running the length of the bus, two high by three across. A belt is provided to strap you to the bed, rather like an ambulance stretcher. These buses are definitely designed for the average Chineser rather than a tall Britisher. Sam got a middle aisle, top bunk, which was probably the worst option as it meant she spent the whole night balanced on a plank trying not to drop off either side each time we powered into another pothole. After twelve rather uncomfortable hours we were dropped off in Yangshuo and were met by the owner of the homestay we were visiting, which was generous considering it was 5am and the temperature was hovering just above freezing.

Yangshuo is a small, pretty town set between the Li and Yulong rivers. All around there are great thumbs of karst limestone jutting up from the paddy fields, creating the kind of beautiful cloudy landscape you imagine when you think of China. Sadly we timed our visit with the worst weather China has experienced for fifty years and the cold, damp days meant that we probably didn't make the most of the surrounds (the photo is what it could have looked like). We still managed to hire some bicycles and head out into the villages along the river. While in Yangshuo Sam had a few language lessons from our host and we both tried our hands at Chinese caligraphy. We were both crap at it but we have kept the results so that we can stick them on the fridge when we get home.

Next stop was Guilin, just ninety minutes from Yangshuo. Again our will to explore was a bit sapped by the cold and damp, but we enjoyed (apart the depressing zoo) a trip to the Seven Stars Park and the spectacular Reed Flute Cave. Tourist sites in China are doing a roaring trade, apparently at peak times it can be shoulder to shoulder. Sites have been developed for the domestic market, which seemingly demands mistreated animals in fancy dress, coloured lights, piped music and Disneyesque attendants in ethnic minority costumes. Still, the high entrance fees for these places seems to be spent on keeping them clean and well preserved. Indeed if some of the original features are starting to show their age then they have few qualms about flattening and rebuilding them.

Next stop was Kunming in Yunnan province, a stone's throw from the northern border of Vietnam. Kunming exists in a different weather system to Guilin and was mercifully much warmer than the places we stopped in Guangxi. There wasn't a lot to see in the city but we spent an enjoyable couple of days defrosting and watching the world go by.

We left Kunming on the sleeper train bound for Chengdu in Sichuan province. The train was a fairly unpleasant one as we had landed the compartment near the latrine. I think there must have been a little seepage from the toilet into our cabin as it smelt pretty ripe every time we stopped at a station. We shared our cabin with a young couple and their 4 year old daughter who were heading home for the spring festival. Being in festive mood they bought us a present of a bag of spicy chicken toes. Not wanting to be rude we went and got a couple of beers from the restaurant car and tucked in. They were not the greatest snack it has to be said, although I liked the fact they still had the pointy claws on them in case you needed to pick bits of twangy skin out of your teeth afterwards.

On the topic of food, the cuisine in the southern provinces of China is a little on the wild side. Popular dishes in Yangshuo included dog and cat hotpot and the highly amusing spicy dried rat, which looked very much like it had been run over by a lorry. I suspect it may have been. In Guilin many restaurants displayed a menagerie of unlikely animals for you to choose for your dinner, some of which we couldn't identify but suspected may have featured on the WWF endangered species list. We stuck to the more familiar pork, beef and chicken dishes with the most adventurous dish being pigs ear with chilli and garlic.

Chengdu is home to China's main giant panda breeding and research centre. Pandas are only active first thing in the morning so we paid an early visit to catch the iconic creatures before they all crashed out for the day. According to the spiel the panda's chosen diet of bamboo is so fibrous that they can only just consume enough calories for a sedantry existence. Activities that require lots of energy like mating are avoided where possible and this contributes to the fragile state of their existence in the wild, although the ones we saw seemed to have plenty of energy for bowling around doing commando rolls and jumping up and down trees so perhaps they just have their priorities wrong. The highlight was seeing a heap of 6 very small panda cubs sleeping in the nursery. The museum at the end was a typically bizarre display of unsettlingly amateurish taxidermy and jars containing pickled panda sex organs. Weird.

Next stop is Lhasa, Tibet, a mere 44 hour train ride away. Getting all the permits sorted has been a pain but we got there eventually and leave tomorrow night. Tibetan new year is on the 7th Febraury and Lhasa should be full of nomads and pilgrims for the occasion. Happy New Year of the Rat to you all.

Gallery: Hong Kong

tim_and_sam — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:23:00 GMT

Hong Kong

tim_and_sam — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:15:00 GMT

The flight to Hong Kong was a sleepless affair on a slightly battered Air India 737. Still, the curry was good and after I figured out that there was red wine available (you just had to ask for it) I was happy. Arriving in Hong Kong after three months in south Asia was like stepping into a brave new world. It's only when you go somewhere so spotlessly clean that you notice the dhobi wallahs have perhaps not managed to beat all the dirt out of your shirt, even if they did take care of half the buttons. We zoomed into Kowloon on the Airport Express and arrived at Chungking Mansions to find that our booking had been noted but disregarded. After a bit of negotiation with another hostel in the same building we agreed on a price for a very small but clean room on the 15th floor and caught up on some sleep.

The main aim for Hong Kong was to secure Russian and Mongolian visas. We had hoped to leave all this to an agent while we headed off to the New Territories to do some hiking. However, it soon became clear that our request was a little off the map for most of them. Several agencies gave a sharp intake of breath when Russian visas were mentioned and denied the existence of the Mongolian consulate in Hong Kong, others were unsure of the existence of Mongolia itself. After a little digging we managed to ascertain that both visas should be possible as long as the various bureaucratic requirements were satisfied. So we set about having ourselves invited to Russia, confirming a string of Siberian hotels and producing a detailed plan of our time in Inner Mongolia. Having to juggle all the applications meant we were reasonably constrained to staying near central Hong Kong. However we still managed to get out to the New Territories a couple of times between trips to embassies, printers, photocopiers and more embassies. Finally we were successful and our passports are now our most valuable posessions.

Our first trip out of central Hong Kong was based on a plan to walk up Tai Mo Shan, a 900m peak in a national park around 30 minutes north of the city. We took the train out to the last stop of the MTR and armed with a compass and what looked like a pretty good topographic map we struck out for the top. What our map failed to show, perhaps for aesthetic reasons, were the shanty towns clinging to the slopes bordering the national park. What was marked on the map as a single footpath soon turned into a maze of footpaths, each terminating in a chain link fence with a pissed off dog behind it. After trying out several incorrect routes it became clear that we were really going to struggle, so we reluctantly turned back towards the railway station. Wandering around the station a friendly man suggested we could take bus number 51 to near the top from where we could walk without problems. An hour later bus 51 finally turned up. "Tai Mo Shan?" we asked hopefully. "No, bus 53" came the reply. By this time it was starting to rain and was a little too late to be heading off into the hills so we returned to Kowloon defeated.

The second attempt we carried with us the benefit of experience. We hopped of bus 53 near the entrance to the park and headed onto the well marked path. The climb to the top was a steep one and again the map had failed to depict the presence of a high, razor wire fence surrounding some sort of military installation on top of the peak. The views from the top were great, if a little hazy and after we had picked our way around whatever it was on top of the hill we descended several hundred meters into a wooded valley via a couple of picnic spots. We found a clearing in the bamboo and had lunch sat on some boulders in the middle of a pretty stream before continuing down towards a reservoir. It was about then that I realised I had taken off my new sunglasses and in an effort to not scratch them (as I had done their predecessors) I had carefully placed them on a picnic bench... near the top of the mountain. To be fair to Sam she didn't even roll her eyes at me as we ground back up the hill to try and retrieve them. Luckily the whole park was pretty much deserted and we found them right where I'd left them. Not quite the route I had planned, but still an enjoyable walk!

Hong Kong is a really easy city to get around and it was a welcome break from the budget backpacking. We visited some interesting galleries and did a bit of shopping. The bars were a welcome change from the sordid drinking dens of India. Leafing through some flyers we noticed that The Young Knives were headlining a multimedia festival called Clockenflap. Sam got on the case with blagging some tickets and we soon found ourselves on the roof of a shopping centre (this is Hong Kong after all) watching a band from Oxford playing songs from their new album to a largely expat crowd. It was a fun evening although the crowd seemed to have been uprooted from Clapham wholesale and dropped on the roof, upturned collars and all. After hours it turned into something that resembled a quiet night at the Clapham Grand in the peculiar setting of the shopping centre atrium. It's never going to rival Fuji Rocks, but it was a fun evening all the same.

We're now in southwest China, and will fill you in on how we're getting on here another time.

Prerna and Bhrigu's Wedding

tim_and_sam — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:56:00 GMT

Again we apologise. It has been a little while since our last missive so we'll try to catch up on the first few weeks of the year. Following our slightly disastrous stay in Kovalam we were very pleased to recover control of our digestive tracts and board a plane for Delhi, and Prerna and Bhrigu's wedding. We had got used to the warmth of the Keralan tropics so it was a bit of a shock to be greeted by a wall of cold, foggy air as we stepped off the plane. Apparently the flip flops were going to be surplus to requirements from now on.

The following morning we were up at the crack of dawn to make our way to the Chinese embassy. Far from the horrors of Pahar Ganj and previous stays in Delhi we were staying, along with the other overseas guests, in a nice hotel attached to the India Habitat Centre, which is similar to the Southbank Centre or the Barbican in London. The early morning drive through New Delhi showed a different side to the city and for the first time it betrayed some sense of what it might have been like before partition and the influx of displaced people from the Punjab. Apparently the city pretty much doubled its population in the six months following partition and much of the old was built over. Things went smoothly at the embassy although the man behind the counter was so brusque that Sam didn't even manage to get a quick "Ni hao" in before we were dismissed. The rest of the day was spent upgrading shoes and meeting Prerna and Bhrigu's friends for dinner. Sam and I distinguished ourselves by being about the only ones without a PhD, post doctorate or professorship!

Anand, a friend of Prerna and Bhrigu's has been enlisted to take some people on an anthropological tour of some of the Mughal sites of Delhi. He is undertaking a PhD on the politicisation of Islamic tourist sites in Delhi, so was well qualified to give us the facts. We visited three mosques. First up was the Q'tub Minar, a ruined mosque and medresse complex with a tall, stone tower built in 1199. Much of the cloistered area was constructed from pillars looted from Hindu temples during the intial Mughal invasion. The faces of the deities had been chiselled off to render them iconoclastic. Next up was a deserted mosque, well off the beaten track in a residential area of Delhi. The neighbourhood locals were surprised to see us to say the least! This mosque marked the extent of the old city and had been inactive for some 200 years. During this period it had, at times, been a busy bazaar and cattle market but now housed little more than a few kids playing hoop and stick and some old duffers playing cards on the steps. The final stop was the large Jama Masjid in old Delhi, where Friday prayers were just finishing. This is the main active mosque and a climb up the minaret gave us great views of the city, although the traffic jam at the top of the narrow spiral stairs lead to a slightly unnerving scene of 30 people crammed into an area the size of a double bed, clambering over each other and testing out the strength of the slightly wobbly railings that separated us from a 50m drop. Having safely descended we went to a famous Mughal kitchen in old Delhi and ate very rich goat curry apparently cooked by direct descendants of the kitchen staff of the last Mughal Emperor. Very tasty.

The first day of celebrations kicked off with Prerna's sangeet. This is one of the traditional pre-wedding celebrations where the friends and family of the bride gather for a day of dancing, drinking and feasting. Traditional songs about the bride were performed by musicians. The party was held outdoors with the delicious food for 400 people laid out in a very colourful marquee. At the end of the day Prerna had henna applied to her hands and feet. Sam had a small picture of the elephant headed deity, Ganesh, drawn on her wrist.

Having been inspired by the anthropology tour we headed to Safdarjung's tomb and Lodhi gardens in New Delhi the following morning. Unfortunately someone had helped themselves to my credit card details (again) so I spent much of the time talking to a computer in Swindon. The second act in the celebrations was an afternoon of music and chaat (indian snacks) laid on by Bhrigu's family. This was great fun, with the guests seated on cushions in a large hall while the band played very upbeat music and the family danced. Sam and I didn't have the moves to match so we majored on the tasty snacks and left the dancing to those with more talent. Bhrigu's mum used to be a professional dancer and did a great job of leading the festivities. Prerna made a brief appearance in a very smart sari with the her henna looking very dark, the sign of a good relationship with the mother in law according to our hosts. In the evening we went to a house party in New Delhi. It was hosted by friends in a lovely appartment, with enough food and booze to keep everyone happy for the whole night.

With a slightly sore head we made our way to Neemrana, an old Rajput fort palace perched on a rocky hill in eastern Rajasthan. The fort was amazing. The oldest parts dated back to the fourteen hundreds and various new additions had been made over the intervening years. We all checked into our rooms and explored the fort. It was all very Arabian Nights.

The main wedding day saw the whole palace garlanded and strewn with brightly coloured petals. The guests from the bride's side all assembled to await the arrival of Bhrigu and his entourage. The plan to enter the fort on the traditional white horse was scuppered as the climb was too steep, and the back up of a Rajasthani camel fell through due to it being mating season and the chosen steed being both randy and rather grumpy. Bhrigu arrived in style, wearing a very smart gold silk suit and turban and was met by Prerna's family. From there they proceeded up to a courtyard for the exchange of garlands, traditionally the first time the bride and groom see each other. In this case they have been together for ten years, but the effect was still very impressive with them stood on a platform with the guests around them. Prerna emerged in her bright pink punjabi finery, looking absolutely incredible. After the garland exchange the party relocated to an amphitheatre, where the stage was set for the priest to carry out the main ceremony. The families jostled for position either side of the fire in front of which Prerna and Bhrigu were seated. The ceremony lasted around 90 minutes and concluded with them walking round the fire seven times and praying to the sun. The final ceremony of the day was the handing over of the bride to the new husband's family and saw them seated on a swing with the female members of Prerna's family behind them singing a traditional farewell song. Prerna then threw rice over her head, which the women caught in their saris. The final farewells were an emotional scene and although this wedding is not a traditional arranged marriage we got a real insight into quite what a momentous occasion it must be for the bride. After the wedding an Indian bride is usually expected to go and live with the husband's family and have much less contact with her own. It was an amazing day and if Sam and I both felt tired by the end of it I can only guess how exhausted Prerna and Bhrigu must have been!

Unhappy Birthday

tim_and_sam — Tue, 1 Jan 2008 18:28:00 GMT

Happy New Year to you all!

Having spent a very enjoyable and very unusual Christmas in Pondicherry we have come down to the southern tip of the subcontinent to the beaches around Trivananthapuram (try saying that after a couple of beers, or in fact before a couple of beers!). We stopped off in Madurai on the way to see the large, and very interesting Sri Menakshi temple where pilgrims flock to see the goddess and have their unborn children blessed. It was very interesting and gave us the opportunity to stay in one of the most utterly awful hotels in the whole world. At least the cockroaches and rats left us alone; it would seem that even they found it too depressing.

We are now in Kovalam, where we met up with Sam's friends Katie and Mal who are here on holiday. Unfortunately the day before Sam's birthday we both got extremely unpleasant food poisoning and spent the whole of Sam's birthday stumbling from bed to toilet and back again. We are OK now and the dull pain in my kidneys has almost subsided. We are feeling very weak so missed NYE completely, choosing instead to have a dinner of boiled rice and mineral water followed by an early night! Oh dear.

Tomorrow we fly up to Delhi for Prerna's wedding, which we are both really looking forward to. We both have a variety of traditional indian party outfits, so we'll make sure we put some pictures up for you to see as soon as we can.

Hope you are all well and that your bowel movements are regular and solid.

Tim and Sam x

Gallery: India

tim_and_sam — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 22:28:00 GMT

Photos from India

Happy Christmas

tim_and_sam — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 22:20:00 GMT

Hello All,

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

We have finally put a few snaps up for you to see. Most of the photos have been taken on film, so you'll have to wait a while to see them.

Hope you all have a great break.

Tim and Sam. x

Gallery: Nepal

tim_and_sam — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:53:00 GMT

Photos From Nepal

Crap Soup

tim_and_sam — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 23:46:00 GMT

It's been a while since we updated this mainly because we seem to have been very busy doing not an awful lot. God knows how we managed to have jobs, it seems to be perfectly possible to fill your day doing little more than eating and going to a temple / beach / shop / train station etc.

So here's a brief update on the last month:

KANNUR - KERALA
Following the excitement with the tiger we took a relaxing break at a lovely homestay by the sea. It was idyllic with pretty much a private beach, nice people and delicious homemade food. Our host was an expert on the local tradition of Theyyam which is a religious ceremony involving a priest painted and dressed up in the most amazing outfit who goes into a trance, whirls around a lot and then effectively acts as an agony aunt to the local peoples' domestic issues. We went to watch one of these ceremonies which also involved free tea, coconut and some kind of beans. It was one of the strangest things either of us had ever seen.

FORT COCHIN - KERALA
After four nights in Kannur we took the train down the coast to meet my Mum and John in Fort Cochin. They kindly put us up in a hotel where our bathroom was bigger than the rooms we have been used to, and it had a swimming pool! Here we enjoyed wine for the first time in ages and spent a few days doing nothing but watching the Chinese fishing nets, going for walks and sitting by the pool.

MUNNAR - KERALA
From Cochin we all headed to Munnar in the Western Ghats where Tim and I returned to budget accommodation in the cottages of Mr Joseph Iype, self proclaimed 'tourist information officer' and 'local treasure'. He was certainly an interesting character, Tim particularly enjoyed his wall mounted antiques display which included a Maglite, a photo from the Crimean War, some Swiss army knives and a Bic razor.
We left Mr Iype after a couple of days and headed off on a three day camping trek with some very nice French people Natasha, Audrey and Fabrice. Apart from the leeches (of which there were many) the trek was very enjoyable, giving us the chance to see some more wildlife in the shape of monkeys and the giant grizzled squirrel (about the size of a dog). We also visited some tribal villages where the children seemed absolutely terrified of us and spent an unscheduled night camping next to the village's satellite TV substation as our planned accommodation was in use (ironically by a meeting of the village elders on how to improve tourism - not cancelling their accommodation would be a good start)! However, our guides managed to salvage the situation by knocking up a feast of curries, rice, chappatis and pappadums all of which was served on the floor of the satellite TV substation. We also got to watch the doctors at work as they bandaged the infected toe of the local tribal man whose job it was to watch the substation.

ALLEPPEY - KERALA
Following a tip from our new French friends, Tim and I then headed to Alleppey where we took a village canoe trip with a local guide Kunjachan. This was billed as a tour that took you deep into the backwaters to observe rural life including breakfast and lunch cooked by Kunjachan's wife. What wasn't advertised was that Kunjachan was absolutely bonkers. First up he dressed us up in his lungis (like a sarong) and head umbrellas, then he took us to the local Toddy shop where he managed to down an impressive amount of the slightly strange tasting coconut beer, finally, after lunch he proclaimed us his new children and said we should send him over a plane ticket for our wedding next year (his date, not ours). All of this was interspersed with some very enjoyable rowing along the backwaters.
After a couple of nights in Alleppey, Tim and I rejoined Mum and John in the world of luxury boutique hotels at a beatiful beach resort just to the north. Here we swam with dolphins and watched the sunset from a hammock on our private beach. We then took an overnight rice boat trip through the backwaters finishing off at Philipkutty's Farm, a homestay run by Mummy and her daughter-in-law Anu on an island in the backwaters. This stay included Keralan cookery lessons from Mummy so Tim took lots of notes and is actually preparing me one of her recipes as I type this.

FORT COCHIN - KERALA
We returned to Fort Cochin for Mum and John's last night in India and came back to the world of budget accommodation fittingly with a room with a rotten door infested with cockroaches. We saw off Mum and John the next morning and then left ourselves, on a train to Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

CHENNAI - TAMIL NADU
In Chennai we seemed to be thwarted at every turn; the hotels were all full, the museum was shut, the cinema was fully booked and Tim wasn't allowed into the nice bar because he had sandals on. We did find good coffee though and some great mini tiffin for breakfast so after one night in the absolutely knackered, but strangely charming Broadlands Lodge, we decided to cut our losses and head down the coast.

MAMALLAPURAM - TAMIL NADU
First stop was Mamallapuram, a small fishing village on the coast that had been hit pretty badly by the Tsunami in 2004. It was a nice place to stay for a few days, which was lucky because we timed our arrival with that of a Cyclone. Our time was therefore spent running from hotel to cafe to internet cafe trying to find places with electricity and stay reasonably dry.

PONDICHERRY - TAMIL NADU
On the third day we started to get brief dry intervals so we made a break for Pondicherry on the bus. We arrived here to discover that almost everything was booked (damn my mother being right about places being busy for Christmas), but eventually found a grim place run by a miserable French chap for the first night, a nice heritage place run by some extremely over-eager Indian guys for the next three and for tonight until Boxing Day we are in a charming little one bedroomed apartment which is giving Tim the chance to get back behind the hob.
Although we didn't intend to spend so much time here, it seems to have been a happy accident. Now that the weather has resumed normal service, blue skies and sunshine, Pondicherry is a lovely place to spend a week. It's a French enclave which means French road names and signs, crepes in the resaurants, great French bread and decent coffee all over the place.
It's also a bit of a new age mecca. There are various ashrams where people come to meditate and down the road is the experiment in cultural diversity that is Auroville. Auroville is the brainchild of 'The Mother' who was the partner of Sri Aurobinda, an activist for Indian independence who set up an Ashram here in Pondicherry. The Mother's teachings, a sythensis of yoga and science seem to be pretty popular here and Auroville with it's multi-national inhabitants settled in various areas with names such as 'Quiet' and 'Buddha's Farm' is the realisation of these teachings. It also features the Matrimandir which looks like a gold version of the Epcot Centre. Inside, the medidation chamber is all white with a large crystal that refracts the sun's rays around the chamber. We didn't get to go inside though. You're only allowed in if you prove that you're serious about meditating. We weren't.
On a more childish note Pondicherry has rewarded us with the best comedy signage we have seen so far. Here are the highlights:

Crap Soup - On a restaurant menu.
France Between Our Lips - The off licence.
Golden Shower Hostel (which apparently has comfort and quite) - An advert in The Hindu newspaper this morning.
Antony Death Body Box - The Undertakers.

Brilliant.

Tiger, Tiger

tim_and_sam — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 23:47:00 GMT

We are now in the north east corner of Kerala, in the little visited Wayanad National Park. Wayanad is a large area of rainforest and joins onto two similar sized parks in neighbouring states. The collective area is known as the Nilgiri biosphere and straddles the Western Ghats, a long mountain range lying parallel to the west coast of South India.

Our base for exploring is a town called Sultan Bathery. They don't get many tourists through here and we are therefore of great interest to the locals who are keen to talk, shake hands and have their pictures taken with us. Sam, it would appear, ticks all the boxes for being a fair skinned beauty and is attracting lots of attention so for now we have matching rings and are masquerading as husband and wife. No plans to consecrate the arrangement, so nobody get excited!

This morning we got up very early to head off to the Muthanga Wildlife Reserve, with the intention of catching a bus to the park gates and hiring a jeep and guide to take us on a safari. This being India things didn’t quite work out that way. Firstly we had some dud information on the whereabouts of the correct bus stop and wasted 45 minutes waiting in the wrong place. Having found the correct stop we were hit with a sudden drought of buses. Undeterred we flagged down an auto-rickshaw and buzzed off along the road. The driver was wrapped up in a quilted jacket and wooly hat. The weather, at 25C, being a little chilly for your average Indian. We arrived at the park gates and wandered over to the warden's office and discussed our options for wildlife spotting. They were firmly in favour of a 4 hour trek on foot rather than our planned jeep safari so we agreed to that and headed off into the forest. Unfortunately our Ray Mears skills had let us down and rather than dressing in the sensible khaki and olive green, Sam and I had both opted for bright, white shirts. The wardens talked amongst themselves and we established that it was either going to frighten the animals or attract them. It wasn’t quite clear which. Anyway, Sam managed to borrow a khaki jacket and I went on sticking out like a sore thumb. The first half hour was pleasant as we strolled through the forest. The guide was very knowledgeable and pointed out lots of interesting things including plants called “Touch Me Nots” that shrivel up when you brush their leaves, frogs, deer, Langur monkeys, short tailed monkeys, woodpeckers, bright blue Kingfishers, red squirrels and some very large spiders (Sam’s favourite). Having left the main track and followed a path into the undergrowth we heard a loud growl and stopped dead in our tracks. Suddenly a couple of black, wild pigs shot out of the bushes and ran off. No tiger this time. The warden told us that he had been working the park for 14 years and had only seen a tiger four times, but that the area was a little dangerous and that we should look both left and right as we proceeded. We walked another 50m into the bush when the warden froze and pointed to the path some 10m ahead, where a tiger was casually prowling away from us. The warden was visibly shaking and Sam and I were both, unsurprisingly, touching cloth. The tiger disappeared from view and we remained rooted to the spot wondering which the safest way to head was. The warden by this point was muttering “Oh my God, Oh my God, we are so lucky, Oh my God a tiger, Oh my God”. Usually you might expect a warden to carry some kind of gun, but not this one. Having decided that it was best to head in the same direction as the tiger he furnished Sam and me with some rotten branches and said “if it comes near then we will hit it with sticks”. The next half hour was a little tense to say the least! Having made it back to the main path we continued the trek a little dazed and humbled that the tiger, who clearly knew we were there, had chosen to leave us alone, a decision which was very much his to make. The final 10km of the walk were spent looking for elephants. We did not find any in the end, although Sam did stumble across a fairly impressive Cobra on the final section of the trail. All in all a very fruitful, if terrifying, morning of nature spotting. If I ever set foot in another tiger reserve I will be heavily armed.

Love Thy Neighbour

tim_and_sam — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 23:30:00 GMT

As Tim described in the previous blog entry, Hampi is a lovely peaceful place on the banks of a river with intricately carved temples and a boulder strewn landscape. No cars are allowed into the central bazaar area, adding to the laid back, traveller paradise. Our guest house was very pleasant, the room was lovely and clean with en suite bathroom, mosquito net, ceiling fan and solar back-up. We even had occasional hot water (although not, admittedly, when we were trying to shower). The neighbours, however, left a little to be desired. On the left was Screechy Lady who seemed to be training up her screechy children. She sounded a little like that voice that can be heard on the telephone in old cartoons (Tom & Jerry maybe?). On the right our neighbour had recently acquired a new television and to make sure everybody knew about said television he would open all the doors and windows and turn the volume up as loud as possible. All of this would begin every morning at around 06:00 and continue until about 22:00 or 23:00.

The situation was explained to us by the owner of our guest house. Apparently his neighbour with the television was jealous at the success of his new guest house and was being unusually loud in an effort to drive away the guests.

Not only this, but Mr New Television and Screechy Lady were apparently feuding (which explains a lot of the shouting, all day). According to our source, Mr New Television had been carring out some home improvements and had recently built his family a brand new toilet... in Screechy Lady's back garden.

Amusing.