DAY 300 - Orpington, England

No, I haven't got swine flu. And no, i won't be (intentionally) be
bringing it back to Britain. I have no idea if it's the much foreseen
a-pork-olypse...

As a good indication of the sort of thing we've had to put up with on
this trip i give you the example of fake money. This is a serious
problem in Peru where large numbers of counterfeit notes are produced
and in circulation. Having been warned about this on numerous
occasions we carefully checked all the notes passed to us, but as
we're unfamiliar with the currency it's harder for us as tourists to
spot them and the locals know it. We paid our (extortionate) fee to
have a look at a church in Cusco and the church-worker on the door
tried to pass me a fake 20 Soles note in my change. He clearly knew
what he was doing from the look on his face when i spotted it didn't
have a strip down the middle. He looked disappointed. It comes to
something when representatives of the church starts behaving like
that.

We flew to Arequipa. We'd heard one too many horror stories about the
buses to be comfortable with using them, and it would have been a bit
annoying to be murdered on the way to our last South American
destination. It's a quaint colonial town set in the middle of the
desert with lots of nice churches and stuff, but the main attraction
is Colca Canyon - a two-day trip to the north. It's a very dramatic
hole in the ground, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US, and
with its own micro-climate. We stayed overnight in the town of Chivay
where we were taken to a Peña for a meal and to watch the local folk
dancing, which was particularly weird. Towards the end of their
routine the dancers pulled out slings and oranges and started belting
each other with them before asking the audience to join in. The music
was more conventional.

On the second day we were up early to take a walk along the canyon
edge and to watch the condors using the thermals to circle up into the
air. They're genuinely impressive birds with massive wingspans. Shame
the locals keep shooting them for attacking the baby llamas. The
camalids (llamas, alpacas, etc) are really quite adorable and much
nicer than sheep. They have huge eyes and the docile attitude needed
in an animal that's about to be sheared and then slaughtered for meat.

Dan's been quite ill over the last few days with a stomach bug, so
he's been off his food and on the loo non-stop. Because of this i went
to look at the St Catalina Monetary myself. It was one of the
highlights of the trip (but don't tell Dan). It was a rabbit warren of
courtyards, alleys, small dwellings and fountains painted in bright
red, blue and yellow. The nuns who used to live here were all of the
naughty rich variety who kept slaves and considered chastity someone
else's problem. The pope finally sent in a troubleshooter to return
them to more monastic ways early last century and the major of
Arequipa forced the place to be opened to the public shortly after.

Three flights, 24 hours and one delay of three hours while a bulb in
the pilot's cockpit was investigated, we arrived at the last city on
our trip, Boston. This place is heaven on earth after squalor of South
America, particularly the hotel which is pure luxury compared to some
of the places we've been. Its great being somewhere were we can speak
English without feeling guilty about it.

I think Boston it the most amenable American city I've been to. It's
clean, safe and accessible. The public transport works and the parks
are really nice, particularly at the moment as the apple and cherry
blossom is out. They also have real ale there. There are predictably
more than a handful of Irish pubs and some of them actually have Irish
people running them (and I don't mean Americans of Irish ancestry). On
Wednesday we walked the "freedom" walk, a tour of sights related to
the war of independence. It's a bit of indulgent English-bashing, but
it wasn't me who taxed their bloody tea, so i don't know why i felt
belittled. On the final day we had a quick look around the famous
universities of MIT and Harvard, but to be honest, they weren't very
interesting and i was just counting down the hours until we could fly
home.

Well that's the end of it. We're on our way home now and quite frankly
I can't wait to get there. As is traditional upon such an occasions,
here are a few lists of bests and worsts. Thanks for coming and I'll
see you soon.

FAVOURITE PLACE
(1) Antarctica
(2) South Georgia
(3) Tereji National Park, Mongolia
(4) South Luangwa National Park, Zambia
(5) Friendship Highway, Tibet
(6) Ubud, Indonesia

WORST PLACE
(1) Calcutta, India
(2) Pangandaran, Indonesia

MOST PLEASANT PLACE (not much to do but hang out and absorb the atmosphere)
(1) Amritsar, India
(2) Boston, USA
(3) Hoi An, Vietnam
(4) Mendoza, Argentina
(5) Sydney, Australia

WORST HOTEL
(1) Calcutta
(2) Tingri, Tibet

BEST HOTEL (relative to local standards)
(1) La Rosetta, La Paz

BEST HIKE
(1) El Chalten, Argentina
(2) Mount Aso, Japan
(3) Around Ubud, Indonesia

BEST EXPERIENCE
(1) Being woken up by hippos next to the window in Zambia,
(2) Microlighting over Victoria Falls,
(3) A whale going under our Zodiac boat in Antarctica,
(4) Penguins nibbling my wellies on South Georgia.

WORST EXPERIENCE
(1) Bus crash in China,
(2) Hotel in Calcutta,
(3) The all-you-can-eat buffets in Japan,
(4) Going to the loo at night in Africa,
(5) Coming down from Everest Base camp, Tibet,
(6) Getting the flu in Lijiang, China.

BEST CACTUS
(1) Salta

BEST TRANSPORT
(1) Trans-Siberia train
(2) Dug out boat, Okavanga Delta
(3) Tobogan, Great Wall, Beijing

WORST TRANSPORT
(1) Flecha bus, Iguacu to Salta, Argentina
(2) Night bus, Saigon to Hoi An, Vietnam
(3) All flights

BEST ANIMALS
(1) Penguins, South Atlantic
(2) Pandas, China
(3) Hippos, Africa
(4) Big cats, Africa
(5) Camalids, Bolivia and Peru

WORST ANIMALS
(1) Bus drivers, South America
(2) Provodnitsas, Russia
(3) Touts (everywhere but especially India)
(4) Population of Copacabana, Bolivia

BEST OLD RUIN
(1) Dan,
(2) Machu Picchu, Peru,
(3) Borobodur, Indonesia,
(4) Taj Mahal, India.

*** THE END ***

DAY 293 - Cusco, Peru

Copacabana is a small town in a beautiful setting on the edge of Lake Titicaca near the Bolivian border with Peru. It nestles between two hills and although it doesn't have the sand, glamour or burnt bodies of its more famous namesake in Rio, it's still a very nice place to stop for a couple of nights. Nearby in the lake is Isla de Sol, a mystical island of wonderful panoramas, ancient ruins and locals who will try to charge you every couple of hundred metres for walking over their land. They'll even try to sell you tickets to places they know you have no intention of going. The people of Copacabana itself are no better. They've had years to work out of to mercilessly rip-off tourists by, for example, blatantly overcharging and hoping you won't notice or quoting you one exchange rate then actually using another. Still, the street dogs are pretty friendly (for half an empanada).

 

There's a clearly defined gringo route through this part of the world and we keep running into the same people as we follow it up the continent. For all the minor mistakes we've made, it's always good to run into Brian the American who seems to be having an even harder time than we are. For one thing, every time he crosses a border he seems to have to pay over $100 just to get into the country (because that's what the USA charges the Bolivians, Chileans, etc to get a visa). He also seems to be fleeced more often by the locals because he doesn't shop around. We can always spot him a mile off because the only thick piece of clothing he has is an enormous silver puffer jacket he bought in New Zealand. It makes him stand out some what against the local Inca ruins. Hi Brian, if you're reading this...

 

On Sunday we crossed over into Peru and took a bus ride to Cusco. After all the promises of rape, pillage and torture at the hands of masked bandits apparently common on Peruvian roads, the trip was largely uneventful if a couple of hours late. We took a taxi to the hotel, avoiding being throttled in a knife attack as all Peruvian taxi drivers are prone to be complicit in and went to bed, fortunate to still be alive.

 

This is my second visit to the Inca capital but Dan's first. It's not a bad place to come to twice, although it's very expensive. I do drone on about the costs quite a lot so i won't mention them again except to say i haven't completely ruled out remortgaging the house. Cusco is certainly one of the most pretty towns in South America with its nicely preserved colonial architecture, grassy squares and mountain setting. There's everything a traveller would want here to take it easy for a few days before pushing on. That said, the food has been underwhelming to say the least, with a wet chili, poor service and utterly flavourless steak. Dan had the Guinea Pig one night. It was presented as billed in the menu, half an animal cleaved right down the middle with half it's head still attached, teeth an' all. It had the constitution of an old granny's handbag and there wasn't a single knife in the restaurant that could penetrate the skin. In the end he had to pick it up to eat it. It put me off my food just watching the show across the table.

 

We did Machu Picchu on Tuesday and it was still pretty amazing third time around. They've permanently shut the train station in Cusco now, so you have to get a coach 12km out of town to catch the train. This is a shame because the repeated switching back of the train on the way out of the steep Cusco valley was part of the fun of the trip. Our pick up wasn't particularly well organised and we only got to the station with minutes to spare. The guide was ok but we couldn't climb up the nearby mountain for the really good views this time as they've limited the number of people who can go up each day. To be honest, this was a theme repeated throughout our visit to Cusco. The authorities have restricted where and when you can go a great deal in the last five years. You can no longer climb over the ruins almost unfettered like before, but are herded in narrow corridors along pre-defined paths. I can understand why they would do this as some of the sights must have been being seriously damaged by all those tour groups trampling over them. However, it does detract quite a lot from the experience, especially as they haven't made alternatives available (such as raised platforms so you can see the carvings and markings on the top of the rocks you were once allowed to climb up to see).

 

We now have one more place left in South America before we start our very long trip home - Arequipa.

 

Rich.

DAY 286 - Copacabana, Bolivia

We will be home on 1 May. All the flights are booked. I'm touched that the South American don't seem to want us to leave though, as evidenced by the ridiculously expensive air fares to almost anywhere outside their continent. To get a decent price (and that's still almost £800) we will fly Arequipa (Peru), Lima, Newark (USA), Boston, Shannon (???!) and London. Needless to say, we've decided to break it up with two nights in Boston (where it seems almost impossible to get a room for under a £100 a night).

Back to Bolivia then, and we crossed the border from Chile in a 4x4 on a three day tour up to a place called Uyuni, via the salt pans and national parks of the "southwest circuit". The guide book is very clear that these trips "are no walk in the park" and prone to various disasters, so we booked with whom we thought were a reputable company. Despite this, the vehicle proved temperamental, refusing to start on numerous occasions and conking out on others. The bonnet would frequently be raised and string applied to reconnect the accelerator pedal to the engine. To be honest, all these shenanigans didn't bother me so long as they didn't bother the ever-grinning driver, even when the engine wouldn't start slap bang in the middle of the worlds largest salt pan. More annoying was the driver playing his one and only tape of Bolivian music over and over again at full volume until our ears rang. You got it worst in the front seat which I had the misfortune to occupy on the middle day.

Needless to say it was worth the hassle. The first day started with a drive up to some boiling volcanic mud pools and some superb lake views. The accommodation that night was basic but warm (dorms and no showers). Fortunate really, as it gets toe-numbingly cold at night four thousand metres.

The next day was very long, starting with some flamingo watching, then more mineral coloured lakes, some weird shaped rocks in the middle of a sand desert and a vast pan of dark salt with a railway line running over the top. That night we stayed in a salt hotel with almost everything made of the stuff, including a carpet of salt crystals covering the floor.

On the last day we reached the Uyuni Salt Pan, the biggest in the world, and it was vast. All you can see to the horizon is a white landscape and blue sky. The light hurts your eyes, even with sun glasses on. We spent most of the time taking silly pictures using the lack of perspective caused by the blank landscape to make it look like we were standing on bottles and stuff. Wait for the pics and it'll make sense.

We finally pulled into Uyuni on Easter Sunday to find there was no way of getting out. All the buses were full and all the banks were shut, so most people couldn't even get any local currency. Even the ATMs were closed. We had some Chilean money which we were able to change which kept us going, but we still had to stay a night in possibly the remotest, most desolate and most boring town on Earth. We had twelve hours to kill on Monday so saw the only attraction in town: a pile of rusting train engines. We finally got the bus to La Paz at eight in the evening.

La Paz is the highest capital in the world at about 3.6km up, and it's built in a canyon. The views from the top are great, but the city itself is dirty, over populated and poor. It feels quite safe though as every other person is either a policeman or in the army, and they all wear paramilitary garb. Even the traffic wardens carry guns. Except the traffic wardens who are dressed up as zebras, who don't appear to carry guns. (The zebras are there to help people cross the roads at the crossings, as Bolivian drivers would rather kill someone than stop to let people across.) To mitigate the dirt, we stayed in the La Roserio hotel, one of the best I've stayed in. We saw some pre-inca ruins at Tihuanaca, and yet another Moon Valley, although this time it did live up to it's name, and was pretty impressive. Very tall columns of rock formed from the erosion of the material around them. You walk along the top on a straw path and hope to god you don't fall over the side as there are no barriers.

We're now in Copacabana on the edge of Lake Titicaca. Very nice it is too, but more on that next time.

Anyway, put the kettle on, we'll be home soon...

DAY 278 - San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

There's an air of mixed emotions and conflicted feelings around our rather cosy hostel cabin today. We're both getting travel weary, the money's running out fast and there's the distinct feeling that the end is approaching. On the other hand, we still have some of the best places ahead of us and don't really want to miss them.

There are a number of things we can't ignore though. Firstly, from hereon, the travelling gets tougher, both from a logistical and security stand point. Secondly, we've looked at the cost of flying home and it's going to be at least a grand each, putting further pressure on the finances. Thirdly, as i've said, we're both starting to think we've had enough.

Before breakfast I'd been taken aback by all the dire warnings in the guide books and from one particularly negative Canadian about travelling in Bolivia and Peru. However, over our eggs we talked to an Irish couple who had just made their way down the route we are to follow and they said they saw no hints of any trouble and they enjoyed it immensely. Still, we will try to avoid being car-jacked, mugged, having our backpack slashed or being raped. Would be a tad inconvenient, but thanks for the warning Lonely Planet.

It's also Dan's 40th birthday (and he won't thank me for telling everyone). I think he's feeling a bit old, but tonight we dine in style (budget: £10 including drinks).

Anyway, back to Port Valparaiso, a town on two levels with about two dozen very old ascendeos (cable cars on tracks) linking the two parts of town if you can't cope with the steep climb (and there were occasions we couldn't). It's a nice if disheveled place with no hint of municipal planning given the way the buildings have been flung up. Houses are often on stilts, in any nook or cranny available on the network of hills and narrow valleys behind the centre of town. There's not actually much to do there, but it had a faded grandeur worth spending a few days looking at. The locals almost encourage graffiti, which they consider art. The end product is like a cross between St Ives and Lewisham, or a weird Camberwell-on-sea.

We found a great bar called La Playa which played 80s music all night, so we got drunk with only a plate of chips to eat. Dan finished off with an unspecified cocktail, plied upon him by some old bird, old enough to be his mother, who wanted us to 'go downstairs' after the place shut. We didn't, but went back to our hostel to suffer the consequences to the excesses for the next 24 hours.

There's another town just round the coast called Viña del Mar which we walked to on Saturday. You definitely got the feeling it considered Valparaiso it's evil twin. Viña is all tree-lined boulevards, green squares and sandy beaches - the very opposite to it's neighbour.

We moved on last Sunday. Another 24 hours on the bus got us here to San Pedro de Atacama. It's in the Atacama desert surprisingly enough and consists only of hostels, tour agencies and over-priced restaurants. We paid too much for our first meal here, but Dan wanted a curry (so predictable). It was served in a coconut shell mounted on a bed of salt, so it was worth it (not).

We booked the accommodation in advance as it's Easter and I was getting worried the place would be overrun by Chileans. It isn't at the moment and there's more danger of all the locals shutting up shop and going to Santiago for the holiday weekend than there being too many local tourists.

There are lots of desert-centred things to do here. We started with a cheap tour of Death Valley (it's a desert, so you have you have a Death Valley) and The Valley Of The Moon. Originality, if not tourists, is in short supply here. Still, the landscape was fab and the sunset passable.

On Wednesday we got up at 4 in the morning to see some geysers and then have a swim in a thermal pool. Was knackered the rest of the day.

As for today, me and the birthday boy don't have too much planned, but that's ok. Tomorrow we head off in a 4x4 with 4 strangers to Bolivia.

Rich.

DAY 271 - Valparaiso, Chile

I read somewhere that nobody reads travel blogs unless they know something really awful has happened to the people concerned. They're not interested in people having a great time abroad while they're stuck in their offices at work. You're not like that, are you?

I'm amazed at how much Spanish I've picked up in the last three weeks. Don't get me wrong, I can't actually construct sentences but, for example, I managed to put my laundry in for washing with a mixture of Spanish, pointing and laughing nervously. I still can't say the number seven though without wrapping my tongue around the nearest lamppost.

Salta is a town with a lot more character than most Argentine cities. It's on the edge of the Puna, a high plateau in the Andies and there's a much bigger influence from the indigenous peoples than elsewhere. The heat was significantly more oppressive there than elsewhere, particularly in the afternoon when it's almost impossible to do anything except find some shade and veg out.

We took a tour north-west out of the city on Sunday which took in some pretty breathtaking views, some old pre-Inca ruins and a large salt pan. The route up was through a long valley lined with cacti that looked as if they were straight out of an old western film. The low morning sunlight was shining through their hairy tops making them look like they've been dipped in icing sugar. The salt pan was pretty interesting too. Water runs off the Andies into the central plain, then evaporates leaving the minerals behind. The light reflected off the white landscape meant you had to put sun cream on the underside of your arms to stop them burning.

Before getting the coach out of Salta we took a cable car up to the top of a nearby hill for views of the city. It was all very nice, but then we had to walk back down in the heat which was pretty bad planning on our part, given we were going to spend the next 22 hours on a bus.

Chile won't let Argentine vehicles into their country. It's not hard to see why. Some cars here are barely one run up the vehicle food chain from baked bean tins. Many don't seem to run at all and only qualify as vehicles because they can be pushed to induce movement.

After Salta it was onto the bus again to Mendoza. Once the bus had set off the delightfully chirpy cabin attendant handed around bingo cards. The game was in Spanish of course. Despite what I've written above, congratulating myself on all the Spanish I've picked up, i've only got to "20" in the numbers. Despite this, I won. Credit must go to Dan who fortunately knew 21 to 90. The rest of the bus didn't look so impressed with a non-Spanish speaking gringo winning though. Oops.

Mendoza was a surprisingly nice city. Despite being in the desert it's very green. Irrigation channels are everywhere. We got some cheese and bread and took it to the park with the bottle of wine we'd won for a picnic. The temperature and weather were perfect. Of course the city is famous for it's wine and you can even get wine flavoured ice cream, complete with alcohol. Fab.

The next day we hired bikes and did a tour of the local vineyards, olive producers and a chocolate factory(!) The bikes were awful with stupidly hard seats and handlebars only loosely connected to the front wheel. I'm now convinced that this apparent structural defect is in fact a deliberate ploy to compensate for the wobble induced by all the alcohol consumed in the tastings during the trip. Despite all this, I am now a wine expert. Honest.

So that's it for Argentina. I won't miss their tediously relentless Falklands obsession, cheese and ham sandwiches (it's ALWAYS cheese 'n ham) or high prices, but I will miss the Empanadas, national parks, cafe culture, cervesa bock, buses (except the dreaded Fletcha company) and snowy, pointy mountains.

We now have to negotiate travelling Chile in Easter week. Oh joy.

Rich

DAY 266 - Salta, Argentina

Groan. The bus I'm on to Salta is a cross between a youth hostel and a soft rock karaoke bar. The drivers insist on playing old hair rock very loudly and singing along to it. We've been stopped four times for drug searches and we've still got another 19 hours "together".

It wasn't always so. The bus from Baraloche to Buenos Aires was very nice, with loads of room and meals served regularly. The hostel we stayed at in BA was staffed by, and occupied by, a bunch of kids and could have been a Channel 4 social documentary (let's put children in charge of children and see how they get on).

This part of the trip I'd done before, but Dan hadn't. We trekked around the usual BA sights over the next three days; Evita's tomb, the Pink Palace, etc, but also found some new things I'd missed first time out, such as the small San Telmo street market with its tango dancers, antiques and art, and the Japanese garden.

Evening outs were a lot more expensive this time with an unfortunate lack of economic collapse to drive prices down (well, unfortunate for me). The beer is great. The food, although still dominated by pizza and beef, is (relatively) more varied (we found somewhere doing curry! Hurrah! Shame it was an English-run pub). We even went back to my favorite eating hole from last time, La Estancia, for a slap-up meal. The people are ok although still attempting to air con the world (by leaving all their doors wide open).

After BA we had a one night visit to Iguazu to see the falls. They're certainly spectacular, especially standing above the "Devil's Throat" where lots of water funnels into a small horse-shoe shaped bend, but once you've seen 'em, you've seen 'em. Second time round they were just as impressive, but a single night was enough, however much the town wants you to stay longer. Besides, our room backed onto the bar with its live music, and one night definitely was enough of that. At least they didn't play Bob Marley on endless loop like most hostels around the world. Having them run by kids does have one advantage - reggae had been and gone before they were born.

 

Rich.

DAY 258 - Baraloche, Argentina

We're in Baraloche at the moment. It's the centre of the Argentine Lake District, but Windermere it ain't. It peddles hiking, ski-ing (not much of that at the moment) and chocolate. This is our last stop in Patagonia before heading to Buenos Aires for some cosmopolitan modernity.

 

We arrived in El Chalten last Friday. It's a new "town" that wasn't there 20 years ago. In yet another Argentine border dispute, this time with Chile, they created the place from nothing to claim the lump of land it's on. You really have to see the maps produced here. They're a wish list of future land grabs and include chunks of other countries marked as Argentine. They claim a large chunk of Antarctica (international territory), the Falklands and South Georgia (ours) and land along the borders with Uruguay and Chile. Their theory appears to be if you include the land on your maps and TV weather forecasts, the people currently live there will give up protesting and join the happy family that is Argentina (along with the rickety economy and unstable politics). Anyway. I digress. El Chalten may not have mobile telecommunications, a bus station or bank, but it does have some of the best countryside and hiking in South America. We did two day-walks amongst the lakes and mountains returning each night to our comfy hostel room, microbrew and ridiculously soft mattresses that gave the both of us sore backs.

 

After El Chalten we took a two day trip up Route 40, a mainly unsealed road that runs the spine of the Andes, to Esquel. The middle night we stayed at Perito Moreno in a hotel that definitely hadn't been decorated since the 1970s - orange and brown were the only shades in the decor's colour scheme and the plastic sofas were just embarrassing.

 

Esquel is a pretty average, if soulless, town but it does have a steam train. It leaves the town station, goes around in a loop without stopping and ends up back where it started. We skipped the ride but saw it set off, watching excited Argentines go all doe-eyed in nostalgia.

 

There weren't main foreigners around the town. The main reason we went there was so I could go to Trevelin, a small village up the road. At the end of the 19th century a load of welsh immigrants landed on the Patagonian coast to settle the rather dry and barren pampas. They kept moving inland, settling towns as they went until they got to where Trevelin is now. Being of welsh stock myself, I was interested to see just how welsh it was, and the answer was not a lot. The odd street was named after a Dylan Edwards John Thomas Jones Davies, but the welsh character was mainly restricted to the museum (where the lady behind the counter started talking welsh to me as soon as I said "yaky da", and there was a good selection of welsh memorabilia) and the tea shops. Now I always associated cream teas with Cornwall, but they're considered a very welsh thing here and they are very, very large. Five types of cake, scones, sandwiches and a bottomless pot of tea. I was feeling decidedly sick, but happy, at the end.

 

The next day we paid 40 quid to see a 2,600 year old tree. The trip to the Alerce National Park took a coach, a walk, a boat trip and six hours. The guides wouldn't stop talking the entire way there, barely coming up for air and unfortunately they were only speaking Spanish. When we got there the guide showed us the really old Alerce trees and spoke about them in Spanish for a few hours before continuing to describe all the other really interesting trees (in Spanish) too. Tall ones, short ones, wide ones, broken ones. I know trees do a really useful job with the oxygen and carbon dioxide and stuff, but I feel I've had my fill of trees for now, 2,600 years old or not.

 

Baraloche is a very quaint town and a lot busier than the other places we've been to in Argentina. Yesterday we had a look around town and bought some of the famous chocolate from the place the guide book says sells the best. I reckon if you're going to make yourself sick, you might as well do it with the best.

 

Today we made some sandwiches and had a hike around Llao Llao National Park. Sounds welsh, but isn't. Great mountainous scenery and plenty of lakes. And more trees. Ah, the trees...

 

Dan's put his trainers on the window sill to air, but they're still to close.

 

Rich.

DAY 250 - El Calafate, Argentina

The two days sailing through the Drake Strait were calm and sea-sick free. Not a lot happened on board as everyone was starting to prepare for our disembarkation back at Ushuaia. We had one moment of excitement though as we rounded Cape Horn. Cameras flashed pointlessly as we tried to get a half decent photo of a small lump of rock, shrouded in mist about 3km in the distance. The captain's dinner on the last night was pretty much like all the other dinners, except the Russian in charge of the boat turned up, made a few naff jokes in broken English, and we had cloth napkins instead of paper ones. Pushing the boat out indeed (no pun intended).

 

Having been without the Internet for almost three weeks, the first thing i did on returning to dry land was to check my emails (that's why you got three in one go), check how much more of my pension had disappeared up the crunch (lots!) and tried to stop wobbling (my body seemed to refuse to believe it was now on terra firma).

 

We had two nights booked in Ushuaia before we had to move on. On the second day we walked up to the much hyped Glacier Martial. Global warming had clearly taken it's toll - either that or after seeing the glaciers in Antarctica my expectations had been raised just a little bit too high. Either way, it was in a sorry state. It looked no better than Orpington Park, three days after the February snow this year when the snow had been trodden to a mucky black by hundred's of people's feet and had sufficiently melted in parts to show the ground beneath. Part of the way up we could have been taken by chair lift, but it was AR$65 (£13) and it only took you about 500 meters - you had to walk the rest. Major rip-off.

 

Monday we flew to El Calafate. It's a town named after a berry. It's sort of like calling somewhere in Britain "The Strawberry". Still, it works for them. After a quiet day on Tuesday, we took a day trip into Chile on Wednesday to see the Torres del Paine National Park. It's very like the lake district, only the mountains are in a different league (this is the Andes, after all). The "Towers of Pain" themselves are a set of spires that rise vertically upwards over the landscape. They're surrounded by some very strange mountains with black rock on top and light grey rock beneath. Have a look at the pics (www.energiser.net) to see what i mean, but they reminded me of those little two-toned Toblerone chunks you get in tins at Christmas. It was a very long day, most of which was spent in the various coaches we were shuffled between at different points of the trip and at the inevitable border crossing points. Still, worth it for the scenery.

 

Today we went to see the Perito Moreno glacier, about 80km west of El Calafate. It's famous mostly because you can drive to it rather than having to take a long boat trip (as you do with the numerous other glaciers around here) and because it moves at a whopping 200 metres a year. Apparently that's really fast for a glacier, but the most it would do for us today is drop a few lumps of ice off it's edge into the lake. It's still pretty spectacular, even after seeing hundreds of the things in Antarctica. It comes off the mountain and bisects a lake causing it to dam up every couple of years. When the weight of water becomes too much, it breaks open again in a "calamitous explosion". It didn't do this today.

 

The hostel we're staying at has a kitchen, so we bought a couple of slices of cow today and had them for tea. The beef comes in huge chunks and is dirt cheap. Tastes good as well.

 

Next, El Chalten... 

DAY 243 - Drake's Passage, Southern Ocean

Drake's Passage between Antarctica and South America has a reputation as one of the roughest seaways in the world. We're there now, heading back to port and it's pretty rocky, but so far not so bad. It's exemplary of the luck we've had with the weather in the last week, with almost universally clear skies, still seas and chilly, but wind-free conditions. The scenery has been incredibly beautiful, and unlike anything I've ever seen before. Life on the boat has been very busy and tiring, but even when I haven't really felt like going outside into the cold for a landing, I've dragged myself up to do it and have been glad I did. The Zodiac cruises have been very cold, particularly when zipping across the semi-frozen sea between the icebergs, pancake ice and "bergy bits". At times the cold was quite painful on the toes, fingers and face. And of course, I've bagged the seventh continent, landing twice on the Antarctic Peninsula at isolated beaches populated only by seals, penguins and tourists. After a great couple of weeks, I'm hoping the only unwelcome experience to come on the way back to Ushuaia is paying the bar bill.

 

The two days sailing from South Georgia to the South Shetland Islands were uneventful. The four-a-day lectures were starting to be attended by fewer people (particularly Axel's "here's another picture of a penguin" talks) although most people were still making the early breakfasts.

 

On Saturday we arrived off Elephant Island. This proved a taster of the landscape we would see for the next week. The island had a rocky base with an ice sheet hundreds of metres thick resting on top. Sharp shards of stone broke through in places, but otherwise it was utterly uninhabitable and inhospitable. Jutting out into the rough sea was a small peninsula, only a few metres across in places and constantly being washed over by breaking waves. This was Cape Wild were 22 men survived for over a hundred days under small overturned boats. It's now occupied by a statue of the Chilean captain who rescued them and several hundred Gentoo penguins. The seas were still quite rough at this point so we didn't land (not that anyone wanted to), just sailed around in the Zodiacs. It was the most nervous of all the Zodiac rides and my camera battery packed up halfway around which was a bit of a blessing in disguise as it meant I could use both hands to hold on.

 

On Sunday we started with a landing at Half Moon Island, a much calmer affair. As well as being home to loads of penguins there was a good walk up to a high vantage point where we could take in the view. The sky was clear and we could see for miles. Great stuff. In the afternoon we pulled into Deception Island, a collapsed caldera ring of land with an entrance a couple of hundred metres across. It's like a cold Santorini, only virtually no vegetation and certainly no tavernas. We had a wander around a deserted whaling station (most of which had been destroyed in the volcano's last eruption in 1970), said hi to the penguins and climbed up to Neptune's Window to look out to sea. Some people took up the suggestion to go for a swim under the premise that the active volcano heats the sea water in the caldera. If it did, they couldn't tell and were out as quick as they entered.

 

Monday we took a Zodiac cruise around Charlotte Bay, mainly to look at the ice. It can be incredibly beautiful stuff, carved by the glaciers, sea and penguin poo into some fantastic sculptures. Where the ice is cut clean and exposed, its true colour of deep blue can be seen to stunning effect. Orne Harbour in the afternoon was more of the same thing, but the beach there was going to be our first opportunity to land on the Antarctic Peninsula. Unfortunately, the staff felt it was too icy (really? In Antarctica?) to walk on and there were too many fur seals (complete with bad tempers and sharp teeth) around the landing site. We were a bit disappointed but the Zodiac cruise was pretty good and almost made up for not getting a landing.

 

Tuesday morning we landed at Port Lockroy, a former British base now run by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. What's amazing about the place is it's built on a tiny outcrop of rocks, no more than 100 metres wide surrounded by ice cliffs across the bay hundreds of metres high. Four people live here during the summer months to tend to the buildings and sell stuff to tourists. It's the most visited tourist location in Antarctica. The middle-aged man is slightly mad and the other three are all young girls in their twenties – it felt a bit like one of those dodgy American religious cults, but we're assured it's all strictly above board. I bought a t-shirt and posted a card to me mum who should receive it by November, I'm reliably informed. There's a middle-sized Gentoo penguin colony across the bay where we saw a Leopard seal catching and munching away on penguins. It will apparently try to eat anything, including Zodiacs and people. We saw it sneak up on penguins on the rocks, grab them, then slash them around to turn them inside out. This way it could get to the meat inside. The alternative would be the eat the bird from the outside in – equivalent to chewing on a feathery duvet. Gruesome but spectacular.

 

After sailing up the spectacular Neumayer channel we arrived at Cuverville Island for another beach landing and penguin colony. These penguins weren't as curious as some of the others we'd met and didn't want to come over and play. That said, there were the usual groups of juveniles who would throw the most entertaining tizzies, running around like maniacs flapping their flippers and squarking for no apparent reason. That night we had a barbecue on the aft deck, which was a bizarre experience. It was pretty cold but the grills and salads were out and the scenery was considerably better than the average back garden in London.

 

Wednesday was our final day on the Peninsula, and the best day of the lot. It started at Neko Harbour and our first landing on the continent itself. There were penguins, one of whom tried very hard to eat my waterproofs, spending several minutes trying to get its beak around my legs and Wellies. After climbing a snow covered hillside there was a great view of the bay and the glacier which fed it. Unfortunately, the glacier wouldn't drop any ice into the sea while we were there which was a bit inconsiderate of it. There was also the remains of a hut which had been in tact on the crew's previous visit but had been completely destroyed in a storm last week. The penguins were making good use of the remains for shelter. We finished off with a very cold Zodiac excursion around the bay.

 

In the afternoon, the ship moved to Paradise Harbour. There were more penguins and another hill to climb for a view, but the best moments came in the Zodiac. A Minke Whale came up under our boat and blew it's nose on us. We got a great close up look of the 10 metre long animal as it circled the Zodiac a few time before disappearing. After that a crab-eater Seal followed us around the bay and then tried to get into the boat. According to the guide this was not something we would want to happen as then we'd have to get the thing out again, teeth and all.

 

See you back in Ushuaia.

 

Rich.

DAY 236 - Southern Ocean, nr South Georgia

I'm bunking off school to write this. There's a lecture on "Penguin Identification and Biology" but I can't be arsed. The guy who's taking it, Axel, is a bit monotonic and very dull.

 

The two days between the Falklands and South Georgia were taken up by more of these lectures – four a day. They're actually – usually – quite interesting, but the daily agenda is so full that between them and the eating, you don't really get much time to yourself. Here's the meal pattern of a typical day; pre-breakfast pastries and tea, breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon cakes and tea, happy hour bar snacks, lunch. It's a lot of food and there are few ways to expend any energy on the days in the open sea.

 

We had three days at South Georgia. What we could do each day was very much up to the weather which was even more changeable and extreme than in the Falklands. Most of the expedition staff seem obsessed with Earnest Shackleton, an early twentieth century British explorer who did heroic things down here. Although dedicated to his men and the do-er of many brave deeds, from what I can tell he seemed a bit of a git, punching people who disagreed with him, bearing life-long grudges, having his how's-your-father with other people's wives, and all because he wanted to be remembered as a "great man".

 

We followed the island's east coast, starting on Monday with an attempt to get into a place called Possession Bay for some penguin watching, but the weather was too bad. That afternoon we had better luck, and managed to get ashore at Salisbury Plain to see a huge colony of King Penguins. They're really wonderful birds with very entertaining and curious personalities. As soon as I got off the Zodiac and sat on the beach one waddled up and had a peck at my Welly. On discovering it wasn't a new kind of fish, he wandered off again. You only had to stand still for a few minutes and small groups would nervously approach to check you over. Others would be pecking at each other, squawking or strutting their stuff with members of the opposite sex. There were thousands of individuals on the beach, mixed in with a handful of baby fur seals being insanely cute and staring at you with huge saucer eyes. The adults were quite aggressive and have a reputation for biting unwary tourists, so we kept our distance.

 

On Tuesday we sailed further around the coast and had a very early morning in Fortuna bay, the sight of another King Penguin colony. The newly risen sun cast a yellowy glow over everything and the sky stayed clear making the visit more peaceful and serene than on the previous day. There are a lot of introduced species on the island, including the reindeer at this site. The government are trying to decide which species to remove and which to leave, but haven't really decided about the reindeer yet. In the afternoon we were back on the main ship and sailed around Stromness harbour where you could see the remains of at least three whaling stations. The industry was huge here in the first half of the twentieth century and the mainly Norwegian whalers culled almost 90% of the stock in the surrounding waters – it's thought numbers will never return to their previous levels. It was considered a very noble occupation back then when attitudes were very different. Now the abandoned stations sit decaying on the coast waiting for the government to make them safe and remove all the toxic materials and asbestos from them.

 

In the afternoon we carried on around, past Thatcher Peninsula (yes, she liberated South Georgia from the Argies too) to the main settlement. The term is relative of course, as the "settlement" comprises of the museum at the abandoned whaling station at Grytviken (population about 3) and the British Antarctic Survey station next door at King Edward Point (population in the teens, but varies). After raising a toast to "the Shack" (Shackleton) – who's buried in the cemetery here – at the tour leader's behest (and watching his eye's glaze over in admiration) we split up into groups for different activities. I chose to climb Brown Hill, as did about eight others. We were led by Yvonne, the Gladys Pew (remember the Welsh announcer on Hi-De-Hi?) of the tour. Permanently happy and with a silver smooth voice, she set off up the hill with boundless enthusiasm and at a pace that would put the Royal Marines to shame. We trundled up after her as the rain started pouring down. By the time we approached the shale-covered summit, the weather was hailing and howling, but we still had some amazing views over the harbour and the island's interior. Once down again, I had a quick wander around the whaling station (asbestos removed) and museum. A long but excellent day.

 

We had another early start on Wednesday as we came ashore in Gold Harbour, but the weather was already closing in. We weren't able to get many pictures because of the rain but we able to see some of the Elephant Seals that live on the sands. These are the four tonne, three metre behemoths that guard their harems and then drop dead a few years later from exhaustion. At this time of year most of the really big beasts are out to sea, but there were some juveniles around and they were already damn large animals. And they really stank. In the afternoon we had to make do with a ship tour around Drygalski Fjord as the weather was too poor to go out in the Zodiacs. The whole island is a crinkly network of black mountains with snowy tops and glaciated valleys, and it all looks stunning, but the stormy weather and filtered sunlight made this last view of South Georgia one of the highlights of the trip. To top it off we saw our first icebergs cluttering up the entrance to the fjord.

 

Last night the storm got a lot worse and gave us our roughest night on board to date. A lot people didn't make it to the evening meal or breakfast this morning. It's one way of avoiding weight gain, I suppose.

 

Rich.

 

DAY 230 - Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

According to the staff, the sea we're bobbing about on is unusually calm for this part of the world. Could have fooled me. We're heading to South Georgia, two days away – assuming we don't sink under the extra weight from the six or seven meals a day we're being pummelled with. No chance of starving on this boat.

 

It was a long flight from London to Ushuaia via Buenos Aires, but largely uneventful. The town is at the same latitude south of the equator as London is north, only noticeably cooler (no Gulf Stream). The first thing you notice is the fantastic setting; buildings clinging to the hillside as the land rises up to meet the mountains, and the many channels and islands surrounding Tierra del Fuego. The second thing you notice is how flipping expensive everything is. Argentina was dirt cheap the last time I was here, but in a country notorious for extreme booms and busts, they seem to be at the overheating economy stage again.

 

We had a couple of days before getting on the boat for our Antarctic cruise, so we took a trip to the Tierra del Fuego National Park (entry £10, up from £4 last year) and had a walk through the very picturesque and crinkly, if muddy, coastal forest. On Tuesday we just took a walk around the town, stocking up on cheap wine for the boat. We finally boarded late afternoon.

 

It's quite a luxurious boat compared to our normal travelling accommodation. The cabin is small, and we have to share facilities with next door, but it's got a window, fridge and desk, and is generally quite comfortable. Except when sleeping, we haven't spent much time in here yet. The ship is run a bit like a holiday camp, with a full programme of entertainment and education running when we're not on land. We've had wildlife films, talks on geology, wars and birds, lifeboat drills and lots of food.

 

We reached the Falklands Islands on Thursday and had two landings on Carcass Island and Saunders Island, off the west coast. The method of getting ashore is via a small flat-bottomed boat called a Zodiac, apparently invented by Jacque Cousteau. Because the landings are usually 'wet' everyone has to don wellies and waterproofs before getting on board. They're quite powerful with the bow rising up well into the air as you zoom ashore. Both islands were desolate places with stubby vegetation and few trees. Carcass island had many thousands of penguins, all huddled together in rookeries, and plenty of ground burrows to break your legs in. After the penguins, we walked around the bay to the settlement (population 10) for a bit of Falklands hospitality – a cup of tea and a table crammed with hundreds of small cakes like your mother used to bake (before she discovered Mr Kipling). Apparently when they hear a cruise ship is coming to the island, all the locals on the surrounding islands (rule of thumb – one family per island) crank up the oven and start baking. They then jump in their Zodiacs with their trays of goodies to fill up this table in someone's front room for the tourists.

 

Saunders Island was similar to Carcass Island with plenty of penguins, but also Albatrosses. The weather is a bit weird. One minute it's sunny the next it's gales and torrential rain. It can, and frequently does, change within a few minutes. The clouded skies can get very dramatic which makes for some good pics.

 

Yesterday we arrived in Port Stanley on the eastern side of the islands. It's an interesting place and somewhere I was really looking forward to seeing given all the history. It has a population of about two thousand people and six pubs, which seems like a good ratio to me. Everyone drives Land Rover Discoveries and the houses are mainly wood with corrugated iron roofs. Apart from the official museum (which has more excellent exhibits crammed into three small rooms than you would imagine possible), there are a few unofficial exhibitions including the anti-whaling garden (harpoons, whale skeletons, gruesome pictures and messages such as "20,000 whales killed by this harpoon" written on car number plates) and the gnome garden (about a hundred garden gnomes in gnomey poses, staring towards the sea). We also took an excursion to Gypsy Cove, but there wasn't much there except for a few dolphins and yet more penguins.

 

On the way to South Georgia now.  They've just announced there are some whales off the starboard bow, causing near hysteria in the passengers (especially the older ones who move so slowly the whales are usually gone by the time they get to the viewing deck). I'd better go and take a look…

 

Rich.

DAY 208 - Orpington, England

Well, It's good to be home. In general...

 

We had a few nervous hours at Delhi airport. We knew there might be travel problems on the drive from the hotel as the fog was so thick we couldn't see more than ten metres ahead of us. True enough, planes were being delayed and cancelled while we sat waiting to hear about our own flight. Fortunately, BA seemed not to be suffering and our flight touched down in London only an hour or so late. The Air France passengers weren't so lucky and spent the night in a hotel. The Jet Airways passengers got the budget treatment of a cup of coffee and the departure lounge floor. 

 

If that wasn't exciting enough, a couple of hours after arriving home a pipe burst in the attic creating a rather surreal waterfall through the landing and hallway. I'll spare you the details of the hassle i've had so far with the insurers, the drying specialists, the builders and the loss adjusters (who i can only assume don't like each other given their unwillingness to talk to each other). Suffice to say, the woodwork's cracking, the ceilings are staining and that lot can't make up their mind who's doing what, when.

 

Rather than sit around the house doing nothing, i've been catching up with friends and family for the last three weeks. An unfortunate side effect has been a big increase in calories, just when i was congratulating myself on the 6kg (1st) i'd lost while away (if you want to lose weight, spent a week in Tibet). All the cravings i had whilst away, namely cheese, bitter and (rice-free) lasagna, have now, i can confidently say, been sated.

 

We had a short break in St Ives, Cornwall last week which was very pleasant. Yes, it rained and wasn't very warm, but there's something rather fantastic about wandering around the muddy British coast in such conditions. The beer down there is the best in Britain but the food was shockingly overpriced. We stopped off at Cheddar on the way home and bought six months worth of cheese having eaten one months worth in the tasting room.

 

We've got a couple of weeks now before we head off on possibly the best bit of the trip - Antarctica. If anyone fancies a pint before then, let me know. I need to get three months worth of bitter down in two weeks...

 

Rich.

DAY 184 - Delhi, India

I'm in the hotel room waiting to get a taxi to the airport for the 0330 flight to Heathrow. I'm soooo ready for home.

 

We only had two nights in Amritsar, so as soon as our train arrived (six hours late, sharing a compartment with some gentlemen with the worst and most unsubtle flatulence), we headed to the Pakistan border. We went to witness the elaborate and jingoistic closing the border ceremony. A bunch of overstressed soldiers from either side waggle and strut around like they're from Monty Python's Ministry of Funny Walks. A bloke with a microphone whips up the audience into a nationalistic fervor ("Hindooostan! Hindooooostan!") as the border gates are slammed shut with such determination they immediately bounce back open.

The next day we headed to the Golden Temple and a definite highlight of the trip. Up to this point India had struggled to provide the goods, but this place was somewhere special. The atmosphere when we walked through the gates was noticeably calmer and more pleasant that in the chaos outside. No-one wanted to sell you anything, no-one wanted to rip you off in a rickshaw, no-one wanted your money, people were friendly without overdoing it and I smiled for the first time since arriving in India. Nice chanting too. I was happy to take my shoes and socks off here, unlike at some of the other places we visited where the floor was less well tended, the water dirty and the local stray dogs had moved in to do a bit of redecorating, if you know what i mean.

Wednesday we got the "express" train to Delhi (two hours late); our last stop on Leg 3. We checked into an ok hotel in Paraganj, the local backpacker district. The last time I was here I stayed in squalor, and I certainly wasn't going to repeat that. This place has hot water and a window. Exciting, eh? There's plenty to do here which is just as well, as we had five and a half days to fill. It was New Year's Eve, but beer was hard to get hold of at a reasonable price, and we didn't really feel like a night on the town anyway, so we had an early night.

New Year's Day we did the old city with the Gandhi museum and Red Fort. Friday we had a wander around 'new' Delhi; the bit the British built (OK, designed - I suspect the Indians actually built it). A lot of roads were closed for security reasons which made finding our way around difficult and frustrating.

Saturday we hired a car to take us to Agra. Given how unreliable the trains had been, we dared not use them although it would have been a lot cheaper. The Taj Mahal was as beautiful as ever but the fog made taking pictures pretty difficult and the swarms of people kept getting in the way. We were made to pay 38 times what the locals paid to get in. For that price we should have had the place to ourselves instead of a poxy free bottle of water. After that we visited Agra Fort. Our driver spent the day chewing betel nut, spitting it out the window and sleeping. He didn't say much until we were almost back in Delhi when he started the most transparent sob story I've ever heard. He might have borrowed it from Bohemian Rhapsody ("I'm just a poor boy from a poor family", etc). When that didn't work he tried to charge us 1,000Rs (£14) for the aircon, which had been switched off all day because it was so cold. He didn't get a tip.

For the last two days we've wandered the streets of Delhi looking at tombs. Dan bought a brass Ganesh.

I'm over India. The infrastructure is decrepit and unreliable. The hotels are overpriced and squalid. Trains are late, smelly and overcrowded (and that's just first class) and the driving is downright suicidal. You get hassled all day, every day by people who only speak to you because they want your cash. People appear, to me at least, to only be interested in themselves and what's in it for them. This is not a holiday, it's an endurance test.

 

Ok, it's not as bad as all that. The food is generally great although a bit frustrating for a carnivore like me, and it's a very interesting place to visit, but I'll be glad to be home.

See you soon.

DAY 176 - Lucknow, India

Thanks to everyone who sent a text on Christmas day. Sorry for not replying, but for some reason we could receive messages but not send them. As the tourist board jingle goes, "Incredible India". Quite.

We've had a string of worsts in the last week or so; Kathmandu airport was the worst I've ever had the misfortune to use (a disorganised shed with no staff and no information) and the worst hotel (in the Black Hole of Calcutta). This was getting us down a bit so, like the government, we thought we'd spend our way out of adversity.

We did our sight-seeing in Varanasi in the first two days. A Ghat is a set of stone steps and platforms which lead into the River Ganges. There are lots of them in Varanasi where the locals do everything from washing, swimming, preparing food, taking Hector the cow for a wash and cremating relatives. According to last week's Economist, it's one the most bacterially polluted rivers in the world, and single handedly responsible for most of the childhood diseases in the area. We went for a boat ride, half expecting the wood beneath us to dissolve away as we went. It didn't, but we decided against the swim.

Apart from the Ghats, Varanasi is a very claustrophobic town, with very narrow streets and a definite seedy side. A couple of dodgy blokes tried a scam on me and were quite aggressive when I refused to hand over some cash.

The first hotel in Varanasi was quite nice with hot water and stuff, but for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we booked ourselves into the most expensive place in the city, The Taj Ganges Hotel. It was very palatial, set in large gardens and had soft mattresses (a first for India). The downside was that it seemed like everything was an opportunity for the hotel and staff to take money off us. Everyone wanted a tip. This wasn't a surprise, but was a bit annoying, as was the constant fussing that surrounded everything we tried to do. Still, we decorated the room as best we could, played tacky Christmas records and attended the "gala" Christmas Eve dinner. This was a fantastic buffet at which I tried a bit of everything and narrowly avoided a repeat of the Beppu incident. There appeared to be general embarrassment and confusion at the party hats from some of the locals, but I don't get embarrassed so led the way in making myself look silly.

On Boxing day we had to drag ourselves away (and pay the bill, which I didn't look at) and get a train to Lucknow. I could almost hear the hotel porter say, "using Indian Railways? I'd better wish you luck now..". Train was two hours late. The hotel we found was drab, overpriced, functional and was run by a zombie who was always at the front desk, day or night, and looked like he'd been stuffed thirty years ago.

The town was more pleasant than Varanasi and had a few crumbling ruins to look at. There's a pattern emerging when it comes to Indian tourist sites. They charge westerners about twenty times what the locals pay, when you get in there the staff are invariably too lazy to open most
of the attractions, they are always poorly maintained (where did our five quid entrance fee go again?) and when they are open there are always bizarre rules to make the visit tiresome ("couples must be shoeless and accompanied by a paid guide").

Today we went to the zoo. It took a while to find the animals. When we did, they all looked miserable and bored, although one pelican that had escaped found the outside world even worse and was trying to break back in. We then got completely lost (thanks for the useless map Lonely Planet) before heading to the train station for our next train to Amritsar.

DAY 169 - Calcutta, India

Ah, India. What is it about India that initially makes me want to run screaming to the airport and get on the next flight home? We've booked our flight back to London now for 6th January, so i'll have to grit my teeth and get on with it.

 

Kathmandu wasn't that bad in the end. Yes the power cuts were a pain, and the restaurants were very expensive, but the hotel had a generator, we ate from the supermarket most of the time and there was lots to see. It was definitely more chaotic than China and the roads were terrible. We walked everywhere as usual although there was rarely a footpath to walk on. The sights were mainly temples and stupas and the like, with one pleasant riverside temple where they burned corpses into the river. Most of the city itself was made up of narrow, busy alley ways lined with shops and small roadside shrines (usually to the Hindu god Ganesh). Great just to wander around and get hopelessly lost in.

 

We flew to Calcutta (or Kolkata as the local ruling communists have renamed it) on Thursday. It was a short flight but we arrived after dark so had booked a hotel in advance. It was a horrid place and the metal grill around the door made it feel more like a prison, so we found another hotel. This one was a bit more expensive (at 25 quid one of the most expensive on this leg to the trip), but it looked ok. How wrong could we be. The noise was terrible. First there was the nightclub on the ground floor pumping loud music throughout the building until midnight. We complained so they moved us to a different room. Above this room they were doing building work from 8 in the morning until 1 the next morning. It was maddening. I'm so glad we've checked out of there, but we'll have to be move careful in future. Problem is, this is the first time on the holiday when we're travelling at the local peak season, so everything is expensive and availability is low. We're sort of hoping that the recession and recent unfortunate events in Mumbai will make things quieter.

 

Calcutta isn't a bad city, but there's not a lot to do here. It's a typical Indian city; grubby, rubbish everywhere, overcrowded, but the food is great and there are some fantastic open spaces to loose yourself in. The Indian Museum isn't up to much though. It's not been dusted since 1950, the labels in the anthropological section still refer to the 1961 census and the fossil and natural history sections are just endless cases of rocks and piles of bones respectively (a picture of the animal the bones came from wouldn't cost much but would enhance the experience no end). That said, the full-term human embryo (pickled) and baby cat with one head and two bodies (pickled) more than made up for it. There's also the Victoria Monument, a fantastic building left over from the Raj that looks like the Taj Mahal crossed with St Paul's.

 

We've booked most of our Indian train tickets now. These will get us to Delhi on New Year's Eve, stopping at Varanasi, Lucknow and Amritsar on the way. The first train journey is tonight which means Christmas in Varanasi. Should be interesting...

 

Merry Christmas to everyone out there. When you're stuffing turkey down on Christmas Day and watching Doctor Who, think of us...

 

 

DAY 163 - Kathmandu, Nepal

After four days on the road in Tibet, getting over the border into Nepal was much easier than feared although not without it's interesting moments.

On the first day out of Lhasa we drove through some spectacular landscape. To be honest, it's for this sort of thing that I travel. Most cities are either identikit blobs and/or cesspits of human squalor.


Lake Yamdrok was a shimmering turquoise pool, shaped like a scorpion (apparently) surrounded by bare light brown mountains (pics at www.energiser.net). Naturally, the Chinese are draining it for hydro-electricity and as no rivers feed it, it'll probably be gone in a few years. That night we stayed in Gyantse, a poor town we'd seen on the BBC's A Year In Tibet. It's main monastery had a fantastic stupa with seventy chapels and a fantastic view from the top. Around the town were several dead dogs who had clearly frozen solid in the sub-zero temperatures at night. We had a heated hotel room. On this occasion.

On the second day we took a short drive to Shigatse, a very poor town further along The Friendship Highway.  We climbed a hill, went "ooh!", then visited another monastery and went "ah!" then ordered some random food at a local restaurant and got stared at lot.

Day three was a long, long drive. The scenery was still fantastic as we drove higher and higher, reaching 5200m and Everest Base Camp. The views of the Himalaya and Mt Everest itself were simply gob-smacking (yes, I've run out of suitable original adjectives and I left my thesaurus at home). The road was a bit hairy getting there but the trip back was in a different league. Our guide decided to take a different route back. The guide book described it as a trekking path. Twice the guide and driver got out, babbling in Tibetan, to check we didn't have a puncture. There were no buildings or people for about 50km, the sun was going down and it was freezing cold. Any incidents and we would have been stuffed. At one point we drove along what I can only describe as a shelf, about 3m wide, sloping down towards a 50m drop-off. We finally got to Tigri, a very, very poor town in the middle of nowhere. The hotel was, well, basic. No shower, no hot water and for all intent and purpose no toilet (this is not an issue for locals who just go anywhere - number twos included - and I'm not exaggerating). There was no heating in the room, so we slept in our clothes and were still cold. Couldn't get out of there quicker in the morning.

On the fourth day we were to drive to the border town of Zhangmu and in the process come down off the Tibetan plateau. We got to within 30km only to find the road closed. They were tarmacking it until 8pm. Dan and I got out and walked. It took five and a half hours and we dropped about a kilometer in the process, but the canyon we walked down was very pretty, changing from scrub-clad rock at the top to lush green Alpine-like forest at the bottom. By the time we got there it was dark and we were knackered. The hotel was rubbish again with no shower or hot water, but it did have a squat loo. It was warmer but we still had to sleep in our clothes.

On Sunday we crossed the border into Nepal and said goodbye to our guide and driver. It was good to be masters of our own destiny again and we immediately went about proving how useless we were at it. After a bit of haggling we got in a taxi to take us to Kathmandu. The tyres looked a bit bald but it was cheap. The road was almost all down hill, there were no seat belts and the driver seemed to have to push the brake petal a few times before the car slowed down. After about half an hour the driver stopped to have his spare tyre fixed which was an annoying delay. Another hour later we got a puncture. We finally made it here and had a shower. Was bliss.

The hotel is quite nice but Kathmandu is expensive, particularly the food. The power goes off for 6 hours a day but the hotel has a generator, so we're only without electricity for a few hours. We've done nothing today except plan the next and last country on this leg - India.

 

DAY 157 - Lhasa, Tibet

For our last day in Chengdu we had a wander around some sights (including a very peaceful if slightly run down monastery) then finished off at a local restaurant with a Sichuan delicacy - the hot pot. This isn't like Betty's hot pot from Coronation Street, it's more like a meat and veg fondue in a very spicy oil. It was very nice but I'd soon had enough. Bit greasy.

We caught the train that evening to Lhasa. It took two days to get there following a horse shoe-shaped route around the mountains, and climbing 3.5km up onto the Tibetan plateau. There was even an oxygen supply in case we felt light-headed. The only symptoms i had though was having to take unusually deep breaths every few minutes or so and an exploding deodourant bottle.

It's only taken a few days here to realise what a complex place Lhasa is. By day the sky is clear, it's warm and the sun's light makes colours more vivid and contrasts more striking. By night it's dark, very cold and a bit oppressive. This is not China, and yet it is. There are troops stationed on every street corner; 16 year old conscripts, balancing a baton round launcher on one arm while attempting to fiddle with their mobile phones in the other. All the streets have been renamed with Chinese names, the writing is mainly Mandarin, and there are the obligatory monuments to The Workers' Struggle sat amidst horrible concrete plazas.

But there is also the real Tibet. The Patala Palace, the one recognisable Tibetan landmark, is set on top of a large rock and looks box-shaped from the outside. Inside however, it's a labyrinth of rooms and corridors with wonky floors, wooden connecting ladders and Buddhist chapels. The colours are magnificent and the smell of incense and burning yak's butter is just the right side of nauseating. Most of the previous Dali Lamas are buried on the top floor, which has to be a first.

We've visited a few monasteries with our guide, most of which have been packed with pilgrims. They take their religion very seriously here. No photos allowed, alas, but one enterprising chapel would allow you to film for 85 quid. I declined.

The timezones around here are all a bit stupid and caught up in politics. Lhasa is on Beijing time (the 'people's time' as the communist mantra goes) so it gets dark (and light) 3 hours later than it should. India is 2.5 hours behind (why the half?). Nepal is 2.25 hours behind, just to make sure you don't confuse it as being part of India (apparently).

DAY 152 - Chengdu, Sichuan, China

By the time we left Dali I was coming down with some sort of flu, but it didn't really hit me until we got to Lijiang. For the next few days I could barely do anything - even standing up sent waves of dizziness through my head. By Sunday though it had worked it's way through my system (from top to bottom) and I was starting to feel better, but Lijiang will be remembered as the town I had to drag myself around.

Lijiang was probably the closest you could come to how old China looked before the modernising started. And how pretty it was. A network of narrow cobbled alleys, each with its own stream and little stone bridges to link them together. Dotted through the town are old wooden water wheels.

Naturally, it hasn't escaped the impact of tourism. Each street is lined mainly with trinket shops, each selling identical over-priced junk, or restaurants, half full at the best of times and with bored-faced locals dressed in local costumes doing a half hearted traditional Naxi jig.

For most of the first day I only noticed the cobbles, as when we did venture out, I barely had the energy to raise my head. Fortunately, by Sunday I was on the mend so we took a tour up to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Apparently at one point it's 4km deep, although from where we were it couldn't have been more than 1 to 1.5. Those nice Chinese people had dug out a cliff-side walkway allowing us (paying) tourists to walk down to the rapids about 3km in. And very impressive it was too, although we didn't see any (real) tigers. On the opposite side of the gorge to where we walked a road had been blasted through, dumping hundreds, nay, thousands of tonnes of rock into the river below. A bit messy really.

On Monday we took a flight to Chengdu in Sichuan. The flight was short but not fun due to a small minority of our fellow travellers misbehaving on the flight (being irritating rather than dangerous), and others using the sick bag as a depository for their flem.

Chengdu is an ugly, grey, concrete, smog-ridden blob. But it does have Pandas. Big cuddly adult Pandas who do nothing but eat and sleep (related to Koalas maybe?), small furry baby Pandas who squeak and roll around like the staff at a PwC Christmas party, and slug-like newly born Pandas who are to ugly to bother with. At the Giant Panda Research Centre we saw all these except the slugs, and learned far too much about the Giant Panda reproductive cycle to be safe just after a large breakfast. The smog was so bad that morning that even though we were outside, we couldn't take a picture without the flash going off, so the results were pretty poor (see the China pictures link at www.energiser.net).

Today we went to see the Grand Buddha of Leshan. It's the biggest Buddha in the world (or summit). It's carved into the cliff by a river about 130km south of here. No-one did a tour down there surprisingly, so we had to make our own way by public bus. I'm proud to say we make it there and back without incident and the Buddha was very... big.

 

The main reason for going to Chengdu was to arrange our trip to Tibet. It's always been expensive and difficult to do, but since the riots there earlier this year it's got a whole lot harder. We've had to arrange and fix our itinerary in advance, we have to have a guide to chaperon us around for the entire visit and we have to pay through the nose for it. That said, it promises to be one of the highlights of the year so hey ho... I'll let you know...

DAY 145 - Dali, Yunnan, China

One day was all we had in Guilin but that was enough. Most of it is pretty much like any other Chinese city. Horrible white-tiled cubic buildings, soiled with the dirt from industrial development and rusting pipework. It's saving grace is its location right in the middle of the Karst landscape which meant there were pockets of natural beauty buried within the city's grid. With so much rock around, the local tourist board had gone into overdrive to find some animal or vegetable that each stony outcrop resembles in an attempt to pull in the punters. "Elephant Trunk Hill" did sort of resemble its tag, but only from one narrow angle of approach. We didn't see many westerners around which was surprising for such a major tourist destination.

Monday evening we set off for Dali. This involved a train (17 hours), a coach (5 hours), a local bus (the wrong one, 20 minutes) and another local bus (the right one, 30 minutes). The town itself must be one of the few places left in China that hasn't been bulldozed and rebuilt in the name of progress. It's laid out in the original square pattern, bordered on four sides by the original town gates. It's set on a gentle slope: to the east, one of China's largest lakes, to the west the first of the mountains which lead up to the Tibetan plateau.

Driving through the Yunnan countryside, it's was clear that China is developing fast, particularly its infrastructure. It's a shame they can't spend more on their people, most of whom appear dirt poor.

We had a look around town to start with. We were trying to find a supermarket, but most large shops seem to be tourist gift shops dressed up as "local food supermarkets". Dan's been "concerned" that we're running out of deodourant, but they don't seem to sell it here which raises some interesting questions. To be fair, it probably says more about our obsession in the West with excessive personal hygiene than anything else.

On Wednesday we took a cable car up into the mountains behind the town. At the top there was an 11km walk (or "cloudy tourist road" as it was called) around the twists and turns of the valleys. The clever thing was that despite being 2km up, the path was flat for it's entire journey, not rising or falling by more than 100m across it's length. Only in China. We were lucky with the weather too and the views were fantastic. At the other end was another cable car to take us down. Unfortunately at this point a local student latched onto us so he could practice his English. Trapped in a hanging basket, there was no escape. After telling us all about himself and asking about us in return, we luckily reached the bottom of the mountain. We were thus saved from him trying to order a meal (lesson 2) or asking directions to the train station (lesson 3).

On Thursday we were going to have a look at three pagodas (not that we haven't seen enough of them already). They wanted £12! Fortunately, you could see them from the road. They looked like they'd been put up in a couple of hours and were made of plywood. Not a patch on some of the older structures we'd seen earlier on our trip. Bit of a tourist rip-off we think.

 

Tonight's meal was pretty typical of the way restaurants and cafes works here. You order your starters and main courses and they arrive in a random order, one dish at a time, over the next hour. Frequently the starters arrive after the mains and if you have more than one main, you can easily have finished the first before the rest arrives. Tonight I ordered Lasagna. I got a pizza. When I pointed out Lasagna has pasta in it, not bread, I was told that was the way the Naxi (local people) do it. And there was me thinking it was Italian. That said, almost always the food is excellent, if not quite what you thought it would be.

DAY 140 - Yangshuo, Guangxi, China

Did you know that China only spends 1% of it's GDP on healthcare compared to 7% or 8% in Western nations? I only mention it because it was the first thing to go through my mind after the events described in the last paragraph below. Better that through my mind than a tree, I suppose.

 

The bus journey to Hanoi was considerably easier than our previous bus trips. In fact, it went rather well. After checking in at a reasonable hotel we decided to have a day off pagodas and stuff, so went to see Quantum Of Solace instead.

By a stroke of luck, the hotel we'd picked just happened to be very close to the area with the highest concentration of Bai Hoi (fresh beer) shops in the city. We spent each night sat on plastic children's garden furniture, wiling the hours away watching life pass us by (or, this being Vietnam, narrowly missing death by moped / taxi, every 20 seconds).

On Sunday we headed out to Halong Bay for a boat ride around it's deservedly famous water scape. Small mountainous islands rise sharply out of the water to look like giant dragon's teeth, covered with green bushes on all but the steepest slopes (the dragon clearly doesn't brush his teeth).

We stopped on floating platforms for a while where fishermen who live in small huts flog their produce at ridiculous prices to gullible tourists. The seafood is then cooked back on board by equally expensive chefs. Our reputation as cheapskates was not compromised. We had the free rubber squid and rice. Despite this, it was an excellent, if long, day out (three hours on a coach each way).

On Monday we splashed out again for a tour to the Perfume Pagoda. It was a long way. First, a couple of hours on a coach. Then an hour in a boat that was no more than a flattened out baked bean tin that floated precariously a couple of centimeters above the waterline. When a motorboat passed by, the resultant wake almost flooded us (ok, I exaggerate). Finally we took a cable car to the cave where the pagoda was located. On this occasion, the getting there was as much part of the trip as the destination itself. The tour guide was useless. His English was rubbish, he had no control over the group and he had little idea on where we were going. Apparently his full time job was as a member of a boy band. He should have stuck to the singing instead of trying (unconvincingly) to over charge us for cable car tickets.

For our last day in Vietnam we hovered around Hanoi itself. Finding shops to buy the basics is easy as the streets are named after the products they sell. So "clothes street" sells clothes, "shoe street" sells footwear and "counterfeit street" sells photocopied money (Oh yes! Apparently needed for religious purposes).

In the evening we got the train for China.

First stop has been Yangshuo. Whereas nearby Guilin is more famous, Yangshuo is smaller, friendlier and infinitely more prepared for western backpackers. The location is simply fantastic. The Karst scenery looks a lot like Halong Bay in Vietnam, but on land and magnified several times over. The weather is decidedly chilly - but not cold - which is perfect for cycling, so on Thursday we hired bikes and pedalled around the surrounding countryside for some gob-smacking views. There aren't masses of tourists here either which makes it even more pleasurable. The land is a hundred shades of green, only broken by the blue sky, the brown rock and the multicoloured fly-tipped rubbish the Chinese drop anywhere and everywhere.

In the evening we saw some Cormorant fishing. The fisherman ties an elastic band around the birds' throats (so they can't swallow) then takes them out onto the river on a bamboo boat. In the water the birds dive to catch fish and when their necks are bulging, the fisherman hauls the birds back on board and removes the fish with a good whack on the neck. Sounds cruel, but the birds behave like well trained dogs and don't try to escape, and they get a share of the catch at the end.

Generally I like China more than Vietnam. People don't try quite as hard here to rip you off. However, the locals do suffer badly from the Three S's: Shoving, Shouting and Spitting.

 

Friday we took a boat ride to view more of the scenery during the day and went for a lightshow in the evening. The lightshow was great and something only the Chinese could put on. With several hundred  performers, it was set on water with the Karst mountains illuminated behind it. Fantastic. It was a shame the locals had to shout all the way through it.

 

We liked Yangshuo so much, we decided to stay another day... Bad mistake.

 

Mum, you'd better stop reading now.

Our last full day in this part of China was a visit to the Dragon's Backbone rice terraces. The coach took us up into the hills and onto some windy roads, high above the fields. At this point the driver lost control of the coach as we rounded a bend and we crashed to a stop. The front window dropped out and the door (in a strangely comic way) fell off. We climbed out through the hole at the front, hinting to the driver that it may be a good idea to turn the electrics off. From outside we could see where we had landed. As the coach had left the road its front right wing had clipped a half meter high concrete wall. This was the only thing that had stopped us going over the edge and dropping at least 100 metres to the ground. Most of the bend had no protection at all so we were lucky to have hit it. One girl was taken away in an "ambulance" (a shuttle bus with no equipment and a cross painted on the side). Dan and I got away with bruised knees and frayed nerves. It's a bit scary when you realise your life was almost certainly saved by a small lump of concrete. I'll never slag off 60s architecture again. After all that we eventually got to the rice terraces only to find the place smothered in fog, so we couldn't see anything.

Oh well. That's travelling for ya.

DAY 132 - Hue, Vietnam

The bus trip to Hoi An was a right balls-up. We bought an "open tour" ticket designed for tourists (although with a few back handers to the driver, the bus soon filled up with locals). The trip was supposed to consist of two legs, both on a "sleeper" coach. Unfortunately for us the company we booked with hadn't bothered to phone through our booking for the connection, so after 10 hours on the first bus we arrived at the half way point and the connecting bus was full and unable to take us. We finally got a seat on a non-sleeper bus - the last two seats - right at the back. The suspension was suspect, and we bounced along like five year olds on a trampoline.

After about an hour we passed the sleeper bus on the side of the road. It had broken down. Oh, how we laughed. I couldn't help indulging in some schadenfreude at that one. We never saw it again. Our coach finally pulled into the back of a hotel in Hoi An where the gates slammed shut behind us. We were supposed to be good obedient tourists and book into that hotel (so the bus company could get it's commission). I don't think so, mate.

Hoi An was a breath of fresh air after Saigon/HCMC. It was a lovely little river side town with old yellow-washed buildings, much less traffic and much less hassle. The only slightly worrying thing was that every night the streets closest to the river flooded as the tide backed up the channel. The locals, never to miss a trick, had marked the high points of each rainy season's flood on the inside walls of their houses and showed them off to tourists.

It was also here that we discovered "fresh beer". Locally brewed, no preservatives, delivered daily and only 4000 Dong (16p) a glass. The quality was far from consistent though and each night was tantamount to spinning the roulette wheel. A good day would be a fantastic tasting drink and a fun evening. A bad day could mean a head in the pan and a stinking hangover. Loved it.

We had a tour on Tuesday to an old ruin called My Son which was nice. None of the ruins in Vietnam seem particularly well looked after, but that doesn't stop them charging you to see them.

The short trip to Hue ran more smoothly than the trip to Hoi An, although still took four hours. The hotel is reasonable and dirt cheap, and there's the usual mix of tombs 'n religious buildings to see. Generally a pleasant place, although the Lasagna I had last night was more like a beef noodle soup than anything of Italian origin.

Today it's been raining all day. We went to have a look at the Citadel where the kings of Vietnam used to live and got wet. My mother would call this sort of rain "wet rain". It rains lightly so you don't where a coat, yet still get soaked because it's actually raining quite hard.

Don't ask.

Tonight we brave the sleeper bus to Hanoi.

Rich.