I wish it could be Christmas every day...

Well in Hanoi it is! Or at least it appeared that way as we taxied our way into the city centre under drizzly grey autumnal skies, fresh off the plane and still rocking shorts and t-shirts. Shop fronts sparkled with decorations, hotel lobbies sported green plastic Christmas Trees and Santa's peered from the rear windows of cars. It was mid January. We were a little confused. Our taxi driver had no idea where he was going and couldn't speak a word of English and pointing to the map in the guide book only seemed to confound him further, but he nodded and made positive noises anyway. I'm pretty sure we could have shown him a map of Bolton and he would have done the same, but we were getting a free impromptu tour of Hanoi and frankly we weren't complaining. In fact neither of us could stop smiling as we passed street upon street amazing looking food stalls, women in conical hats carrying yokes piled high with fruit and vegetables and old men sipping steaming tea on street corners.

After four months of amazing travel in India everything looked brand new; different faces, different architecture, different smells and sounds and we were excited. Eventually we found our hotel, and in fairness to the driver it wasn't easy - hidden down and alleyway with no sign and sandwiched between a hairdressers and a moped repair shop. I'll tell you this though, ten bucks gets you a lot in Vietnam, the room was a palace compared to what we'd been used to for the last several months, "We've got a DVD player! Check the beds out - silk throws! We've got a fully loaded fridge! The shower has got proper water pressure! Amazing!" The young Vietnamese guy stood in the door way with our bags must have been wondering whether the weird hyperactive English girl usually carried out inventory on every hotel room she stayed in. I asked him "whats with all the Christmas decoration still up?" "We like them" was the response. As good as answer as any I suppose...

As I'm sure you've worked out now, food is a pretty central theme to the blog (and drinking, yes...) and Hanoi was looking good. You know things are going to be interesting when you've got a woman with huge pot of black snails cooking away outside the front door of your hotel. Now, don't get me wrong, we loved the food in India, it is hugely addictive, incredibly tasty and always different wherever you go, but the Vietnamese take cooking seriously. Indian street food is good, but once you've suffered a few bouts of Delhi Belly and spent several days on the pot wondering whether it was battered thing with the black sludgy dal in the bus park in Jaipur, or the vegetable pakora cooked in possible week old oil on the high street in Bikaner, you get a wee bit wary. Never once did this happen in Hanoi. I'm sure once you get out into the burbs there are plenty of dodgy establishments, but the food in the city always looked and smelled fantastic. As the advice goes, if its busy, and its being cooked in large amounts (usually by a grumpy woman who looks like she means business) then you're pretty much ok. This seemed to be the case for most of Hanoi's numerous street food stalls.

The way things seemed to work is that each stall will specialise in something different; maybe a particular noodle dish, soup, kebab, salad or even just one type of seafood, like our sea snail lady next to the hotel. This means dinner is basically picking what you want then finding the stall that does it. If you want a salad to start then you can, and you then can follow it up with some shellfish at another stall two streets down. It's literally like having a huge market to walk round containing all the things you want to eat and someone there to cook them all in the best way possible. Grab yourself one of the playschool plastic chairs made for mini people that the locals perch on and some 30p beer and away you go!

Just before we came away I had a two day blow out and gastro-bender with my brother for his 30th birthday, which I would be missing. As some of you probably know Tom's a pretty decent amateur chef and and to say he likes his food is an understatement (a 1.3 kilo T-Bone steak eaten in Rome is still the Personal Best as far as I know, the sick man...). We picked one restaurant each; I chose St John  in Smithfield, Tom went for Bocca di Lupo in Soho . Over the course of of 24 hours we ate and drank as well as two blokes can. Between us we devoured Roasted Marrow Bone with Parsley, Ox Heart, Sweetbreads with Fennel and Bacon, Radish, Celeriac and Pecorino Salad with Truffles, Lardo di Colonnata with Walnuts, Tuscan Blood sausage with fava beans and Foccacia with lung and spleen simmered in lard and smoked ricotta. We even ate a full English breakfast in a greasy spoon in between which I'm mildy appalled at myself with. So, I was on the phone within the first day of arriving for the wind up... "mate you have got to see some of the food here!" listing a smorgasbord of grub "Ive already eaten two dinners today! You would love it - literally the best shellfish I've ever seen and loads of mad shit Ive never seen before, its as cheap as it gets too". I got the impression it was mild torture for Tom at the other end. "I'm so happy for you. It's pissing it down here and now you've made me want to get lunch" Sorry bro.

While we're on the subject, the coffee is worth mentioning too. It's outstanding. Our first cup of the local stuff was in a tiny doorway shop where an old guy who looked like Mr Miagi still weighs out the beans with lead weights on vintage brass scales. It's got a incredibly distinctive taste - slightly nutty and chocolaty, very strong and thick and it rips your head off. After a proper cup of Roman Espresso its about the best cup of coffee I've ever had. We later discovered that's its just as good iced and mixed with sweet condensed milk too, which in the ninety degree heat of the South goes down a hell of lot better than the hot stuff.

Anyway, it was good to be back in a city where there was so much to eat and drink for the first time, and the three days we planned on staying quickly turned into a week. Just so we're clear and you don't think we're a pair of chunkers we did actually do some cultural excursions (see pics for evidence) other than hang around street stalls stuffing our faces, although admittedly that was a considerable part of it. There actually aren't a huge amount of specific sites to see in Hanoi, but if you're happy just to wander and take it in then its perfect - the Old Quarter is hugely atmospheric and an absolute hive of activity (based mainly around cooking or eating unsurprisingly) and its fascinating to get lost in - provided you don't get taken out by one of the millions of mopeds that seem to be hell-bent on driving into you.

We had a couple of really good nights out too; the Saturday night market is superb and rammed with locals and there are some good bars also including a decent smoky Jazz club which we hit one rainy night (naturally). There were some pretty talented local musicians belting out some of the old classics and an excellent guest sax player who got up and went a bit crazy - the locals seemed to love it though and we got summoned over to a table full of extremely drunk office workers who seemed to want to toast themselves and us every ten seconds and drink themselves into total oblivion while sliding steadily off their chairs. Very funny to watch...

It's probably fair to say no other nation that conjures up a more vivid set of images in the global psyche than Vietnam. For many the name itself still represents a conflict more than a country - it was really interesting to start to separate the modern reality from the history lessons. Later on we'd see more of the ravages of the wars Vietnam had been subject to, but for now it was enough to be spending time in a beautiful, sophisticated Eastern city drinking in a whole new set of experiences.

View our pics here:

Hanoi

Planet Rock

You'll be pleased to know this is only a short blog, not one of the usual mega-essays, and the last from our four months in India...

Hampi, in the state of Karnataka was our final destination before we left for Vietnam and kind of an addendum to original plans, but it really turned out to be one of the most fascinating places we'd been and it's worth a mention in its own right.

People almost always say when talking about thier travels "the pictures don't do it justice", and while that's undoubtedly a truism here, you can probably get a fair idea from the pics we snapped as to why were so blown away by it - it really is quite unlike anywhere else you're ever likely to visit. Just in terms of the bizarreness of its geological makeup alone, its visual impact is huge. Vast mountains of house-size red boulders sit stacked upon each other as far as the eye can see - almost like piles of pebbles by placed there by giant hands. Lone ones balance impossibly on the tops of hills silhouetted against the blue sky. A winding river flows though the valley floor filled with men on coracles and lush green paddy fields surrounded by palm trees reflect the images of the mountains. Somewhere, an lone eagle screams high over head...OK - I'm taking the piss now but you get the picture. It's easy to see why this place was, and still is viewed as holy land, and there are temples and shrines every where to testify. It really does feel at times like you're on the set of an Indiana Jones film, although in the eternal tradition of fact being weirder than fiction its hard to imagine anything but nature being able to bring to life somewhere so fascinating.

The main town itself is bisected by the wide meandering river with the bulk of it on the South side and the quieter more traveler-friendly area on the North. We stayed on the North bank which is only reachable by boat across the river and even then it seemed only until six pm when you would then have to grab someone with a coracle to get you across. It never failed to entertain how there could be only three people waiting for the boat and literally as it arrived another twenty Indians would appear and pile on in front, usually with half a ton of bananas and pineapples to boot.

We ended up spending five days in Hampi, a few of which we spent exploring the incredible temple complexes and landscape. We climbed the five hundred and fifty odd steps to the top of the mountain where the Temple of Hannuman (the Monkey God) looks over the valley and we watched the sun set over one of the most incredible views in India (which is more difficult than you'd imagine when you've got two red faced monkeys going at it like Pamela and Tommy Lee next to you).

We'd landed on our feet with the hotel too where we had a cottage which looked right across the paddy fields, so we took in a couple of final afternoons of kicking back Indian style before we hit the road for our longest journey yet - a mega ten hours by bus to Mangalore, fifteen hours by train to Cochin, five hour flight to Kuala Lumpur with six hours in the airport before connecting to Hanoi. Still, on the way we got chased in traffic in a rickshaw for three miles by a crazed dog after some takeaway pizza, I got thrown out of a chemist (best not to ask) and accidentally George Bush-style insulted a man with no legs (best not to ask again), got into a seat war with a weirdo from Hospet who insisted that he wanted to sit next to Sam for the entire bus journey and got my photo taken with Ronald MacDonald. At least it wasn't dull!

View our pics here:

Hampi

The View from the Afternoon

Back in 1994 the hugely influential (later to be huge sell-out), proto-superstar DJ Paul Oakenfold returned from a trip to India, ranting and quite literally raving about the burgeoning trance scene in Goa. Fusing the ferral, dark psychadelic sound with more club friendly productions he went on to mix what was considered (arguably) to be the best Essential Mix ever to be broadcast on Radio One, and in the process denonated the Goa Trance sound in Europe.

Psy-trance, as it eventually came to be known, was relatively short lived as a mainstream club pheonomenon, but the spiritual, otherworldly production values that gave the music its haunting edge lived on through Progressive House which went on to dominate the global dance scene into the next millenium. Whether this means Paul Oakenfold is single handedly responsible for unleashing the appalling crimes on fashion that were orange trance-utility-trousers, and the rest of the flouro-related clobber that followed remains to be debated. EIther way, Goa is still indelibly linked with the image of wild beach parties soundtracked by booming trance, dreadlocked hippies in tie-dye, and acid sunrises. So having never made it over back in the day, I was looking forward to seeing whether this was still actually still the case - whether the Goa of public imagination still existed, or whether time, and popularity as a holiday destination had changed all that...

From chatting to friends before we arrived it pretty much seemed that there were two sides to Goa. Advice seemed to be "South Goa is chill out, North Goa is Party time". So, heading up from Kerala we hit the South first for a bit of R&R before the Christmas binge in the North, and on the advice of Goa stalwarts Matt and Lucy, made our way to Pallolem Beach.

Arriving an hour before sunrise it looked spectacular. A stunning, empty, tropical stretch of golden sand lined with cocohuts and flanked by a rocky bay. As it was three weeks before the main season kicked off it was still pretty quiet, and we spent a week being about as lazy as two people can be, lounging in hammocks, drinking cocktails before lunch and generally soaking up the sun. It was pretty hard to pull ourselves away when time to move on came around, but we had people to meet and a family holiday to invade!

Now I like to think that over the course of the last few months we'd been pretty good as far as "keeping it cultural" and holding down the partying goes (we both agreed that we did enough of that at home), and we were feeling in pretty good shape. However, all that was about to go shit - amazing how meeting up with some familiar faces from home turf can unleash the bad habits (admitedly it doesnt take much), but lets just say on the first day we met up with Jen and Smiffy in Calingute in North Goa, an entire case of large Kingfisher, two bottles of wine and a bottle of rum "disapeared" mysteriously by the pool in one afteroon...

Calingute is the overdeveloped commercial beach resort town where holiday makers flock every year for cheap bars and pubs, loud music and boozy afternoons on the beach, and what a beach it is...I've honestly never seen one so busy in my life. Rammed from top to bottom it looks pretty much like vintage Benidorm (with cows of course) and was loaded with the requisite Lobster-Red Europeans in floppy hats chain smoking and knocking back the premium strength lager. You know its going to be interesting when you hear "Who the fuck is Alice" coming from a bar in the first ten mintutes. Not really my type of thing, but when in Rome, eat chips.

Anyway, Jen and Smiffy had kindly sorted us a smart and unfeasably cheap apartment with pool on the quiet end of town and the next two weeks kind of turned into a family holiday within a holiday, with all the added entertainment that kids deliver. "Mum I'm not eating this, its weird, have they got fish fingers?", "Mum Dillon's locked him self out of the room again", "Mum Rhys shot me in the head with an elastic band" etc. But to be frank, we all know blokes don't ever really grow up and there can't be many better ways to spend afternoons than enjoying ice cream/cold beers on the beach, going crabbing in rock-pools and fishing with telescopic rods and spinners. Admittedly, although Smiffy had bought two rods for the kids, they didn't get much chance to use them due to our extensive, erm, "demonstrating classes".

Being the build up to Christmas too there was clearly some sort of competetion going on with a few of the Northern ex-pat Brits who lived in the apartment complex we were staying in. Every day after returning from the beach more flashing tat seemed to have appeared on two of the balconies, reaching the point where you could probably have seen them from space. Powercuts are a pretty much daily affair in India, but I'm sure the ones in our block were down to the massive electrical drain caused by 9 thousand fairy lights, 4 giant flashing stars and several luminous Santas going full pelt 12 hours a day.

Nights were spent mainly down on the beach eating and drinking at the numerous beach shacks which battled to see who could play the loudest six year old Electro House records (How many versions of Robin S's Show me Love are there?) and we did pull a few allnighters which ended up resulting in some messy mornings on Vagator Beach (see picture of Smiffy and angry cow in photos for good example). We hired a few mopeds, went to the markets, took a boat out to do some proper sea fishing and saw dolphins, got invited to an ex-pat OAP Bingo party and generally avoided being sober. Christmas day turned out pretty good too. Paragliding, Barbequed fish and curry! Smiffy somehow managed to eat six different dinners at six bars which was quite impressive, but I think he may have suffered internal hemoraging by the look of him next day.

So with internal organs still barely functioning we said our goodbyes to the Oxford Massive and hit the road again having finally got in contact with Leicester peeps Matt, Lucy and Jonnie who'd been on a mammoth road trip through Maharashtra on the trusty Enfield Bullets (real men drive 50cc mopeds though). They were heading down to Palolem for New Years Eve and we were more than happy to return after our week there in early December. Pretty much everyone had doubled thier rates in North Goa (thanks overspending Russians!), and frankly judging by the increasing daily torrent of new holiday makers arriving for the festivities it looked like Calingute and Bagga could turn into one of Dantes Circles of hell in a few days. By the time we'd arrived down at Palolem again even the tranquil bay we'd seen just a few weeks ago was now busy, so we took a beach hut at the quiet Patnem beach a few Kilometres down the road, which turned out to be a good choice - we stayed in beach shack with some great people, talked total rubbish over afternoon beers and on NYE had a bonfire and BBQ on the beach before heading over to meet Lu and Matt on Palolem. Wading through the unbelievably packed full moon high tide beach we only just made it for midnight celebrations in the most disorganised bar on earth. We didnt stay long (the booze was running dry rapidly) and headed off to Agonda beach for long and entertaining night of partying. We finally made it home sometime around 11am the next morning. Happy New Year!

It was great to catch up with the guys...and we'd finally started to see what all the fuss about Goa was. Maybe we were missing something, but the North just didnt do it for us, the South however, is beautiful and we'd definately go back. It's easy to see why you could end up getting stuck there, and we found ourselves staying at Patnem for another several days before we moved on to Hampi in Karnataka which we'd heard so much about.

As far as whether the fabled psychadelic Goa of 90's still existed - it's hard to say; mainly because we never actually made it a proper party (getting old?). We did consider heading to the "Russian Progressive House and Minimal Night" for about 5 seconds but then decided against it - meat heads in Lime Banana hammocks doth not make a good party.

Without doubt, opinion is "It's not what it used to be" (isn't it always...). The rules regulating the shutting off of soundsystems before midnight don't help either and judging by the average age of the grizzled Trance Monsters at Anjuna market, it's unlikely that there is going to be any massive underground resurgence as the area continues to commercialise. But, Goa definately does have a certain magic and is clearly still a very special place for a lot of people. I still hold Paul Oakenfold responsible for those Orange Trance Trousers though...

View our pics here:

Goa Part 1

Goa Part 2

River deep, Mountain high

It's kind of a given that if you're going to explore Kerala then taking a trip on a houseboat is a must, so ending our beach-bum stint we left Varkala taking the short trip Northward up the coast to Kollam, where we boarded an overnight cruise through the lush tropical backwaters. The majority of the traditional style boats are now mainly used for tourism but life on the river is pretty much the same as it has been for centuries; dominated by sustainance and small scale commercial fishing and dotted with little villages where the river is central to pretty much everything in life. The day was spent chugging along the lakes and channels with a few hours on a small rowing boat drifting through the tiny waterways that threaded through the villages. We stopped for chai at a banana plantation, took a walk though a spice garden and at sundown were taken to the local temple and then on to our young guides house in the forest to meet his mother and sister, who showed us the usual Indian rural hostpitality. Along the way we stopped to say hi to numerous locals who all seemed to be either cousins or aunties or uncles too - it seems no one strays too far from home on the backwaters! We had an early start the following morning, heading on to Alleppey where we appeared to be staying in the middle of a menagery - outside our bedroom window were ducks, a fox, parrots a pair of friendly and inquisitive mongoose and a large and not so friendly emu. It made for an interesting alarm clock anyway!

From Alleppy we then took the boneshaking bus trip that climbed west to the rolling green hills and valleys of the Western Ghats - Keralas inland highland region best known for its tea and spice plantations. The public buses in india are always a mini-adventure, a bit like being stuck in a rusty sardine can on wheels full of all sorts of random people. It never fails to amaze firstly how fast and efficently the drivers manage to get round potholed hairpin bends on mountain roads without hitting anything, secondly how the buses havent actually fallen apart yet, and thirdly just how many people its possible to get inside one. As the already fully seated bus pulled into a small town about 30km from our destination it was clear that school had just finished - imaculately dressed kids were pouring out and running toward the bus. About 20 managed to get on, making it about as packed as we thought it could get. But no! At the next village it stopped again and Sam and I looked at each other in disbelief as litterally another 20 kids somehow wedged themselves in by crawling in between peoples legs, climbing up and standing on the back of chairs, hanging on to the luggage racks, and sitting on the laps of whoever was seated. Face were squashed against windows and armpits against faces. A rickety old bus that must have been made for 30 people now containted about 70. The soundtrack to the next 20km was of zombie style moaning as we felt the full force of every pothole. I'm not even sure there was enough oxygen on the bus for everybody...

Arriving in Kummily, the small town close to the Peryar Wildlife Park, the first thing you notice notice is the smell. It's good. Usually in Indian towns that is not the case. As big producers of Cardamom, Cloves and Vanilla, there are rows of shops lining the main street and it fills the air. Unfortunately their isnt much else in Kummily. But it does smell nice. If you like spice. It had been raining pretty much from the minute we arrived so there wasnt much to do really - we'd planned on doing a full days trekking into the hills to see elephants, but talking to some guys who'd done it the day before and spent what sounded like a miserable afternoon wading through wet leech infested rainforest we decided to let the weather clear up before hand. So, we had to do the only other thing that you could do besides going to the pub. Go to the Tea Factory. Rock and Roll.

Now Sam and I like tea (me - Earl Grey, little milk, one sugar please, Sam - PG Tips Builders Tea - bag pressed against cup), but lets face it - tea factories are the sort of places you go on school trips. Had it been a vineyard I would have been there like a shot, but it wan't, so donning our macs Howard and Hilda style (should I have brought a notebook and pen?), off we trundled for the highlight of our years travelling. Our rickshaw broke down on the way. Initially I was a bit pissed about this as it was still chucking it down and we were getting slowly soaked, but when we arrived it turned out that litterally every cloud does have a silver lining! At the entrance we were informed by an appologetic tour guide that unfortunateley the hour long "How tea is made" film had already started and we would thus not be able to attend and have to proceed directly to the factory walk and plantation. I did my best to hide my disapointment. To summarise the trip to the tea factory, I would say that it may have enabled me to answer some trivial persuit questions that I might not have known the answer to before, but on balance, the Rexel Cumberland Pencil Factory in the Lake District which I went to when I was eleven was still slightly better.

The rain continued, but we did eventually get to do a short trek in in Peryar Park; no elephants alas, but lots of monkeys and leeches. The next morning we headed further up into the Western Ghats to the hill station of Munnar. The surrounding areas are some of the highest tea plantations in the world and the views are stunning - the uniform height (twenty seven inches - I did learn something at the factory!!) that the tea bushes are cut to make the hills look like a giant rolling green shag pile carpet, and at a distance, almost like one vast golf course. Munnar itself is a shabby and odd town, and it seems suprisingly out of place amongst such stunning scenery. Our disapointment with it was further compounded by arriving late and getting the last room in the worst hotel in town. Sandwiched between the local Kerala State Alcohol Shop and a half demolished house full of dogs and chickens with two old fellas burning a fire made of plastic bags, it could have been better located and the queue of alcoholics past the bedroom window wasnt ideal, but at least we didn't have to walk far for a beer.

Following a lovely night in the palatial surroundings of Hotel Fantastic and a "refreshing" morning shower of cold water with a bucket we set out for Top Station; the highest point in Kerala and the border of Tamil Nadu. The scenery grew more dramatic the higher we rose and we'd expected a spectacular view into Tamil from the top, but we were actauly above cloud level by the time we got there - zero visabilty - so we sat in the caf with the locals and our driver, drank chai and eat some very good cakes. From there it was down hill all the way...well nearly.... 6 hours drive back to Cochin, then 15 hours by train to our home for the next month...Goa, and party time...

View our pics here:

Kerala Part 2

I'm Still Standing

The Indian people are a pretty tollerant lot by and large. They dealt with the tiger-shooting, tea obsessed British Raj for a hundred years, still deal with the tattooed, beer drinking British invasion of Goa every year and, on the whole, seem pretty relaxed about the whole thing. However whilst staying at a hotel in the small Keralan town of Kollam, we saw tollerance taken to a whole new level. Walking into the hotel lobby they were playing the sort of "Pan Pipe Moods" muzak that you hear in dodgy european supermakets and lifts; only after about half and hour we realised that it was the same song over and over again, which, unfortunately, happened to be "Sacrafice" by Elton John.

Now, I don't mind a bit of vintage Elton from the Bernie Taupin partnership days, but Sacrafice is not exactly one of pops finer moments - to put it lightly. Seeing as we were only staying the one night though it was hardly the worst possible torture to endure. However, things did start to veer towards aural assault when it came blasting onto the piped music system at 6.30 the following morning, at which point I could take no more and sprung out of bed (a rare event) and stormed downstairs to reception to ask them to turn the f*cking thing off and why the hell were they playing a Bontempi keyboard version of Sacrafice by Elton John non stop for 24 hours anyway?...to which the poor bastard on the desk replied "Is that what this is Sir? Oh thank you! I have been wondering what it was for the last month...". Ouch.

Anyway, we had arrived in Kerala; the lush green state with the beautiful beaches on Indias South West coast and pretty much the first thing we did was head straight to a restaurant and order half a menus worth of seafood. I had been fantasising about Grilled Tiger prawns, Tandoori Snapper, Curried Crab, Calamari, Seafood Chowder, Massala Mussels and a host of other sea dwelling gastronomic delights for the last few weeks in North India. Not to say that we weren't enjoying the food in the North, but after two months the same twenty five items on every menu does get a little strained, and frankly there was no way we were ordering anything that swam in an ocean 800 miles inland. Fort Cochin, the old Portugese colonial district of Keralas capital was our first destination and perfect for gorging on fruit de mer. The smell of the harbour was in the air from the minute you arrived and you could pretty much see the famous Chinese fishing nets from most of the compact towns restaurants. We ate a plate of big super fresh prawns cooked in coconut and chilli, a whole grilled garlic-butter Red Snapper and a side of calamari washed down with cold beer and went to bed happy people. I won't even tell you how much it cost too, because it will only make you jealous.

Fort Cochin is a strange little place. Situated on the end of a pininsula accross the bay from the more noisy industrial side of the city, it feels more like a large village on a lazy sunday afternoon in places than a town. Smart little (and some not so little) whitewashed Portugeuse style houses and quiet streets give it a relaxed feeling a world away from the North, and after several weeks of total imersion into the Hindu way of life it seemed odd - almost out of place too see churches and chapels again. Although Christianity has been in Kerala for hundreds of years and is clearly an established religion there, you do get an underlying feeling that it doesnt quite fit in. Something about the way that Indians treat the imagery of Chrisianity seems like its being practised in way that a Hindu would do it, with the religions key players and symols, Jesus, Mary, the Crucifix etc all being turned into forms of Idol Worship. Many homes have what are effectively Christian shrines in them, often with a picture of Jesus (white of course) surrounded by strips of flashing lights and adorned with flowers and possibly some plastic figures of the disciples knocking around underneath.

To a practising european Christan this would probably look crude, tacky and out of line with the generally austere principles of the church, but thats often what Hindu shrines look like - the more gaudy and colourful the better. I have to say I quietly liked the fact that early white colonialists with a misguided belief that a monotheistic god was superior haven't totally been able to wipe out the traditions of the indiginous people. You've never seen such entertaining Christmas Nativity setups either. I wouldn't have been suprised to pull back the blanket on the baby Jesus's manger and find a sneeky Krishna hiding in there...

We only spent a few days in Cochin, which is all you need really. We ate, drank took a trip to a Cherai beach on Vypeen Island and watched some fascinating fishing techniques down on the harbour before catching a train to the superbly named Thiruvananthapuram (we stuck wih the English version - Trivandrum) where we arrived in an almighty rainstorm that had been going on for three days.
Stepping out of the station there was a good foot of water to wade through, so we sacked off the bus and hailed an old Ambassador taxi that stank of wet dog down to Kovalam beach. The rain was still thundering down when we got to the end of the tiny road that led to the beach and the taxi driver refused to take us any further, so we headed on blindly, packs on backs, through through the squal to find our accomodation.

Kovalam is basically one long beach with restaurants along its front and a maze of tiny muddy allyways with houses, huts, forest and eventually paddy fields behind. We had no idea where we were going and were both soaked to the skin in 2 minutes. Clearly no sensible person had come out that night and those that did were more interested in getting somewhere dry than giving directions to a couple of tourons in flip-flops 6 inches deep in fast flowing muddy water. Finally after a lot of buggering about we arrived and were greeted by an smiling old couple who plied us with chai and towells. I've probably said it before, but It's pretty hard to stay pissed off in India.

Now, nobody really wants to hear about someone elses beach holiday so I won't bore you with the details. Once the weather cleared up it basically invloved not a lot except laying on some sand as you do, going to restaurants to eat ridiculously cheap and ridiculously good seafood twice a day and making important decisions like whether to have a beer or a rum and coke. While the food was good we both felt pretty underwhelmed by Kovalam (the package holiday had clearly arrived) so left for Varkalala up the coast which we'd reliably been informed was much nicer. And it was.
Staying at what was our best hotel name yet "Santa Claus Village" (not one fecking elf thought the lying bastards) we did pretty much the same as Kovalam albeit in much nicer surroundings.

Varkala can be described a pretty much a massive Ewok Village perched on top of an iron-red cliff top with a long stretch of beach below. It's got a nice laid back feel to it and was a pretty easy place to spend some time. For my birthday Sam got me (and her) a course of Ayurvedic Massage, which was hell as you can imagine. Three days of three hour massages is hard work I can tell you. We saw the best display of DJing ingenuity yet that night too - an Indian guy somehow playing off an Ipod and Blackberry wired into an amp, just a shame he was crap really. Day Tripper mixed into Psycadelic Trance does NOT go, possibly thematically in an abstract sort of way, but definately not musically. I nearly had words, but Sam told me I was "pissed and a DJ pest" and to leave the master to his work.

We finished off a pretty decent birthday sat on the cliff top drinking low grade rum in a powercut and watching a mindblowing lightening storm fifty miles out over the dark ocean. And who said romance was dead? I have zero recolection of the conversation I had with my parents later that night too, but apparently I seemed "in a very good mood". Cheap booze, a shit disco and a decent light show still do the trick then...

View our pictures here:

Kerala Part 1

Thieves in the temple

Maybe it was the fact that after several weeks traveling in India we were getting more used to the controlled chaos, or maybe it was that we were just happy to to be back to civilization after our trip to Kashmir, but we both took to Delhi straight away. Arriving at eight AM after a twelve hour bus ride from Jammu in Kashmir, it felt good to be in a bustling city again, and after the usual bartering with Auto rickshaw drivers trying to cash in on snoozy travelers fresh off the fun bus, we motored our way to our hotel in the Paharganj district.

We only had a few days in Delhi as were heading back to Rajasthan for the second part of the Pushkar Camel Festival which was already underway, so we decided to check out Old Delhi first. If you can conjure up the chaos of central London on a busy Saturday afternoon around Christmas time (not pleasant I know), then you are part way to conceiving just how busy Old Delhi is - chuck in load of cows and dogs, swap Hackney Carriages and red buses for black and yellow three wheeled Autos and bone shaking Victorian cycle rickshaws, and imagine nothing has been cleaned for a about a hundred years, and you start to get the picture. Old Delhi is miracle of the urban world; how it functions is not quite clear, but somehow it does - Chandi Chowk, the long crazily busy main road running from the junction at the Red Fort is a effectively Old Delhi's Oxford Street with a maze of side streets and Bazaars connected to it. Stopping to look at anything is a dangerous game, as even the mildest whiff of interest on your part is tantamount to you wanting to buy. Shopkeepers shout enthusiastically to grab your attention from all sides and for all sorts of products - quite why an Englishman abroad would suddenly need to buy a king size mattress, a load of Tupperware, some industrial detergent an old pram I wasn't sure, but these apparently were items I needed in my life. On reflection, the mattress could have come in handy with some the beds we've been sleeping on, and maybe I could have wheeled it round on the pram, but I'm still reasonably convinced declining to purchase was the right decision on this occasion.

Venturing into the Bazaars is a voyage into the unknown, and frankly we had no idea where they led to or where they came out, so we just wandered, pushed along by the human tide. Inside the tiny network of streets lies total chaos. Although not totally covered, a strange filtered half-light pervades due to the high sided buildings flanking the walkways and the loose wiring hanging down from the dense spiders web of cabling overhead. Small shops trading mostly jewelery or fabrics are packed tightly together with barely any room to move in between, and at points the bazaar came to a total standstill with no-one able to move. Invariably then someone on a motorbike loaded with boxes would appear and try to squeeze down the middle causing further chaos, but somehow it all keeps moving. You get the impression that bar the presence of modern technology, this is probably not far off how it all operated a century ago.

Eventually we emerged onto a main street, and spent the rest of the afternoon looking round the old city with the odd beer in between. Getting lost is not really a problem either as you're never more than ten yards from a rickshaw, so when we'd had enough we headed back to the relative calm of the hotel. That evening we decided to go posh and eat at one Delhi's more stylish restaurants on Connaught Place. We even had a bottle of wine - the first one in a month, which, as Sam pointed out, is probably a new record for me. We'd both heard mixed reports about Delhi but it's really likable place. Yes, it can be dirty and overcrowded and intense, but it has a lot of character and it's certainly unlike any other capital city you're likely to visit.

We spent a couple more days exploring before catching the six thirty AM Shatabdi Express to Pushkar for the Camel Festival. Pushkar is a small but striking Rajasthani desert town that once a year plays host to a huge Camel trading fair combined with a religious festival. We'd been told that the holy lake the town surrounds was "a bit low" this year and that it would likely have a negative effect on the numbers of pilgrims visiting, but this clearly wasn't the case - the town was heaving with a mix of hard looking desert traders, fair people, pilgrims, backpackers and the extraordinary looking Sadhus who'd made the journey. Clearly the festival was an an annual Indian photography highlight too, as I've never seen as many cameras in one place - some with telephoto lenses as long as your forearm. This was looking like fun and were both looking forward to a few days at the weirdest festival we'd been to yet. Unfortunately, things didn't pan out as expected and the following morning while working our way through a crowd leaving a temple, I got my bag stolen which contained my Canon camera, prescription glasses, sunnies, wallet, and all my bank cards - basically everything useful! The whole previous afternoons and evenings pictures were on the camera too and we were now left sans camera for what was probably the best opportunity to get some amazing images we'd have in Northern India...frustrating was not the word. Anyway, we're insured, so it was more a case of frustration than anything, but the police were utterly useless, being by run by a Rajasthani version of Chief Wigam. It was patently obvious that there was zero chance of getting anything back. After a bit of research into getting a new camera it also meant we'd now have to go back to Delhi (before heading onto Jaipur) to buy a new one, and we could also replace fairly easily there the rest of the things that had been stolen. As days go though, it wasn't a good one and I was not a happy traveler that afternoon. Plus, to add insult to injury, we'd missed the moustache competition, which after 3 weeks of growth I was bound to win.

By next morning we were feeling a bit more philosophical about the whole affair and we just decided to get on have a good time, so we headed off to explore the town. The lake being "a bit low" turned out to be a sizable understatement; there was basically no water at all in it except for a large brown puddle in one end, and the result was a huge dry dirt bowl. My suggestion to a shopkeeper we got chatting to that Pushkar should host a monster truck and dirt bike extravaganza in it and call it Flying Sadhus didn't go down well - I decided it was probably best not to try and explain who Evil Knievel was either. Anyhow, the lack of water didn't seem to deter pilgrims heading down en masse to bathe in the temporary man-made pools constructed at the side of it. I have frankly never seen swimming pools looking more rancid, but maybe being full of holy water maybe they were self-chlorinating. Either way, everyone seemed to be having a great time dunking their younger brothers and mother-in-laws all afternoon - it must be quite a sight with the lake full.

One of the other most most fascinating aspects of the festival were the huge numbers of Hindu Holy men; Sadhus and devotees who had made the journey. Mostly they spent the day sat in groups together around the lake with incense laden mini-shrines they had built either talking loudly or meditating silently. Without doubt they are some of the most otherworldly looking people you will ever encounter, and most of them smoked more than Bruce Willis in Die Hard. It became clear why the mammoth telephoto lenses were needed too - travelers attempting to taking close up holiday pictures of them meditating were given a good Hindi bollocking and the old boys could get fairly animated when confronted with a snap-happy tourist. Fair enough though - it can't be easy pondering lifes great questions in the face of an Australian brandishing a cameraphone shouting "give us a smile mate".

From Pushkar we headed back to Delhi again and spent a couple of days re-buying the stolen items. We checked out smart New Delhi and the shiniest shopping mall we'd seen outside of Europe, spent too much money in expensive restaurants, and had a few boozy nights in some seedy bars in the old town - one of which was strangely full of grown men in suits drinking whisky watching The Flintstones. Jaipur turned out to be a flying visit, partly due to having ingested something that took a disliking to us, and what we saw was interesting, but we both felt a little underwhelming. The comedy highlight however was being me getting charged by a moody street cow in the town centre and trying to fend it off with a plastic water bottle which exploded on impact with its head - unleashing the contents all over my T-shirt and face and causing much hilarity to the onlooking locals. A You've Been Framed moment if ever there was one.

Our final stop in Northern India was Agra, for the mighty Taj Mahal. Little needs to be said about this really, as clearly being one of the wonders of the modern world its beauty has been described a million times, but suffice to say it's an awe inspiring sight, a mind blowing piece of architecture and worth every penny of the visit. Finishing with the Taj was a magical end to our tour of the North West and after seven weeks of fairly intensive travelling, we were both pretty excited about reaching the lazy tropical south...

View our pics here

Delhi

Pushkar, Jaipur & Agra

Kashmir

I've been told numerous occasions that I could "sleep through an earthquake", but living in a country as geologically benign as England it's not the sort of assertion you get to put the test very often, if ever. So, it was with some surprise that we got up for breakfast on final morning of our trip to Kashmir to read in the local English speaking paper that a pretty sizable quake of 6.3 on the Richter scale had rocked the border of Afghanistan at one in the morning and could be felt all the way through the Kashmir Valley where we were staying, five hundred miles away. Obviously we were some distance from the epicentre, but we were told also that it had caused some serious damage and in the area and there had even been some evacuations in some of the towns further north following fears about further aftershocks. Worryingly both of us had slept right through it. I wasn't quite sure how to feel about proving this particular theory correct in this case...

Initially we hadn't planned on heading as far North as Kashmir, but a bit of shonky research on my part meant that if we'd gone to Nepal in January when initially planned we'd have both died of hypothermia as the mountains would be totally snow-covered by then, so this was probably our best opportunity to check out some of the Himalayas before the season ended - Nepal will have to wait for now. On paper, Kashmir is the probably the destination on our travels that presented the most risks, with its history of violent dispute over the state between India and Pakistan, hair-raising (and accident prone) mountain roads, and weather that can close in very quickly. Ironically though, the week we chose to go was probably one of the safer options - Pakistan suffered three appalling and fatal bomb blasts in Lahore and Islamabad from Taliban terrorists - they clearly had far more pressing problems than the Kashmir issue.

Our journey North to Palalgam in the Srinagar region of the Kashmir Valley took about eleven hours by Jeep, and was a stunning, if bumpy drive. Winding our way along the rugged Jammu-Srinagar road cut into the mountain side, barrierless sheer-drops gave way to steely blue glacial rivers crashing along the valley beds. Catching the occasional glimpse of the icy cold far below as the jeep rounded a tight bend was enough to give anyone a bout of vertigo. Even on a road as clearly dangerous and over populated with massive trucks, everyone still drove like there was a medal at the end; and we both went a few shades paler when our driver several times had to abort a failed overtaking on a blind corner at a two thousand feet. Part of the reason for the craziness of the Jammu-Srinagar road is that it's the main service route for supply convoys heading into the valley, and at points whole sections of road cut into the mountain can come to a standstill jammed with trucks travelling in one direction, causing the rest of the traffic to try and belt it down the wrong side of the road at full speed - until they see something else coming and then try and swerve out of their way...fun!

En route we passed the vast and controversial Baglihar Hydro-Electric Dam - a leviathon example of engineering shouldering hundreds of millions of tons of water between the valley walls. Our jeep driver mentioned it had only been open for just over a year, and had while it would undoubtedly solve lot of electrical problems for the region (once everyone was actually properly connected that is), it had been, and continued to be a source of a lot of aggravation. Water levels down river from the Dam had dropped, meaning irrigation for farming was more of a problem than ever and more disturbingly there had been significant displacement of population from villages and towns above the dam where it was flooded, which due to the the poor management and corruption of the authorities in the area was not handled well. The overriding impression was that it wasn't popular with the Kashmiris. Slightly unnerving too for the dams location are the regularity of earthquakes, as we discovered.

After passing through a few Army checkpoints to have our passports, purpose of visit and job (I still can't bring my self to say "unemployed" bizarrely) verified, we finally made it to the Kashmir Valley. The roads leveled off and we headed though endless small towns and villages and fields of crops being harvested. This region of Kashmir is almost 100% Muslim and its people, clearly used to cold winters and a lot of time in the open looked far more rugged and weather beaten than those further South. The small town we were staying in is apparently very popular with Indians for summer holidays, but was quiet when we arrived, being right at the end of the season. It was however one of the most attractive settings for a holiday you could imagine. Flanked by four thousand metre snowcapped mountains, and surrounded by alpine forest, with healthy looking horses grazing in lush green meadows next to fast flowing rivers and streams, we felt like we'd arrived in a real life version of one of those comedy moving pictures depitcting a far flung utopia with glowing waterfalls you get in Eighties Indian restaurants back home.

We stayed in a small basic cottage next to a river owned by a local Muslim family, and for the majority of the week just went on hikes around the valley, read a lot and tried to keep warm! There were no bars being an Islamic area, everything shut at 9pm, and for at least half of the day the electricity would go off (so much for the Dam!). It was already beginning to get pretty cold with some variable weather; temperatures were a few degrees only at night with no heating and snow was starting to fall heavily on the mountain tops. Ramzan our guide on a few of the longer treks told us that in only a month or so there would likely be several feet of snow. Kashmir must look incredible then, but also a pretty bleak place to live too. I asked him what he did during the winter to keep entertained. "Smoke". A man of few words. Clearly the fags in Kashmir actually make you fitter though, as he also told me that only a few months before he'd completed a two and half week trek to Ladakh in Eastern Kashmir with two Swiss brothers who spoke limited English, which is no short distance to cover over some pretty hostile glacial terrain and a pretty sizable language barrier to too... I wondered what kind of entertaining conversations two Swiss brothers and a quiet Kashmiri Muslim would have over the course of two and a half weeks? "Would you like some Chocolate? It's Swiss" "No thank you. Smoke?" "No thanks" "Oh look, a Mountain.."

One afternoon, came across something fairly shocking accoss while we were on a hike through some villages on the way up to the mountains. Walking through the last village before hitting the wilderness proper, it seemed almost like a ghost town, with a few people only dotted around looking sombre. As we left the village a man stood soberly with an automatic rifle stared at us as we walked past. "Policeman" Ramnzan told us. He went on to tell us that two days before, a Tiger had come down into the village in broad daylight, approached a group of small children playing in the street and attacked one; an eight year old boy, slashing him across the neck. The boy died later in the day from the severity of the injury and loss of blood. We must have looked shocked as he immediately assured us attacks on people here were extremely rare, but were not uncommon on horses and livestock, however, these tended to be at night and only when the Tigers were really hungry (on another trek he pointed out an old pony with huge gauge marks on is backside where a Tiger had once had attacked it).

The problem he informed us, was that because weapons are outlawed due to the political conflict, farmers cannot keep guns anymore - the penalties are severe. Twenty years ago he continued, if there were Tiger problems they could fire off warning shots which would usually do the trick, or if there was a single animal that was causing problems they could deal with it. Now farmers can't defend their livestock, (or children occasionally) from rogue animals. For an attack that took place only a few Kilometres from his own kids and home, he seemed extremely philosophical about it though. He told me that he also worked as a tracker too for the big cats in the area. "Tiger has been here for tens of thousands of years, longer than us, and we have killed a lot more of them".

With the colder weather moving in and the "nightlife" graveyard quiet, seven nights was enough for us in Kashmir, on this occasion. A diet of boiled veg, rice and supernoodles, cold showers that took half an hour to warm up from and limited conversation opportunities had, by the end of the week, got us more than a little enthusiastic about the 21st Century delights of our next stop - Delhi. A long haul South for sure, but a capital city with abundance of people, bars, shops that actually stocked things and restaurants that possibly knew how to do more than just boil everything in sight...

Getting the chance to spend the time we did in an environment as epic as Kashmir was an amazing experience and one that we were lucky to have had. Having got a taste for some accessible trekking in Himachal Pradesh and the Kashmir Valley, its really spurred me on to want to tackle some larger treks to Ladakh further East, but this is something that a separate, better organised trip probably calls for. Without doubt it's a fascinating and beautiful region that deserves a return visit. Just need to remember to bring a some thermal pants and decent bottle of whiskey next time...


View our pics here:

Kashmir & Jammu