Moving on

Hello! Just a quick update – we’ve changed our flight plans slightly. The main reason is actually that we were stuck in Delhi for the remainder of our time in India as the trains north to Shimla were full. So, we move on from India to China – Hong Kong. Yay! We’ve enjoyed travelling in North India, but with the temperature here in Delhi hitting over 40 degrees each day now we think its time to move on to somewhere a little cooler…

We found India a weird place to visit. We’d highly recommend seeing Jaipur, Udaipur and Jaisalmer, but to be honest there’s not much to Agra excepting the Taj Mahal, or Jodhpur except the Fort. And Delhi is a bit smelly.

Some things we’ve found great…

1. Tandoors. Great kebabs – chicken, and paneer especially. And I love proper naan bread. I think tandoor food is definitely my favourite type of Indian cuisine. And it’s so much better out here than in the UK.

2. Colour. Everything is so colourful out here – particularly the women during festival times. And you can get lovely hangings and scarves and things (I hope our purchases survive the post back to the UK…)

3. Forts. Really big and impressive ones! We have nothing on this scale in the UK – our castles are really pathetic by comparison. The lived in one in Jaisalmer is vibrant, the huge one in Jodhpur impressive, Agra’s is more like a palace… Wonderful.

4. Palaces. They have some really silly, completely over the top palaces – sometimes in the forts, other times in the town, on mountains, lakes, wherever. It seems that each Emperor / King / Maharajah could not possibly be happy until he had built a bigger palace than his Dad / predecessor / whoever he conquered. And there seem to have been loads of Emperors, Kings and Maharajahs…

5. Mountains. Particularly around lakes. Udaipur does this particularly well.


And some scary things…

1. Facial hair. OK, I know this is a matter of personal taste, but the moustaches out here are impressive. Particularly the ones which get really long and bushy, so their owners twist the ends to make them stand up!

2. Big turbans. Really really big, colourful, and in lots of different styles of course depending on religion, region etc. The colourful thing isn’t always a good move however – particularly shades of pale pink…

3. Water. And food for that matter. It often tastes great (except when they try to westernise food), but you may regret it the next day! They have some serious bugs to challenge the GI tract around here. And on top of this, why is the Indian version of Fanta a particularly violent shade of radioactive orange?

4. Roads. Lane discipline? Nah, that’s for wooses! Plus it’s much more manly to drive the wrong way up roads, especially duel carriageways. Everyone wants to get you to give them huge sums of money for a 10 meter trip in their rickshaw / tuk-tuk / taxi / whatever Oh, and don’t forget the cows wandering down every street, or the carts drawn by ponys, cows, or camels!

5. TV and Film. And adverts. OK, now I know that we don’t understand Hindi, however, staying in a lot of hotels we’ve seen some TV over the last few weeks. And flicking between the few English language channels, we’ve seen a fair sample of Indian TV and films. You could say there are a few things we don’t get. For instance, in Indian soaps, why does every scene seem to be a hugely over melodramatic collage of the characters facial expressions, mixed in with a few epilepsy or nausea – inducing camera effects? I’ve never seen anything like it! And I’d also like to know why there seem to be so many men dressed in really bad jumpers with big patterns on them in films? Usually jumping around with paint-brushes or chairs or something to some song or other. Weird!

6. Sport. There is lots of sport coverage out here. Loads. But we could see interest in only one sport. Tell me, is cricket the only sport they play in India?

Anyway, here is a list of our new flight dates if you need them for any reason, or are tempted to come out here! Hope you are all having a good time at home.

26.4.08 : Delhi - Hong Kong

9.5.08 : Hong Kong - Tokyo

24.5.08 : Tokyo - Beijing

30.6.08 : Shanghai - Hong Kong

11.9.08 : Singapore - Perth

25.9.08 : Perth - Brisbane

31.10.08 : Sydney - Aukland

5.12.08 : Aukland - Tahiti

11.12.08 : Tahiti - Easter Island

20.12.08 : Easter Island - Santiago

12.2.09 : Lima - Mexico City