India, Nepal, Sri Lanka 2003

Some quick news from Sri Lanka

No, i have NOT been lazy not to log in and write some news, but its more like internet is too lazy to come to me, sort of :)

Ok, so last time, we were leaving India, arrived at Colombo airport and went straight to Negombo for the night, its a nice small fishmen town, sort of peaceful as we didnt want to hit Colombo to start with. So we spent the night there, and went off to Kandy by train the following day. Trains are slightly less hectic than in India, a bit more comfortable, less crowdy depending on the hours, but bloody hot, oh, and cleaner too :)

Arrived in Kandy, with the rain, yep, its the Mansoon there, 2 mansoons a year, soaking wet, still hot though, quite painful. We found a nice guest house, where a nice family holds the place, its like a big home, ‘its your home’ they said. We spent a few days there, visiting the Tooth temple. We then decided to take a driver for 3 days to go round the Golden Triangle above Kandy. Our driver was the ‘daddy’ from our guesthouse family. A very nice guy.

So, we did a few cities in the triangle, Mihintale, Anapurana, Sygiria and a couple more i can’t remember right now, but i’ll fill in the gaps when i get home.

Some very nice historical sites, but mostly destroyed by the time, but they are working on clearing it all up, amd they better be, seeing the cost of that entrance ticket to all those sites hehe, yes, Sri Lanka is very expensive compared to India and Nepal. So then we were back in Kandy, at our guest house, we went to the botanical garden in the afternoon, little shower (rain) as we were leaving it hopefully, and went to see a traditionnal dance and music in the evening. Very nice.

Then we decided we could use a few days on the beach and went down the west coast staying a night or two in a couple places on the way, until we reached Mirissa, a beautiful place, nice beaches, barely anyone around, just what we needed. Though the sun did catch us, and we all caught the sun at some place or another, but its cooling off now ;)

Well now we are in Colombo now, and about to spend a day or two here before going back to India.

Hugs to all

Tony

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And leaving India once more

Hello folks,

I know its been some time since i’ve posted any news, but its been kind of a problem finding internet access, and also, we havent been all so well lately, but we are getting a lot better now, joys of travelling :)

So last news said we were in Sauraha, seems like that was ages ago, had a nice time in the national park there, saw some crocos, rhinos, loads of nice colored birds, missed out on the tigers and bears though hehe, can’t have them all i guess. We also managed to spend a nice time for Stephs birthday there.

We then left for Kathmandu, and what should have been a 5 hours bus ride turned out to be at least 12 or 13 hours, gotta love check points, and miles of traffic jams in the mountains, but we managed it, waited, at least you can’t starve on the road, there is always people around selling food and drinks. We then spent 6 days in Kathmandu and its valley, especially the valley, visiting, lots of walking, lots of nice things to see, we spent that week with another 2 french guys who were starting their trip, and were going for a 20 days trekking the following week (can’t remember the names of the places we went now, but i’ll look them up at some point). So we spend a few days and evening the 5 of us, been nice to drink again :)

We were then thinking of going to Sri Lanka, but 2 things slowed us down, the first one was all the warnings we had been getting from friends and family about what had been going on the last few days over there, and the second was the price for the plane tickets, so we decided to simply go back down to Calcuta, and decide what we’ll do there. So we did, and after checking a few information sites and all we decided to go south, along the east coast of India, towards Chennai (Madras) and Pondicheri. However the train for Chennai is a 27 hour trip, so that was a BIG no-no in 1 go for us :) So we only took the train for 7 hours or so, down to Bubaneshwar (will have to check spelling). This is were i started to feel sick, so i didn’t see much of it, except for some caves with lots of monkeys hanging around, and the hotel room :)

I guess leaving Nepal and back to India was harder on the stomach that i thought (and it took me a few days to get over it, actually i’m just starting to feel better, a week later). So, we spent a couple days in that place then finally got on the tracks for a good 24 hours of train to Chennai. By that point none of us were feeling very good, so we didnt do much, and just basically hanged around, booked our plain tickets for Sri Lanka, and went off to Pondicheri by bus, and spent another 3 days or so there. There is definately good french cooking over there, but not that much else, temples and churches are … surprisingly colorful, beaches saddely poluted. But we ate good, and got our strength back now it seems as we just arrived back from Pondicheri earlier today.

So, tomorrow morning, gonna get up early, head to the airport, and fly to Colombo.

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Some news from Sauraha

We left Kathmandu by bus and went to Pokhara where we spent almost a week. Had some nice time there, cycling, walking, relaxing … enjoying the view of the Anapurna mountains, great view from the lake when the weather is clear. We had a big storm one night, which messed up our plans for the next day as we had planned on getting up early and reaching Sarangkot before the sun rise .. but the rain over the night decided otherwise.

However, after almost a week there, we decided to leave for a few (3) days rafting on the Kali Gandaki river, which has class 3 and 4 rapids, pretty fun. So in the evening we were sleeping out in tents on the river side, fire camps, nice food, beautiful clear nights, could see loads of stars up in the sky, we had quite a nice time. When the rafting was over, instead of returning to Pokhara with the rest of the rafting group, we went down to Tansen, or up i should say, its a nice small town on top of a hill, where we just wanted to spend a day to get over the rafting, in peace, the streets are too narrow for cars and trucks to go through :) Unfortunately the area is under military survey, with all the terrorist going around, so the city shuts down at 9pm, quite wierd. Not even mentionning all the military controls we are getting on the roads.

We are now in the Terai, in Sauraha exactly, going to visit some of the national park tomorrow, and hopefully see some of the wildlife there :)

We should be heading back towards Kathmandu valley in a couple days, so we can get a few more nice walks done in that area.

More news and some photos then, the internet is pretty slow over the country.

Tony.

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First impressions of Nepal, in Kathmandu

We spent a few days in Calcutta, visited a few temples and gardens. There is a small part of the town filled with sculpters, people making all the statues tourists will be buying everywhere, its a very small area, will very narrow streets, if we can call them streets, rather small paths to get around all the working areas, and houses. Its a very poor part of the city, which is actually the most civilized city we have seen in India so far, well depends on the side of the city you are in of course, but there is really a big difference with the other cities. Its a very modern city (in some areas). The city still has loads of building left from the time the english were around, such as churches …
quite interesting to see them here.

The temples in the city are however really odd and small compared to those we have seen so far, but the inside our very nice, and the gardens are nicely kept up with.

We left India and went towards Nepal. We have spent a couple days here in Kathmando. This is really a nice place, not much to see in the city itself, but we will visit the valley before leaving the country. The few temples that are in the city are … small, and unfortunately not visiteable (or at least not when we were there). Life in the city is a lot nicer than in India, people are way nicer, less noisy … We have also finally been able to get out a bit at night, and get a few drinks down, India is just not a place for alcohol, we did however manage to get our hands on some indian whiskey, a bit rough i must say, but when theres no choice! At least Kathmandu has bars and live music going around in the evening, a nicer place for youngsters and old hippies. It was a nice change after the 2 weeks we have spent in India, we were able to relax a bit before going back on the road, heading towards Pokhara tomorrow, a few (7) hours of bus are waiting for us, fun fun :)

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From Khajuraho to Calcutta

I’m posting this from Calcutta (best computers and internet connection so far), where we arrived around midday today, after spending the last 15 or so hours in the train we took in Benares.

Benares is a big and fairly nice city, as long as you are near the Ganja, where there is no roads, only very small, narrow and quite dark streets, where you can find all sorts of small shops, silks of course, but music shops too, quite interesting to be walking down these streets and suddenly hear some sort of techno music in a distance, some drums and flutes in another direction, people shouting and trying to sell their goods, avoiding the bicycles, motorbikes and the holy cows in streets less than 2 meter wide !
Benares is also the city where all hindies want to die.
Thousands of people, bathing and praying in the Ganja river every day, as pure tourists we took a boat to see this ‘scenery’ and discovered thousands of people in that dark brown water before the sun raises. We could also see a fire on the side of the river, obviously someone passing to the other side …

Before Benares we spent a few days in Khajuraho, a not so famous city for some very famous Temples. Everyone has heard of the Kamasutra .. well this is the place it is from. We visited some very nice guardens in which we found a few (6 or so) temples,
some of which have some very nice *hint* sculptures on them, but all are very beautiful however. The city is quite calm, not as calm as Orchha though, but still quite pleasant compared to some other cities we have been through! We ‘lost’ a day here, as we didn’t book our train tickets fast enough, we didn’t realise that what was going to be tomorrow was sunday, and that we wouldn’t be able to book any tickets then, so we did spend a very calm day there.

Now a little information on the buses and trains, in land, there is no roads as we know them, but only paths, which makes short distances very painful in 50 year old mini buses, all wreckling, missing half the windows, you can feel every single stone on the road, and bang your head a few times as you jump off your (hard) benches. One would think trains would be better, well its just a totally different story, no board in stations telling you what platform your train is, very few announcements you can barely understand due to all the noise going around, overcrowded platforms, totally misorganized train stations, having the station manager at one end of platform 5 for some odd reason … so when you finally get into a train, you have to fight your way to your seats, hoping somone isn’t already sleeping in it, in which case you have to wake him up (sometime, you will find several people in your seat !) and try to make him understand he shouldn’t be here … having to be very careful where you walk, people sleeping absolutely everywhere, in the corridors, under the seats, in that small area that links 2 coaches !! in front of the toilets … everywhere …

that basically summarize the fun we have had with trains, and i am still omitting loads of details! the first time we were going to take a train, we took the train just before the one we should have, it was an 8 hour trip, we jumped down 4 hours later somewhere and managed to get onto the train we were suppose to take, hm fun fun … second try was a little more complicated, i asked some military in the station to find me the platform my train will be stopping, he went to find the board … platform 6 .. so off we go, a train is there already, not our train number .. we wait a few minutes, we were early after all, then i discover that our train had been announced on platform 8 but noone had changed the board … so yes you get it, we had missed our train this time ! off i go to find the tourist office, sends me to the controller room in the main station, yep confirmed, train is gone, he sends me to see the station master on platform 5 so i can get another train, he sends me to the other end of the same (thank god) platform to get an authorisation to get onto the next train, that should be coming in in 10 minutes … when we got on that train, it was already packed, so as we couldnt find the train controller, we decided to camp at 1 end of the coach and wait, after an hour, and after trying to explain the situation to a dozen hindies (all very nice, but not very understandeable unfortunately) we finally get our hands on the controller, and put down some extra cash to get in 1st class and finish the night, which we did! Trains are hell …

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