Sarajevo is an incredible place. A bit battered around the edges but that’s to be expected in a city that resisted the longest siege in recent history. Bullet holes pockmark the apartment blocks along the main arterial road from the airport, once called Sniper Alley, where people – men, women and children – would be picked off mercilessly. Further on, stately Austro-Hungarian buildings, traces of bomb damage mostly plastered over, line an avenue that leads onto a quaint Turkish town centre. Toy-town suburbs stretch upwards into the green hills, the same hills from where once a Serbian army rained up to 4000 grenades a day onto this cute city. Here and there amongst the houses are graveyards sprouting countless white obelisks, each a headstone with a lifespan ending between ’92 and ’95.

Graveyard.

But I’m painting an unjustly sombre picture here, this is a fun, vibrant place. Dozens of bars, clubs, restaurants and coffee shops are to be found in the cosmopolitan Old Town. The Turkish influence is apparent; mosques mingle contentedly with churches and synagogues; the call to prayer (still we can’t shake the East!) rings out alongside church bells.

Sarajevo.

One strange thing happened here though. We were walking along not far from where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot, kicking off the First World War, and near to the Sarajevo brewery, whose water reserves were vital during the Siege, when a man leaned out of a car window and shot a gun three times into the air. We, fresh from an exhibition about the Siege, almost dived for cover! We checked with our Bosnian guest-house owner – this is definitely not a common occurrence.

Miss Sarajevo.

We rode a bus with an unreasonable number of passport checkpoints to Dubrovnik in Croatia. Dubrovnik is exquisite, just perfect. Thick walls encase an old town and port seemingly straight out of a Renaissance painting. The ground is buffed to such a sheen it’s as if the streets are paved with marble, gleaming in the sun. On the first night we strolled into the old town, planning perhaps on a nice meal in the harbour as the sun set. Anyway, one thing led to another and before we knew it we were downing shots with a gaggle of 18-year-old Australian girls on an all-you-drink pub crawl. We snuck off at about 2am and the hangover the next day affirmed that we were indeed too old for all this. We crawled to one of the beaches that are dotted around and drunk plenty of water that day.

The mean streets of Dubrovnik.

The next day we picked up a car. The tiniest car in the world, but a car none the less. The poor thing struggled to even make the speed limit along the uphill stretches of motorway. But we grew to love it, and the freedom it afforded us. First thing we did was a 6-hour journey to camp at the Plitvice Lakes National Park, on our way north to Slovenia. The Plitvice National Park is a series of waterfalls and inlets that gurgle and gush into lakes so perfect you can’t quite accept that they’re not artificial, loaded with curious trout and with ferries that transport tourists too lazy to walk. We found a nice campsite deep in the Croatian countryside from where we could explore the park.

Plitvice Lakes.

And again.

One day we awoke to thick cloud cover. We looked at each other in dismay and rushed to a nearby wifi-café. The weather satellite showed a large, maddening mass of cloud covering most of Central and Eastern Europe. We were not, we decided, going to spend our last few days camping in the rain. Within minutes our plans had been re-written: Slovenia was off the cards, at least for now. We retreated 200 miles south, to Split, where we caught a last-minute ferry to the island of Hvar – the sunniest place in Croatia!

The view from our campsite.

Hvar.

We were starting to realise just how great a holiday destination Croatia is, and Hvar just compounded that feeling. A green island rising out of the blue Adriatic, covered in vineyards, arrestingly beautiful towns, and lavender fields which lend the breeze a sweet aroma. We found a delightful campsite with its own stretch of beach, strung up the hammock, opened a bottle of local wine, and then left the site only once – to celebrate our 2^nd wedding anniversary in nearby Hvar town. We managed to avoid the pub crawls this time.

Happy Anniversary!

We begrudgingly left the island a few days later and started forging our way northward again, destination Venice. There we are to meet our good friend Dan, fresh actually from his own trip through South America, so we’ll have plenty to talk about.

One more from Hvar.

Us at the Blue Mosque.

And from the inside.

On first impressions Istanbul is very much in the mould of a southern European city, all cobbled streets and kerb-side dining, well kept gardens and fountains. But then there are the mosques, the muezzin call to prayer, the food carts, bazaars, street dogs and the pavement prospectors that give it that unmistakably Eastern feel.

Amy chugging on a water pipe.

Our hostel was in Sultanhamet, practically in the shadow of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya. The latter, unprepossessing from the outside, is described as one of the world’s great buildings from within. Previously the Church of the Divine Wisdom until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 (interestingly, we call it the Fall but in the East it is called the Conquest) when it fell into the hands of the Islamic Ottomans. They hastily ditched any Christian relics and plastered over the mosaics of Christ, Mary and all that mob and it remained a mosque until 1931. In 1935 it was re-opened as a museum, after the Christian mosaics had been uncovered. The result is a wonderfully unique place where mosaics of Jesus hang beneath a roof of Islamic inscription and arabesque. A fitting metaphor for the city itself.

Man frys fish.

In the mild evenings we visited such Istanbul institutions as the Mesale Cafe – where light-footed waiters spring about with trays of tea, a whirling dervish spins to live Turkish music, and the evocative smell of apple tobacco mists through the air – and the Pudding Cafe, where Sixties’ hippies would meet to arrange transport to Nepal overland through Iran and Afghanistan (such a shame that is no longer an option!). We also watched the sun set from the Galata bridge, where rows of fishing rods hang out over the Golden Horn, catching fare for the lively fish market beneath the bridge where floating kitchens serve up fried fish in bread rolls. As the sun sets, from the bridge you can see the silhouettes of the many mosques of the city, proudly hanging the red star-and-cresent-moon flags, and this is when you really get the impression of this place being the gateway to the East.

The travertines at Pamukalle.

A quick overnight bus trip and we were in the village of Pamukalle, where people come to see the otherworldly travertines at the base of which it sits. These are deposits of white calcium seemingly poured over the mountainside like congealed paint, and baked hard by the sun over the millennia. A constant trickle of water gleans over them and light blue paddling pools have formed a kind of natural water park. As an added bonus there are the ruins of a Byzantine (think Roman) town above the travertines. Much of the masonry has been piled back up into a semblance of its former glory but some remains just where it tumbled thousands of years ago and there is an impressive amphitheater with astounding views of distant snow-patched mountains. Several Japanese tour groups got there early – like us – to avoid the crowds, not realising that they are the crowds; but we were at least spared the hordes of speedo-sporting Russians that turned up as we left.

Lost.

Oludeniz next. On the dolmus bus in we passed the package holiday heaven/hell of Hisaronu with its profusion of fish ‘n’ chips, Sky Sports and flabby white stomachs belonging to men from the north of England. Thankfully Oludeniz was a little better. Still very much Anglified; fry-ups and Strongbow abound, and you can even pay in pounds in some places (a little sneaky, thoughts I, as the Turkish riots had caused the lira to plummet that very day). But you can forgive it when you see the shockingly blue sea pounding the beach and the stunning mountain backdrop. “Why would you come on holiday just to eat fry-ups and kebabs?” we joked derisively, before going to have a fry-up and a kebab. We felt a little like outsiders though, the poor relations camping in the 2-man tent, so eventually decamped to the nearby port town of Fethiye, from where we picked up our Blue Cruise.

The beach at Oludeniz.

Who needs all-inclusive?

A Blue Cruise is a 4-day sailing trip on a yacht (or gulet) where all your food is provided so you’ve nothing to worry about except relaxing and enjoying the scenery. And what scenery! Classic Mediterranean: a leaden blue sea, deep green forested mountains and picturesque port towns providing a splash of terracotta and white; rocky islets and outcrops sprinkled with the remains of ancient churches, castles, Lycian tombs and even an entire sunken city subsumed by, yet still visible through, the clear water. We enjoyed a blissful 4 days on the gulet, and were dropped in Olympos.

Olympos is a fantastic little backpacker town, a city of tree-houses hemmed in by rocky bluffs that loom above a pine forest. Our lodging was a sequestered wooden shed, high on stilts, with nothing but a window and a mattress. Our fellow Blue Cruisers, fresh off the luxury boat, balked at the rooms but “hah”, we said loftily, “this is nothing compared to India.” And with breakfast and dinner thrown in, we treated it as a dry-land continuation of the cruise. The town is built around – predictably – more ruins. But this time ancient Greek ones that are so old they seem to have almost returned to the forest, so they carry a mysticality not unlike Angkor Wat. Eventually they open up onto a rangy pebble beach where we spent time topping up our tans in between lazy afternoon drinking sessions with the countless Ozzies in the town.

Our tree-house.

Olympos.

After a couple of unremarkable days in Antalya – a clean modern city with a clean, ancient-cum-cosmopolitan heart – we headed to Cappadocia, to a town called Goreme. The draw here is the spellbinding landscape, these incredible phallic rock formations that have been fittingly named fairy chimneys. Hundreds of them spear upwards like giant mushrooms, and most have been carved into dwellings. Some you can visit where the interior has been assiduously hewn into churches, replete with arches, apses and domes, all painted in unweathered frescoes. The first two or three are breathtaking but we’d had enough after about ten so arranged to go on a short trek into a nearby valley.

Cappadocia.

It didn’t take us long to realise that our guide, nephew of the owner of the guest house, was not a guide at all. More of a young, urban type, he strode on ahead, little concerned if we were keeping up or not, smoking and chatting busily away about his love life, drunken exploits, traffic accidents. He invited us on an illicit late night vodka binge. He confided, with echoes of that Monty Python sketch, “I never wanted to work in a guest house, I wanted to be a hairdresser” and then flung his empty plastic bottle in a bush. At one point he stopped abruptly and we thought he was about to finally impart some local knowledge. We followed where he was pointing, “French people!” he grinned, and then “bonjour!”

Inevitably we were soon lost and our guide took to asking us if we knew the way. We were trying hard not to laugh. Eventually he collared his mate into picking us up and taking us to our intended destination, a sunset viewpoint. On the way he made us stop at an off-license where his boss unexpectedly walked in, perplexed that we were in a booze shop when we were supposed to be on a walking tour. When we arrived at the sunset viewpoint with a carrier bag full of beer cans and a drunk guide we felt less like part of a tour and more part of some teenage misadventure! He was a good lad though. Terrible guide but a good bloke, and we sat up into the wee hours talking with him.

And that concludes our whistlestop tour of Turkey. Such an amazing country, a land of mountains and minarets, ostensibly European until you hear that mournful wailing of the muezzin and get the fleeting sensation that you’re deep in the Middle East. We fly to Europe proper now though, to Sarajevo.

The pool at Becs’ ‘condo’.

Becs’ apartment is unbelievable. Like the best hotel we’ve ever stayed in, and its not even a hotel. There are two bathrooms, two balconies, an infinity swimming pool, two gyms, all lavishly finished and sparkling clean. We had to remind ourselves how to use a toaster and kettle, and to wash up after ourselves (you’d never believe you could miss washing up, but you can!)

We spent a day or two in Singapore during our last trip in 2009 and dismissed it as just another Asian city. But there’s more going on here, and this time we saw a different side to the place. Singapore is held up as a shining example of how developing countries should, well, develop. Over the last 50 years or so an autocratic government has almost militantly stamped out any aspects of society they deemed undesirable, and enticed business and investment with appealing tax rates and facilities. So hand-crafted and well manicured is the city state that any character it may have once had has been smothered beneath this utopian veneer and instead there is the feel of a giant conference centre, a playground for well-to-do Europeans and Australians to come and enjoy the infinitesimal tax rates.

The Fullerton Bay rooftop pool.

But, whatever it may lack in charm, it more than makes up for in swankiness. There is a certain proud new world magnificence about the place, particularly at night when the skyscrapers twinkle and the upmarket hotels glow, and the restaurants and bars are packed with yammering Westerners. Almost immediately we shed our backpacker skin and tried to fit in with the expat elite. It was amazing, especially given where we’ve been for the last 6 months, to drink nice wine, pints of ale, eat delicious food in plush surroundings, take taxis everywhere, and pay for it all by card! We had a great budget-be-damned time and it was lovely catching up with our old mate Becs…with whom we also embarked on a little holiday to the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Boozin’…

…more boozin’.

Our decision to visit Sumatra rested largely on the fact that it was one of the very few places in SE Asia which was not in monsoon season at this time of year. It was a risk as Sumatra is a place which, for one reason or another, has fallen out of favour with the backpacking hoi-polloi and we’d not found even one other traveler who’d been there. Our first stop was Lake Toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world and one which encompasses Samosir, an island the size of Singapore and home to the native Batak people; warm, musical and, until relatively recently, cannibalistic.

Samosir Island.

Diving-boards jut out from the many lakeside resorts over the dark blue waves, sunlight glinting off their crests; the water is clean and clear and tastes like Evian. The island is a bit like somebody’s happy acid dream – many-coloured huts with pointed roofs the shape of a ship’s keel nestle amongst trees of various type and shades of green, bustling in the breeze, as cute as the glut of puppies, buffallo calves and baby chicks that roam about. In fact the acid theory may have legs, as magic mushrooms are listed flagrantly on the menus of the restaurants and guest-houses! There are few tourists (though it’s hard to see why) but the town hasn’t let itself go; everything is spick-and-span, the shelves are well stocked, the lights are all on. In fact it feels like they are anticipating a bus-load at any moment. We spent a delightful four nights on this beautiful island.

Lakeside sunbathing

Best. Backflip. Ever.

Next up was Bukit Lawang, a tourist town erected along the banks of the Bahorok River, and a base for exploring the Gunung Leuser National Park, where one can see – if one is lucky – the endangered Sumatran Orangutan in the wild. We stayed at the Back to Nature resort, located in the jungle, a 45 minute walk from town and only accessible by traversing not one but two rope drawn cable cars, pulled by a man at each end. We only had two full days so we quickly signed up for a jungle trek for the second day.

The cable car.

That left an afternoon free. “I can take you to a waterfall?” suggested our guide. I was concerned that this might cut into my hammock and beer time but he said it would only take half an hour so we agreed. The route was a little tougher than we were perhaps led to believe – clambering over slimy rocks and forging through overgrown jungle track, and 3 crossings of the very fast-flowing river – but we got there in about an hour. Just, in fact, as the first grumblings of thunder became audible in the distance. Our guide was looking a bit disconcerted at this and we all agreed we should probably head back. But all too quickly the weather changed. Lightning raked and crackled into the jungle, trees crashed, thunder pealed and rumbled and rain lashed down around us. The river was gaining in strength. More guides appeared from somewhere (one, for reasons not quite fully explained, in just his underpants) and we were completely in their hands. There was definitely an air of panic as the guides struggled to get us across the river (thrice) and back to our guest house. I fell down a waterfall, but was OK. Amy fell too, but luckily the man in underpants caught her. We made the river crossings with not a moment to spare as the river became a brown, raging torrent and crossing again would’ve been out of the question. Full credit to the guides, they got us all back in one piece, only slightly bruised, and we were able to laugh about it all over a few bottles of Bintang.

This was a river crossing before it got dangerous.

So, next day was our jungle trek. This was proper jungle; creeper vines strangulating skyscraper trunks, liana vines hanging like rope (great for Tarzan impressions), the smell of damp leaves and the howling of gibbons in the air. Our guide had made it clear that seeing an Orangutan was not guaranteed, some people can go on a 3 day trek and still not see one. We saw ants the size of small mice, wild boar prints and friendly Thomas Leaf monkeys with black-and-white punk rocker hair cuts and tails hanging pendulously, but what of the illusive Orangutans?

This makes me laugh every time! A Thomas Leaf monkey.

Eleven. We saw eleven of them. The first, an adolescent, swung into view like a hairy ginger gymnast, and we were awe-struck; the rest were mainly females with their young, observing us and trying to discern if we had any food. One descended from the trees and began advancing after us, walking on her musly forearms. She was more curious than malicious but we flung some fruit and scarpered. It really was just incredible to see these beasts, sometimes only a few feet away, in their natural habitat, while the sunlight strobed through the jungle canopy. A memory to treasure indeed.

Back to Singapore then, for a night. Went to the cinema. Got up, took breakfast on the balcony, went to the airport. From now on in we are edging ever closer to home; first stop Istanbul, after a 13 hour stop-over in Jeddah airport. Sounds like fun!

Durbar Square

Durbar Square is more like three interconnected plazas, chock-full with ornate red-brick temples crowned with Oriental-esque pagodas where people perch in the shade of the upper tiers, watching the world go by. At night it comes alive with revellers and worshippers alike, street food sellers and cycle-rickshaw drivers hawking rides. One night we hopped in one who pedalled us up to the jaded glitz of Thamel where we met a couple of English lads with whom we found we shared a dislike of hippies. This seemed a good enough pretext to embark on a drinking session with them and our guest house staff were a bit peeved when we woke them up at 2am trying to bash our way through the door that was locked at eleven.

Thamel.

There’s a saying round these parts: the first time you come to Nepal you come for the scenery, the second time you come for the people. And we concur, the Nepalese are incredible. They are friendly, funny, calm (almost phlegmatic), clean, honest; the standard of English is pretty good (not that this should be a yardstick but it makes it easier to gain an understanding) and, although apparently Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, it’s as if nobody told the locals.

This little piece of public advice sums up the Nepali attitude. A few of these signs wouldn’t go amiss in India!

Anyway, we finally wave goodbye to this part of the world, and are flying to Singapore with a stop-over – for one last time – in Delhi airport.

Rush hour.

Most people use the town solely as a base to explore the park, arriving on 2 or 3 night package tours, but we saw some potential here for a little R&R. We found a high-end hotel that let us use their luxuriant swimming pool, sunk into a lush garden that attracted all sorts of jungle birds and had an elephant stable. So while some of our fellow tourists were done up like Stanley off to explore Africa, we ambled around in beach clobber, clutching a bag full of paperbacks and bottled water.

Certainly we weren’t so lazy as to disregard the park altogether. We opted for a morning ride in a dug-out canoe where it felt like we were floating down some tributary of the Amazon. The banks were lined with rushes and high grass, amongst which we saw a twitcher’s wet dream of birds: egrets, ibis, kingfisher, huge maribou stork and even bigger peacocks. Our guide floated us through the lilipads and vegetation close to the bank. “Crocodile!” he whispered urgently, pointing. None of us had seen it so he laboriously punted the canoe backwards. This time we saw it, about 2 feet underwater, the back half of an enormous man-eater, it’s tail as thick and long as a man’s leg, hiding like some relic of prehistory.

A little farther on we happened across a full-grown male rhino bathing, rolling every now and again to wet it’s impenetrable armoured skin. It regarded us with one wrinkly eye and decided we were alright. We had clambered into the jungle to get a better look, and walked back to the park entrance. The only other wildlife we saw were skitterish deer, the thundering of their hooves belying their position in the dense forest, and also some deep scratches in the bark of trees where a tiger had marked out his territory.

The locals seem to have a strange co-existence with the animals of the forest. On the one hand, they are protected species, they are what draw the tourists and, more than that, the people seem truly proud of them. But then there is the killing. One tiger has killed 10 locals, a wild elephant another 20, crocodiles take a bite here and there, even sloth bears don’t just watch from the sidelines. The government disallow any sort of retaliation, and there are several army checkposts to enforce this (also to dissuade poachers who slaughter rhinos for the – you guessed it – Chinese market), so the villagers just accept the situation.

Bath time!

Our guest house clearly wanted us to leave when they realised we weren’t going to book any more tours, but we ended up staying 5 nights. We just couldn’t tear ourselves away – where else can you sit beneath a thatched riverside bamboo gazebo, drinking 2-for-1 cocktails and eating curried catfish (caught fresh from the river), watching the sun sink into a misty rain-forest, while elephants wash themselves, lizards flitter around, and a man-eating crocodile crosses stealthily beneath you?

Crocktales.

I had a growth spurt.

The Middle Hills

Contrast this to our preparation: a training regime made up largely of lounging in a hammock and adhering to a strict diet of rum and cigarettes. We even took the hammock for chrissakes, envisioning ourselves sauntering into the mountains, stringing up the hammock, then sauntering off after a few hours. I carried it all the way and used it not once.

With that T-shirt she was bound to make friends.

Of course, there were rewards for our travails. It’s not without reason that this is one of the most popular treks in the world, the scenery was outstanding, and so varied. The trail started at Besi Sahar, in the warmer lowlands of the region. The first couple of days were spent winding through the Middle Hills, a tropical mountainous setting, bushy green and with haystacks, goats, cows, and hillsides carved with terraces reaching almost to the top, like giant staircases. Dotted along the way were tiny farming villages.

Not enough room to swing a goat.

It was these villages that provided us with succour and shelter, and lend the circuit it’s ‘tea-house trek’ status. This trek has been popular since the 1980s and over the years the locals have realised that they can make a few supplementary rupees from the continuous trail of Westerners panting past their door. These are not rich hoteliers, just individual families who’ve converted their dwellings into guest houses. Often we’d be the only people staying and would eat – and drink the local alcohol, rakshi – with the family. The kids chipped in too, they’d always seem so grown up, serving us tea or touting for custom, until with minimal encouragement they’d revert to being kids. A favourite game of Amy’s was to show them photos of themselves on the digital camera screen. One little girl made us take around 20 shots in different poses, some with a flower on her head, some with a cat. She showed no signs of quitting so eventually we had to say a semi-stern “No more!”. “And where’s our tea?”

Nepal’s Next Top Model

A typical day would be: awake at 6:30, breakfast pre-ordered, on the road by 7:30, break for lunch about midday, then arrival at destination by 15:00. After the Middle Hills the scenery began to alter; the terraces became more dishevelled and sparse as the valley sides grew a velvety green baize and slowly turned into a steep chasm. By day 4 things had become very British: a light drizzle chaparoned us through pine forests carpeted with brown needles and the smell of damp trees hung in the air. A mist enveigled the mountain forests. Chimneys chugged out puffs of woodsmoke, we even saw a football pitch at 3000 metres.

Inevitably the light drizzle turned to rain, a cold rain. This wasn’t so much of a problem in itself – we had wet gear and the strenuous walking meant we didn’t get too cold – but it did obscure our view of the peaks that the guide book promised we should’ve been seeing for the last two days. Each day seemed cloudier than the last and this began to get us down. Then, finally, at the end of day 5, when we were sitting in a guest house in Upper Pisang, the clouds unfurled to reveal Annapurna II in all it’s glory, chalky white against a bright blue sky. The sudden unveiling was perhaps more rewarding than a peek here, a peak there along the way.

Annapurna II

The following day, although the hardest yet in terms of height and distance, turned out to be the most enjoyable. With the clouds vanquished we could see the white peaks, blue sky, green alpine forests, turquoise lakes and rivers, glaciers, moraines, crevasses, all cheering us on our way to Manang.

Nice hat.

So it was, with the wind harrying at our backs, that we hobbled into Manang, the promised land, where we were to have a rest and acclimatisation day. At Manang, altitude sickness was the subject of many a conversation, and the disturber of many a deep sleep. The Himalyan Rescue Association lay on a daily seminar on the subject and proudly claim that nobody who has attended has ever died from altitude sickness. We thought we’d best attend, to avoid the dying if nothing else. We also rested, and stocked up on factor 60 suncream for the days ahead. “There were times,” said Amy, “when I never thought I’d make it to Manang at all.”

Above Manang things really began to feel eerily separate from the rest of the world. We left the trees, the river, the paltry road behind and entered a strange boulder-strewn meadow land where the only sound was the occasional tinkling of a yak-bell. The snowy peaks got ever closer and the handful of villages now were seasonal only, existing only for trekkers making their way up to the Thorung La. It took 2 days to reach the base camp of the pass, Thorung Phedi.

Well it had been a tough day.

This was it, this was what we’d been leading up to for the past 10 days. It had been tough – at times gruelling, one foot forward stuff; at other times head down, driving through the rain; there were definitely times when this whole merry escapade became my fault entirely and Amy scowled at me from beneath her woolly hat. But we’d made it this far. A camaraderie had developed amongst all of us who were attempting the pass the next day. We sat for dinner in a cabin heated by a wood fire while a snow storm howled around outside. A nervous tension reigned, and was only heightened when two Americans burst in from the darkness covered in snow. They’d attempted the pass that day but had had to descend due to altitude sickness. We all prayed that wouldn’t be us tomorrow, nobody fancied a 7 day retreat down the mountain.

Sunrise at 5000m.

Up at 4:30, on the road by 5:30, the first challenge of the day was a climb up a frozen waterfall. Seeing the sun rise while being that close to so many gargantuan peaks was a treat, and the nighttime snowfall had carpeted everything with a white duvet. This was spectacular to look at, but made walking difficult – every so often one of our feet would fall 3 feet through the snow, and it completely covered the trail. Luckily we fell in with a French trio who had a guide. We walked single-file through the snow like a South Pole expedition. The setting was just awesome, ethereal: a deep, deep blue and a sparkling white was all we could see. The altitude took it’s toll though: the closer we got the slower we had to climb. Also, the higher you go the colder it gets but, paradoxically, the stronger the sun becomes. So we were in a situation where we were freezing cold but getting burnt alive. Our noses reddened and puckered and our lips boiled and blistered. But hang on a minute, what about that factor 60 sun-cream?

Made it!

There were so many false summits that the climb seemed to go on forever but finally we made it! We all hugged and high-fived and probably said something like “wooooo!”. We’d climbed over 1000 metres before lunch.

Intrepid husband and wife duo.

Still we had a knee-wrecking 5 hour descent. The scenery as we went down the other side was spellbinding, it appeared we’d entered some sort of mystical desert kingdom, over which and behind a whole new set of peaks the sun was setting. As we staggered into Muktinath we found ourselves being cheered on by almost all of the other trekkers we’d met along the way, like the cast of characters at the end of a film. There was the Australian girl, the Canadian couple, the Dutch guy, the North London Jew who’d taken an extra day because he observed the Sabbath, the Kiwi family (they really were a family, with two teenage daughters putting us all to shame), all showered, relaxed and drinking beer! We soon joined them and the sounds of raucous relief spread throughout the town.

Yaketty yak.

We were more than a little annoyed however, when we looked properly at our ‘Nivea Moisturiser with SPF 60 Protection’ and saw it was actually ‘Misturiser’. Fake sun-cream. We’d taken a battering from the sun, Amy especially, so jumped on a bus the next day. Two days, a trilogy of god-awful journeys, two flat tyres, a lost pair of Ray-Bans, a found pair of Ray-Bans, and a heated argument with a Frenchman who refused to vacate Amy’s seat, we got back to Pokhara; bedraggled and burned and bearded (me that is, not Amy) but ultimately very proud of ourselves.

“Whoa, NO!” we shouted in unison as he was about to turn the ignition.

“Only for 2,3 kilometres?” said the driver, puzzled.

“NO!” we all shouted again. He relented, and trundled on to the border where we spent the night.

11 hours of this…

The next day was even worse. We were bundled on a local bus for the journey to Pokhara. Local means that it will stop and pick up anyone or anything that can pay. We had a goat on the roof (it fell off and broke all its legs), children on our lap and people clinging to the rear. To cover a distance of about 150 km it took eleven hours.

Aaaah.

After all that then, Pokhara was a breath of fresh air. A calm town set around Nepal’s largest lake, Himalayan peaks sometimes visible in the background, ‘No Honking’ regulations, no hassle from street vendors, honest taxi drivers, water buffallo wallowing in the lake, excellent Western food; in short completely different from it’s Southern neighbour. We struggled to remember why we loved India so much.

No Honking!

Like most tourists we stayed in the Lakeside area, a trekking and adventure sports hub where we picked up some gear for our upcoming Annapurna Circuit trek, ate steaks, wandered along the lake and generally just enjoyed not being harrassed.

A Lakeside cafe. And a water buffallo.

Mud bath.

The Ganges at Varanasi

It is easy to get lost in this most ancient of cities. Varanasi is built around it’s ghats, concrete steps and jetties that lead down to the Ganges. The area around the ghats is a confusion of nameless alleys, gaily painted with advertisements like Victorian London, thick with flies and incense, pebbledashed with cow pats, and often thronging with people. It took a few moments of staring at the river from the rooftop of our ghat-side guest house before we realised that this was the Ganges, the most holy of rivers, flowing from its source high on the Tibetan plateau to the Bay of Bengal where it opens up into the largest delta in the world.

The ghats.

Varanasi has a magic all of its own. A morbid, unsanitary magic, but a magic all the same. Often you’ll hear a rhythmic masculine (always men) chant floating down the alleyway from behind. This is a cue to step aside and watch as a procession of solemn men come bounding past carrying a corpse wrapped in bright yellow and red, on their way to the ghats to arrange a flaming pyre and float the body out onto the holy river.

The ghats by night.

Our last night in India was an emotional affair. We spent the last few hours being rowed along the Ganges in a skiff, watching the Indians at play on the ghats; bathing, swimming, splashing and, of course, playing cricket; watched as herds of buffalow came down to drink; saw the bodies being consumed in the perenially aflame ‘burning’ ghats. Eventually we joined a flotilla of skiffs and row-boats around the main ghat to watch a nightly ceremony so old that nobody knows how or when it started. We said barely a word to eachother, each lost in our own thoughts. We’d been living and breathing this country for the last three and a half months and couldn’t have planned for a more perfect and apposite ending.

More than a country, India is an experience. It hangs like a ripe fruit, dangling from the Himalayas, the embodiment of Asia. It exudes a kind of sweaty fecundity and smoky mysticism and the sheer weight of humanity, the dogs, cars, rickshaws, cows, elephants, camels has to be seen to be believed. Religion seeps into the everyday: Hindu luminosity, Muslim opulence, Buddhist austerity, Sikh openness, Catholic stateliness, and the result is a magic unlike anywhere on the planet. Thanks to the variagated landscape and the ghostly impressions of empires past it can feel at times like you’re in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Tibet, Marrakesh or England.

Train travel in India.

The people too; it should come as no shock to anybody whose lived in England in the last 50 years or so, but Indian people are wonderful. V.S. Naipul says that the Indian is the last true English gentleman, and its true. They have an exagerrated courteousness and a kind of misplaced chivalry (for instance Amy will often be offered a seat on a packed train, but not by the person occupying it!). Everyone is an entrepneur, and will cheerfully rip you off for whatever they can. This is a downside. Even when caught red-handed, they don’t have the grace to look abashed, you’ll just get one of those damned infectious ambiguous head-wobbles (does it mean yes or does it mean no?) But on the other hand we’ve never felt threatened and have heard no tales of anyone having anything stolen.

The food will be very much missed.

In Varanasi I saw 2 children playing, a boy and a girl. They were tussling and laughing, the boy trying to escape the clutches of the little girl. A passing dog provided a distraction and he made good his escape, running off up the alley. The girl set off after him but as she gave chase I noticed she had ricketts and waddled off with a bow-legged gait. Therein lies the tragedy of India. A country with one of the largest economies in the world, some of the most expensive real estate on the planet and a $1.3 billion space program, yet they have no sanitation, no waste disposal, and still have kids running around with ricketts.

I could go on forever. You could write a book about India, and many have. So to sum up I’ll just say we are going to miss this filthy, fractious hell-hole very, very much.

We floated these flaming lotus flowers off down the Ganges. Good karma apparently.

Farewell India, and thanks for all the curry.

But the next day we did get a ticket for the boat, and off we sailed to Havelock. We arrived at night and the very next day was the annual Hindu festival of Holi. For weeks we’d been asked by other backpackers “so, where are you spending Holi?” in a manner that inferred their new found Hindu devoutness. “I dunno,” we’d shrug. “What is it?” What it is, is a wonderful, colourful celebration of something-or-other that involves covering one another in different coloured powder paints. The streets were lined with Indians, some with water guns filled with pre-mixed paint, some with tubs of powder, others with vats of narcotic milkshake. People would approach, paint your face, dump or fling handfuls of powder, shoot the paint guns at you, give you a hug and shout “Happy Holi!” Nobody was exempt. Eventually everybody congregated in the town where there was a speaker pumping out music and yet more of the riotous explosions of colour. Everybody was covered head-to-toe, clothes ruined, laughing, dancing, throwing paint. Absolutely magical, and one of the defining moments of our time in India.

Holi paintballs.

With Holi over we settled into island life. I can’t really stress just how mind-blowingly beautiful Havelock Island is. Initially we were aghast at the fact there was no Internet access, no hot water, and only one place that sells alcohol but soon came to realise that this sleepy seclusion is precisely the charm of the Andaman Islands. The calm ocean is a bright turquoise colour and laps at pristine beaches whose silky white sand creeps beneath overhanging jungle canopy. There is a single narrow road on the island and the main town is a dozen or so tin-roofed shacks with a covered fruit market. We stayed in a garden of wooden huts amidst bow-trunked coconut trees and their perpendicular betel-nut cousins and rented a little moped to get us into town or to the other beaches. Contentment settled on us like a disease.

First of all we bought some Marmite – a palliative to home-sickness – off of a West Country lad we befriended. And then we bought the only thing you really need on this island – a hammock. Because the beaches are completely deserted – no hotels, no sun loungers, no hawkers, no umbrellas – and the boughs of the trees have grown horizontally over the sea, all you do is find a suitable branch from which to string up your hammock, and then climb in. Often the tide will come in and you’ll find yourself swinging in the breeze with nothing but the crystal water gurgling beneath. Hours were spent just gazing out to sea. As the tide receded we’d lay in warm shallow pools left between the coral until our skin wrinkled.

Hammock Life.

It would be dark by 6pm so we’d stroll to one of 2 nearby restaurants that sold some of the best food we’ve had in India. By the time we’d eaten there’d normally be some sort of gathering around one or the other of our huts, and then perhaps we’d hear whispers of a party in a different resort so we’d all decamp, enormous bottles of rum in hand. It’s what you’d describe as a quiet social scene, in keeping with the environs.

Havelock is completely unlike anywhere else in India. It’s peaceful, becalming, heavenly, unspoiled, and it’s a marvel that destinations like this still exist in the world. Back in the hubbub of New Delhi, staring through a subway window we wonder if it happened at all. The only proof we have is a suntan and a well-worn hammock strapped to my rucksack. The Marmite, like our allotted time in paradise, is gone.

The moonset over Havelock.

Covered.

Even the beach wasn’t safe.

Home is where you hang your hammock.

Needs no caption.

Words won’t convey the sense of peaceful perfection and solemn serenity, the wonderful symmetry or the subtle shifts in colour throughout the day; it seems almost alive, and there definitely seems a mournful sadness about it – you can see where the tear-drop analogies come from. There’s nothing like a tragedy to add some pathos either: In 1631 emperor Shah Jahan’s heart was shattered when his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died during childbirth. Clearly he loved her more than his first two wives and, through gritted teeth and a river of tears (one imagines), he announced that he would build her the best darn tomb to ever grace the surface of the planet. Construction began a year later and took 22 years and once he finished old Shah must’ve sighed aloud and known that he’d done his Mumtaz proud. He would’ve, I’m sure, loved nothing more than to live out the rest of his days safe in this knowledge but this was not to be. His bloody ungrateful son Aurangzeb usurped him and imprisoned him in Agra fort from where he could only gaze upon his masterpiece from afar. When he died they finally buried him next to his beloved Mumtaz beneath the Taj Mahal.

The Taj and Us.

“A blemish on the arse cheek of eternity” is how I’d describe Agra, the city surrounding the Taj. Actually it’s not that bad, not as bad as people would have you believe – it’s just the same as most other North Indian cities – but perhaps, juxtaposed against the Taj, anything would look abject. We spent an afternoon in the fort, awoke the next morning at dawn to see sunrise at the Taj Mahal, and then left the following day. The best thing about Agra are the rooftop restaurants where you can stare like a lovesick teenager at the Taj, like a resplendent, reclining octopus with dozens of large birds of prey circling it’s onion cupola. Further entertainment is provided by gangs of street monkeys running amok on the rooftops of Taj Ganj.

Sunrise at the Taj.

From Agra it is just a quick 4-hour standing-next-to-the-toilet train journey to Delhi where we had to fight to alight. I fell under the train but luckily it remained stationary. We tried not to let that colour our opinion of the place but still came to the conclusion that it is a little underwhelming. We stayed in Pahar Ganj, a neon-lit backpacker enclave where the clamour for custom reaches its zenith, and did enjoy riding the spotlessly clean subway (although it inevitably leads to more fights to alight!) It’s not that we particularly disliked Delhi, it’s just, well, Mumbai it ain’t.

Pahar Ganj.

Anyway, we’ve had enough of cities and forts and buildings for now so we decided to head to paradise – the Andaman Islands.

Agra Fort. In any city without the Taj Mahal, this would be the star attraction.

Arty.