28.10.2004

Gone Trekking

Singalila ridge. One foot in Nepal, one foot in India. Five days trekking from tomorrow with gaze drawn to Kangchendzonga. Tibet to the north, Bhutan to the east, and raw beauty at all points of the compass.

27.10.2004

Himalayan vistas

It's no thing getting up at 3:30am this morning. We must beat the jeep-convoy-rush from the hill-station of Darjeeling (2134m) to Tiger Hill look-out (2590m). Elevation becomes important around these parts.

24.10.2004

Durga Puja - Kolkata

Every traveller worth their salt feels nourished when a dash of serendipity is added to their journeying meal. So it was on Friday night when we bumped into Kim, enthusiastically urging us to split a fare and cab it on down to Muhammed Ali Park. We'd fortuitously arrived in Kolkata at the height of the annual festival for Bengalis - Durga Puja.

23.10.2004

Impressions of Kolkata

Busy. Dirty. Big yellow bonnet ambassador cabs. Urban rot. Rendered cement peeling off buildings to reveal red-brick teeth gritting through grime. Street scenes shot like... cinematic widescreen...everywhere you look.

21.10.2004

Cleanliness, training.

Forget searching out Hindu gurus for enlightenment - or discovering the four noble truths within Buddhism. There are more essential things to learn in India first. 'Transcending western notions of cleanliness' is a self-taught class every traveller needs to undertake.

19.10.2004

Aspirational squalor set

I thought I should get in on the political demographics game and invent a label myself. How else can you describe the dirty, hectic, desperate street scene here when the telegraph poles are covered in posters advertising technical training in J2EE, .NET, and whatever else is the latest craze in programming. All a little incongruent - foreign - out of place - in a town where Siraj' book depot is not looking like implementing any B2B, B2C, or even ABC solutions soon. I never checked though, so I can't be sure.

Woah...

It's all true. Nothing can prepare you for India. Chenai is absolute chaos - the fourth largest city in India with around 6.7 million people contributing to the belching, farting, spitting mess of humanity that is smeared across this dirty street canvas.

17.10.2004

India

Well here we sit in Malaysia's largest internet cafe killing time. A couple of hundred wood-panelled booths with individual faux-leather couches, flat-screen monitors, phones for food service. I can't see any kids falling asleep on their keyboards like usual though - I put it down to the industrial-strength air-con pumping through the place.

Trepidation? - no, adventure - is a word that comes to mind as we're browsing through forums and reading up on India travel stories. Boy are there some stories. We fly in to Chennai (aka Madras) in the south tomorrow morning and we were debating rushing up to the province of Sikkim in the north to have a Himalayan birthday for Danielle. Only problem is the train ride to Kolkata is 27 hours. and from there it is still another 18 hours of overland travel!

15.10.2004

Kuala Lumpur

We've spent the last week in Kuala Lumpur waiting for the behemoth that is the Indian bureaucracy to issue our visas. If all is correct in the land of paper-pushers we should be getting our passports back this afternoon.

We can then prepare for our Monday morning flight to Chennai (Madras), India. Ear plugs, valium, scotch fillets, Spiritualism for dummies....hmmm

08.10.2004

Kuching, Borneo

The Kuala Lumpur international airport is definitely a sight to behold - an architectural feat. A massive roof that seems to weave in multiple Opera House sails to cover the buildings below. Flying with Air Asia cost us something like AUD $30 for a two-hour flight - though the no-seat allocation policy instantly creates a 100-metre sprint.

01.10.2004

Vote early, vote often in this Australian election.

While we were in Kuala Lumpur I thought we'd kill some time by hanging out with the AEC staff at the Australian High Commission. Now that's one building that used a lot more cement than glass in construction. A little bit tricky to get into too. They wouldn't let me take my pocket knife in - yet they let people in to access pens without even verifying whether they will vote for John Howard's illiberals. What's more dangerous - I ask you?