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Day 103: Dinner tonight was at the village of Chokhi Dhani, just outside Jaipur, which hosted a nightly all-inclusive Rajasthan-themed evening of food and entertainment popular with local Indian families. Following an incredible all-you-can-eat Rajasthani thali meal, we wandered from attraction to attraction including elephant and camel rides, child acrobatics, magic shows, dance performances, henna […]

Days 102-103: Continuing on our whirlwind tour of the Golden Triangle, we made it to Jaipur.
(This looked touch and go for a while when our car sustained a flat tyre just outside a tiny village en route and we were swamped by curious locals. As is usual in situations such as these, conversations about […]

Day 101: While India can’t match Africa for breadth and depth of animal life in the wild, we were given some small hope by our trusty Lonely Planet India that we might be able to eyeball a tiger in Ranthambore National Park, about 3 hours drive south from Jaipur.
Loaded by the local ticket mafia into […]

Day 100: It’s one of those places that words can’t describe.
I’ll always remember my first glimpse. Walking slowly through the southern archway, the full magnificence of the Taj Mahal came into view.
It’s a monument of great beauty but there is also melancholy here. The Taj is not a palace but a mausoleum. Built out […]

Days 93-95: Delhi was our starting point in India, where we met up with Kate’s student exchange pal Andrea. We bided our time here before kicking off on our road trip around Rajasthan, dropping into the Red Fort (above) and the nearby main mosque.
It was here that we started hearing the expression: “This is […]

Day 93: In Nepal, we had our first taste of the single-minded cricketing obsession of a nation. India’s victory over Pakistan in the Twenty20 World Cup final had sent India into a frenzy of celebration, and on Indian TV it was the only news for at least three days, with English language Indian news channels […]

Day 1: Our first night out of Australia and the Residency Hotel Andheri lived up to our relatively low expectations for Asian budget airport hotels (it’s a tightly contested genre) and probably exceeded them in some aspects. What we really needed was sleep - and the hotel delivered.
Check-in was painless, staff were generally helpful […]

Day 1: Arriving in Mumbai was pretty much what we expected - chaotic. There was no obvious taxi rank but there was no shortage of hustlers to take us to our hotel.
It’s a matter of honour that we weren’t out of the airport for more than five minutes before we had our first dodgy […]