Yay, we escaped Delhi and the bus trip turned out to be great, well as great as 20 hours on a bus can be... and we did get the Volvo airconditioned bus as promised. When we weren't sleeping the views from the bus in the morning were spectacular climbing slowly up to the hillstation of Manali, sometimes looking down the valleys with a 200m drop below us. We are now staying in the sleepy village of Vashisht, our guidebook says that there are sometimes raves in the...

We have arrived in India!! No sooner had we jumped into a taxi were we thrown into the chaotic mess of New Delhi - think a 2 lane carriage way turned into at least 6 lanes, buses, bicycle rickshaws, motor rickshaws, horse carts, cows, cars, trucks, buses... my god it is total madness and they love their horns - beep, beep bloody beep!! Before we left London we booked ourselves a hotel room so we would miss the touts that follow you to every hotel trying to get c...

Ponte de Lima - Rubiaes - Tui - Rendola (from Porto - 175km) After - I think - 7 days of walking we are now into a routine, sad but true. We wake at 5am strap our blisters and walk... after a couple of hours we stop for coffee/breakfast... walk some more... look at yet another church... walk some more... arrive at Albergue... shower... wash clothes... buy food to cook for dinner... pack backpack... sleep. In the last 4 days we have walked 90km, this includes 3...

Day 3 & 4: Rates - Casa Fernanda - Ponte de Lima (from Porto - 88km) Well after the initial teething problems (i.e. blisters, burns, hating walking) we now seem to be into the whole flow of walking. After spending the first couple of days dodging cars finally most of Day 3 was off road, walking through vineyards, eucalyptus woods, along streams... when you are not stressing about when you are going to be run over you start to enjoy yourself a bit more. Day...

Day 1 & Day 2: Porto - Rates - Barcelos (53 kms) So... the 300km pilgrim trek (Camino Portugués) to Santiago de Compostela has commenced, actually it started at 5.30am yesterday and already we are feeling the strain of walking. Yesterday we walked 37km to Rates, it was a pretty dire day... by 10.00am it was already about 35º, it took us close to 3 hours to get out of Porto city and then we would spend the next 5 hours walking along a busy main road, shari...