I'm loathed to make sewage a regular feature of this blog but I cannot help but mention it again as I pick up from the last entry. The last update was from the east coast town of Puri where we stayed for a couple of days longer before heading further north to Calcutta. Being famed as a beach town and popular with Indian holiday makers, I decided one morning (after awaking early due to the outrageously loud snoring from my new roommate) to wander the beach. This was a big mistake and a hugely disgusting experience as the fishing community that lives there obviously don't have any sanitation facilities, the quantity of poos is difficult to understate.

My roommate for the second half of the trip up to Kathmandu is a 70 year old british guy. Although 70 sounds old, this guy looks and acts about 20-30 years younger and is more often than not sinking copious quantities of booze and always to bed later than me. Almost everyone you meet ends up describing him as 'a character'. His catchphrase is "I'm at that age where I'm looking for a new experience", he often refers to his wife as "House Management", and he has a never ending set of stories (even if they are often repeated as he can't remember who he's told which ones). As his surname is Mills I call him 'Millsy' to make him sound like a Premiership footballer.

Whilst in Puri a visit had been arranged to a local charity funded school that the tour company Dragoman support and would pledge 10 bucks for each of us that showed up. The idea of the school was to provide some education to underprivileged children from the town, but having sat in on a few classes, the teaching just seemed to consist of the kids reciting words. This didn't strike me as likely to be very effective but I guess something is better than nothing. The whole school got together in the yard and then a few of the kids did some funny dance for us which I thought was rubbish.

To escape the poos in Puri myself and 5 others from the trip decided to leave the group for a couple of days and catch a sleeper train up to Calcutta rather than making the two day journey in the truck. This proved to be a wise decision as it gained us almost 2 extra days in Calcutta, and meant we missed out on a nights camping which ended up being in a paddy field according to the others. On the train we also benefited from clean bedclothes (which are not always a given in the mid range Indian hotels) and a mean cup of chai in the morning.

The first day in Calcutta we did a bit of sightseeing and generally ambled about. First stop was the famous cricket ground Eden Gardens. Despite pleading with a security guard they wouldn't let me inside but I did join in with some of the numerous impromptu games that take place in the park outside. To my surprise my batting was not a complete embarrassment, even when up against some tasty Indian quicks. While some of the others went for a mid afternoon beer, I decided that I would opt for a lower calorie coffee option in city's western style coffee house as I'm worried I'm getting fat. However on arrival I was faced with a wall of cakes and it was 2 chocolate brownies and a slab of cake later before I wandered back to the hotel. With extra time on our hands we booked a 2 day trip to the Sunderbans tiger reserve which is in the delta of the river Ganges south of Calcutta. This involved a bus and boat trip from the city to a camp/hotel complex within the mangrove forest waterways of the national park tiger reserve where we stayed for one night. Naturally we saw zero tigers but I made sure I took some close up pictures of photos the hotel had up on their walls of tigers to wind up the others in the group that we did get some good sightings (the fraudulent shots didn't con anyone unfortunately). On return to the city more sightseeing was on the agenda although most of that particular day was spent sitting in traffic, the roads here are as mental as anything I've seen. Calcutta is pretty synomonous with squalor and it didn't fail to deliver on that count with lepers, naked people in the street and general nastiness aplenty.

After Calcutta the tour continued with two long drive days in the truck, both unfortunately beset by accidents, broken bridges and the subsequent huge traffic jams. The one bright spot was, when stuck in one of the queues of trucks, this absolutely enormous monkey ran down the street. It must have been the size of a full grown man and the locals got out its way rather swiftly before it disappeared down a side road. The end game for these drives was Darjeeling the former Raj hill station in the Himalayan foothills. In-between we had a camp and stayed in a horrible town called Siliguri which was full of flies, dirt, traffic, no streetlights, and a dearth of restaurants. Not looking forward to returning here, which we have to do on our way back south before heading west and cutting across into Nepal later this week.


The final stretch into Darjeeling was a spectacular drive, which was as much up as across as the town itself sits at an altitude of 2000m. It has been a refreshing change to reach cooler climes, and even the fleece has escaped the confines of my rucksack to make an appearance.

We've done some of the generic tourist activities in Darjeeling, kindly organised by our resident fat German 'Til'*. The paramedics jacket he always wears continues to attract widespread derision from my traveling companions. As time passes further information emerges related to the infamous jacket. It's average weight is 9kg, but has reached the height of 15kg in the past. The jacket has been requested to be checked in as hand luggage by an airline while he was checking in for flights, and a couple of days ago he added on his zip on arms which are a completely different shade of red to the rest of the jacket due to fading. It's a complete farce. Til also tickled me with the picture of his girlfriend that he showed me. Strangely he has cut round her in the photo which looks very funny and the skeptic in me suspects he may have cut it out a catalogue. Enough German bashing!Darjeeling is famous for numerous viewpoints in and around the town from which you can get spectacular views of the Himalayas, including Everest on a good day. Unfortunately the days we were there couldn't have been less good days and I counted myself lucky to see my own hand in front of my face** due to the cloud that enveloped the town, rather than mountains hundreds of km's away. They have got a good zoo there with a few big cats in (Leopard's tails are huge) and we had afternoon tea at one of the posh hotels complete with sandwiches with the crusts cut off, cake and biscuits.

From Darjeeling we've head yet further north into the small state of Sikkim which sits of roughly the same latitude as Nepal and is where the hills start getting serious (the Himalayas). The roads were windy, at times hair raising, and seemingly the scene of poor driving as every mile or so there were amusing signs placed to remind drivers to exercise care e.g. 'Drinking whisky, driving risky' and 'Are you married? Divorce your speed'. We're now in a place called Gangtok which is a bit hilly and hard work to walk around but good nonetheless. This morning we went to a monastery and this afternoon I got to a football match, the final of a tournament being played in the town. I was not too hopeful it would be a lesson in quality play when both sides had defenders taking their goal kicks, and needless to say the opening goal came from a defensive horror show. I can't tell you what the final score was as I had to leave and run back to the hotel shortly after the second half started to do a diarrhea and couldn't be bothered to go back. Tomorrow we have a trip up to a lake near the Chinese border and go on yak ride, so pictures from that on the next blog.

Right I'm going to bring the to a halt as I written more than enough and more importantly I'm getting hungry. I think I might go for a curry tonight......

* I was most disappointed to learn yesterday from Til that popular citrus based soft drink 7up is not called 'Sieben Up' in Germany.

** This is an exaggeration.