Trekking has been the order of the day of late (with the trend to continue). During the second week of my first trip in Nepal we embarked on a 5 day trek in the Annapurna region. The Annapurna range is a load of high peaks (some over 8000m) in central Nepal, out to the west of Kathmandu and is a popular area for hikers. We set off at the beginning of the week with our army of guides, porters, and cooks with the next 4 nights all being spent under canvas. Compa...

"You ver ze most German non-German I have ezer met". The touching last words from the big German Til from my Mumbai-Kathmandu tour group as I bade my farewell to them last weekend in Kathmandu (I kid you not, he actually said that to me without any prompting). The tour truck was continuing on back in to India on its loop around the country, I meanwhile was joining up with the group for the next trip I was booked on 'Nepal Adventure' with a company ...

As you can see I'm now in Kathmandu the capital of Nepal, which incidentally is brilliant. Over the last 2/3 days I've been gorging on the rampant commercialism that is the tourist ghetto of Thamel in the city, a welcome change from India.The last blog was from the town of Gangtok in the northern eastern state of India called Sikkim. Unfortunately due to a lack of willing participants amongst the tour group, I couldn't do a 2 day trek in the surrounding mountains...

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 w...

India stinks, little would refute anything otherwise, however it's a case of extremes in a country of extremes. At the one end of the scale you have the hunger inducing wafts from the roadside food sellers and the smoke from incense sticks filling the streets, to the horrible concoction of rotting urine, poo, and rubbish. It's a pity the former doesn't prevail but this to me seems to be a result of a lack of pigs. As the Indian's don't eat pork the pigs in the co...