Hi all!

I think now is as good a time as any to update those of you who care as to our whereabouts and activities! John and I will head off to the Andaman Islands for 2 weeks on Friday (yey!) so I think that will deserve it's own blog!

Well, I left you all in Katmandhu. From there we travelled in a rather rickety overnight bus for 17 hours to the border near Darjeeling. Oh, I forgot to mention that I bought a guitar! It's very pretty -it's a bright pink electric guitar! It's a fake Fender (the spelling is Fendar! hehe) but I love it. Can't wait to plug it into an amp! Anyhoo, though it is a pretty guitar - it's not overly practical! I had to sit in a seat with it inbetween my legs when there wasn't enough room for my legs in the first place! - for 17 hours! I had some serious cramps in some serious places!

From there we took a jeep for 4 hours and nearly got into a fight with the driver for just being utterly horrible. Plus we had to put up with a horrible whiney German girl who kept calling the driver stupid, adding to his anger. I realised I didn't like her because she said she hated India as it's too dirty so she's taking planes everywhere. I really don't get on with travellers who are afraid to travel!

So we got to Darjeeling and that's about where the interesting blogging stops. There is absolutely nothing interesting about Darjeeling. They have good tea. Full stop. The weather was awful, I got a cold, everywhere looks like it's stuck in about 1982, people NEVER smile, there is nowhere to get a decent meal except for one place where we went everyday and we saw a dead man on the street. Literally riga mortis (no idea how to spell that) dead. I nearly vommed. We managed to find a nice place to stay though and on Divali we all sat out on the balcony and watched the fireworks which was lovely. So I'll skip quickly through Darjeeling...

We took a rather nice bus to Calcutta and Joe left us to go and meditate! He joined a ten day meditation called 'verpasna'. He said it was really interesting but it was just too hard to sit in the same place for hours on end. Plus he was the only foreigner, which we all thought was a bit strange. Anyhoo, We've literally been cruising around the city for 4 days. Calcutta is not what I expected at all. It's a city but it's a very managable city. It's not very dirty and the people are all super friendly. There's a main road called Park Road which looks like it could be new york! We've had some good coffee, visited the horticultural gardens, been to the zoo, walked by the Houghley river and been to the Indian Museum (which contains nothing but rocks, random artifacts stolen from Greece and China and some stuffed, rotting animals! Oh and they have a fake foetus in a jar as well as an 8-legged goat!).

There are some really lovely back-packers here too which is nice. We've been using the Subways a lot as well which are surprisingly not jam-packed with people like the streets! It seemed like we were just hanging about in Calcutta awaiting our flight to the Andamans so we decided to do something.

There is an excursion that is organised out in the bengali jungle in the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve. Apparently there are just 275 tigers left in West Bengal and this excursion allows you to see where they live (and possibly spot one). Well, we didn't spot one but it was an experience!

Just getting there is a mission in itself! First you take a local train (which if you read my first blog from Bombay is an infuriating and petrifying experience involving fist fights, spitting and other unsavory things) two motor-powered boats packed to the brim with people (I thought we were going to sink at one point) then two motor rickshaws made literally from a 50cc bike and a plank of wood! When we arrived we sat down with the local villagers and watched them catch the fish and prawns that we would eat that evening. We also caught a boat that night under the moonlight to a neighbouring island and tried rice-liquor which tasted like how I imagine paint stripper to taste! I then got a splitting head ache and had to go to bed (I think it was a mixture of the diesel fumes and the ridiculous train! On the trip we were also joined by a lovely English girl, a funky Italian lady and a cynical, arrogant French guy! As much as I tried to like him I couldn't. He turned up his nose at absolutely everything we did! He didn't like getting dirty and he didn't like the sun. Why the heck pick India?! Anyhoo...

The next day we ventured out in a lovely big boat at 7.30am to the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve. We were given a tour of the main reserve HQ where they offer sanctuaries for monkeys, turtles and Monitor Lizards (we got to see all three up close!) Back onto the boat for some lovely fish curry. We didn't see much else that day. We did get to see a wild Crocodile, lots of Kingfishers, Monitor Lizards and some deer but no tigers! John was utterly disappointed! At the end of a rather sunburnt day we sailed over to the mangrove forest where we promptly jumped into the mud (much to the French guy's disgrace!). We waded through the forest in mud up to our thighs! It was so much fun. We had a little swim around then enjoyed a glorious sunset on the boat. It brought a tear to my little sunburnt eyelid!

It was a truly wonderful time and I'm so glad we did it. We came back to Calcutta today and who did we find in our guesthouse?...Joe! He hadn't lasted 10 days but we're still proud of him for trying. Now we're going to hang around here for two days and we fly to the Andamans on Saturday!

I'll let you know how our beach-lazing and snorkelling goes!

Lots of love,

El xxxx