Hi all, so our first blog. Well her goes, we arrived in India about a week ago and spent a day in Mumbai before flying to Bhavnagar in Gujarat to meet some of the friends I made on my last trip here. We had three great days here, eating really well - thank you everyone that had us for a meal! And we did some general sightseeing of the area - it's not normally on the tourist route so we had quite a few stares from people that had never seen the 'white ginger boy' before!

We went for mini treks in the hills and visited a rural village to see how people really live under the stars - literally they sleep outside it's so warm!

While we were there it was Rhaksha Bunden a date celebrated all over India where a sister ties a rhaki (friendship type bracelet) to her brother - or any other female relative/friend to a male relative. As they didn't want us to be left out we were also included in this and I even got myself in the local newspaper tying one to the boy in the picture for this blog. The kids you see in the photo are part of 'Ray of Hope' a project run by the Rotary Club of Bhavnagar for kids from the slum to give them a chance at a good education.

The Rotary Club has loads of ongoing projects and when I visited last time they were just starting to make school benches available to kids in schools - as most of them just sit on the floor. This time I visited a school that had some benches donated by the Potters Bar Rotary Club (my dad's) and saw sucha difference so if anyone feels generous, then let me know as twenty squid will buy a great bench that will save a lot of bum and back ache! A brilliant cause.

After catching up with friends and our 'Indian family' we set off to Ahmedabad on bus and then caught a flight (when we eventually found our cab to the airport - thanks Tarak!) to Delhi. We were all set to go on a ten day trip we had booked, but alas we both got a case of Delhi Belly, Mike in particular and had to resort to calling the doctor and not moving from the hotel room for a few days. Suffice to say we missed our trip but should be able to claim it back on insurance thanks to a doctors certificate. So then, we were both so fed up with feeling ill and stuck in Delhi feeling sorry for ourselves that we decided to bring our flight to Bangkok forwarded and headed off!

Quote of India (from a crisps advert) ' Oh no, it looks like my chips have fallen for your sandwiches!'

So here we are now in Bangkok, good old Khao San Road - the road for backpackers where there's a huge mix of different westerners, clothes, bags, jewellery, (girls I'll bring you something back for xmas!) it's great! We plan to go see the famous Bridge over the River Kwai in the next couple of days so wil wrte another blog soon.

So, unfortunately our Inida trip was cut short and we didn't see half the things we would have liked - but that's just another excuse to visit again! But, fortunately we both now feel much better and are looking forward to the rest of Thailand. Bye for now xx

P.S. By the way Dan rat chat flat mat hat nat phat.