India - glorious India. We have just arrived in India after our 3 week stint in Nepal. After our trek we did a 2 day/1 night white water rafting trip which was awesome. It was so much better than i expected. We had awesome grade 3-4+ rapids and the water was absolutely beautiful - clean, cold and refreshing. We stayed in a wicked lodge by the waters edge in well constructed tents with a thatched roof and beds!! Typically we expected the food to be pretty po...

We have returned from our 10 day trek to Annapurna Base Camp. What a fantastic trek. We started in Pokhara, Nepal, and trekked through local villages, thick rainforest, alongside the white water rapids of the fresh Himalayan rivers and all during rain, hail and shine (literally). After 6 days we reached 4130 mts above sea level at Annapurna base camp. We stayed here overnight and took in the wonderful views of the Himalayan mountains. We played volleyball wi...

After much ado we worked out how to spend out 'Tibetan time' as well as see a touch of Tibet while we are still here. Well at least we thought until our plan came tumbling down. We decided to catch a 10 hour train and then a 6 hour bus to a place called Xiahe. The day we were about to board the train what did the Chinese Govt. decide to do - close that town off to tourists too! So in a bit of a frantic mess we had to decide what to do with our time. We heade...

We made it..... Just arrived in Pingyao after out mammoth 12 hour train ride from Beijing. Ordinarily i like train rides but we couldn't get sleeper tickets so we had to go with the 'hard seat' option. We got to the train station with about 10 mins to spare and ran to our platform. Once we boarded the train we had a better idea of what we were in for. There were people everywhere - on seats, in the isles, on the floor ie you don't need a ticket to get a ride ...

Hi all, Internet is pretty slow around here and it has taken me ages to upload a few photos so this will be brief. Beijing is awesome. We went to the Great Wall which was absolutely spectacular. It just keeps going and going. We ate Peking Duck last night and it met all my expectations and more. Beijing is not as big as i imagined. It is a huge city in area but there are not many huge high rises like in Hong Kong. Traffic is made and construction is goi...