Hi everyone! We've been out of touch with the modern world for a while now due to various planes, trains and automobiles, but now we're back, here's what we've been up to over the last 2 weeks....

After being lazy on the beach in Gokarna, we decided to head inland to a place called Hampi. This can only be described as 'Bedrock' with some 15th century temples dotted around the place aswell.....very chilled out with stunning scenery.

Our journey there wasn't so chilled out though - a 12 hour overnight 'sleeper' bus journey without the sleep, but plenty of bruises! You can get an idea from the photo....We had a 3 hour delay, broke down for 4 hours and found ourselves in a 6 mile jam full of identical-looking trucks!

When we did finally arrive, days were spent hammering around on our moped taking in the boulders and temples, and evenings were spent eating great food and watching movies. As usual the mopeds weren't up to much and we ended up blowing a tyre on the 'not-so-trustworthy' blue-ped, and soon discovered the speed of the 'more modern' scooter.

You know how much everyone at home hates even commuting in to London? Well out next journey would cover pretty much the whole of India! We had booked a 31 hour direct sleeper train from Hampi to Calcutta. This wasn't our original plan but due to a massive Hindu festival, every other train we wanted was fully-booked. You could call this good or bad luck, but once we got to the train station we were told that our train had been cancelled due to a major derailment on the line 3 days before (you may have seen in the news).

We had to trudge back to Hampi in the heat of the day, not happy, and re-think our travel plans. 31 hours was to become 80!!

We were dropped off at a bus stop to catch a night bus to Hyderabad. Whilst we were waiting we witnessed some of the most distressing scenes we've ever seen. Street kids were begging for money which is the norm in India - we were happy to give them some food, but never money - but as we boarded the bus, another guy who couldn't have been much older than 14 was handing out glue into old rags for these kids as young as 4 years old. As soon as they had had their fix their little faces lit-up like it was the best thing in the world. So upsetting to see and there was nothing we could do about it at the time....

In Hyderabad we were typically dropped off in some scummy street at 4am with a barrage of rickshaw drivers trying to get our business. Hyderabad stank like you wouldn't believe, no need to ever go back there! We had a short pit-stop there in amongst the craziness before finally boarding a train to Calcutta, not knowing that this would end up taking well over 30 hours due to yet another derailment on that line!

We had just enough time in Calcutta to have the worst taxi experience (ripping us off and sheer rudeness) before getting another sleeper train.....we were gluttons for punishment! This time we were heading in to the Himalayas to Darjeeling.