Arrived in Agra by the super fast train from Dehli in two hours. We settled into Hotel Sheela late morning; small cottage style accommodation in a peaceful lush garden setting, set well back from the road. We waited in the shade of the trees for our room to become available. While we happily sat on one of those seat swings; we were entertained by the juvenile monkey's playing in the tree behind us while the adults had a big snooze on the tin roof, occasionally...

The one and a half hour flight from Kathmandu to Dehli was amazingly picturesque. One snow capped mountain rolled into the next into the next. The plane followed the mountain ranges, we then made a left hand turn and flew into Dehli. The airport had been recently rebuilt in time for the Commonwealth games, it was very swish and the security was very tight with police everywhere carrying machine guns. No outsiders were allowed into the airport; this gave us a goo...

We landed in Kolkata on Monday and shared a taxi with 2 Aussies from Queensland into Kolkata's central area. This was a one hour ride. These guys had been touring around Asia for the past 3 months. As they had no hotel reservation and it was late in the afternoon they booked into our hotel. The view from the taxi was desperate, dark, depressing, wall to wall poverty lined our route into town. There are whole families living in makeshift shelters they call home...