We arrived into chennai airport and made our way to our little bit of luxury, a night at a ramada hotel. After checking in (we were definitely the scruffiest people in the building), we flopped down on our luxury bed. We bargained a tuk tuk (he quoted a price but also switched on the meter, so we demanded the cheaper meter price, and won), we went to the nearby mall. We bought a cute plastic tuk tuk each, and I bought myself a pashmina. Hugo bought a tie. We were...

On the flight to the Andaman islands, we could see the deltas in the bay of Bengal, where lots of Bengal tigers live. On the descent, we saw the small tropical islands with white beaches in the vast ocean, and the unspoilt rain forests. We landed into the tiny airport of port blair, and went through special immigration. We waited for our bags, until there were none left on the conveyor belt, which made us worry that they had been flown off to some far away countr...

Arriving into Kolkata station, we struck up a conversation with a lady on the train, who was called Jolly (which turmned out to be a very fitting name). She offered us a lift with her friend, who kindly dropped us at our hotel. She had been in Lucknow training other teachers about human rights and child protection, and worked to help street kids into education - what an angel. We checked into our 1950s style hotel, complete with retro lift with metal shutters, ak...

On the evening of our departure from khajuraho, we headed to the station and boarded what looked like the tourist carriage; there were no Indians in sight. We arrived into Varanasi after a good nights sleep and headed to our hostel. This was the first dorm room we had stayed in, with 16 beds to a room. With a host of free activities offered by the hostel,we were just in time for 'spa'. I joined the queue of 4 other girls for the massage, but Hugo was whisked away...

The following morning we went back to the station and had a quick meal before waiting an hour and a half for our delayed train. There we met a young boy who struck up a conversation to practise his English. He told us his dream was to work in technology and to earn his own money so that he could take his parents on holiday out of India. His top places to visit were Paris, London, Rome, Brazil and New York. He asked us how many times we had been on a plane - a rea...