At the end of our month of volunteering it was with a sense of relief that we escaped into the departure lounge of Trichy airport to wait for our Air Asia flight to KL and then on to Kuching in Sarawak.  At Kuching airport we got a familiar red and yellow taxi to the Basaga, our old favourite haunt when staying over in the provincial capital.  Breathing in the warm and humid air en route to the hotel my pervasive feeling was one of coming home. Next morning I had a wander round the town and got a haircut and was reminded what a cool place Kuching or Cat City really is.  Culturally diverse with Chinese and Malay communities and tribal influences everywhere.  There is now a new bridge over the Kuching River to the Sarawak parliament house, a kind of Asiatic county hall. That evening we dined with Mr Steve, Sue’s old colleague from our time in the little town of Saratok, a few hundred miles further up the coast.  Steve has stayed here since the British C...

From Kerala we got an overnight train that took us across the South of India to the transit hub of Trichy in Tamil Nadu, ready to begin our month long volunteering assignment in a pre-school in a small nearby town.  During this time we also transited from tourist India to another place, I suppose you might call “real India”. This “real India” is an uncompromising place, where prices are a fraction of what they are in tourist India, the stares are hard and often angry or suspicious and the flies abundant.  The photo opposite shows where we breakfasted most days before school began, eating with our hands off banana leaves for less than 50p each.  These guys were some of the nicest people we met on our journey and always made us feel welcome.  But living in a stock room next to a busy classroom with constant interruption during the long school day was wearing and stressful. At the weekends we felt impelled to get a crowded bus back into Trichy to spend a ni...

We're coming to the end of our stay in Kerala and this image, which I took in a small village in the Backwaters yesterday, sums up some of my impressions.  Che is everywhere here along with images of Marx and Lenin on the CPI.M (Communist Party of India [Marxist]) banners and flags.  I've no idea how Marxism co-exists with Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.  For many of the devout maybe Che is just another member of the pantheon of local gods. After our first three days in the cockroach infested tin box we moved to the delightful Raheem's residency next to Alleppey beach.  I had the pleasure of running barefoot in the sand there most mornings and we would often take a stroll on the seashore.  It's a busy place with people casting nets from the beach, fishing inshore on small rafts and just enjoying the fresh air and the sea.  Often while on my early morning run I'd come across the odd bloke squatting in the sand having a shit while smoking a cigarette a...

On 18th January we got a taxi from Fort Kochi to our homestay on the backwaters where our driver was incredibly patient while we tried to find the place, which turned out to be a cute little tin box with a verandah facing one of the main canals into Alleppey.  It was great being able to watch all the boats going in and out of town, just a shame about the cockroaches. On our first full day we hired a local boatman to paddle us around the nearby canals for a few hours and this really was a great way to see some of the small canals and experience the sights and sounds of daily life here, albeit it feels a bit intrusive to be paddled past someone trying to do their washing or having a quiet shave in the canal outside their house. Many of the canals are choked with vegetation and I helped our boatman paddle through some of the worst of it, where we encountered this egret who seemed to be trying to chase us off his territory.  The trip ended on a slightly sour note as the...

After our hectic time visiting some of the major tourist destinations in North India we fled to the South by plane from Varanasi to Kochi via Bangalore.  Our posh hotel, the Xandari Harbour in Fort Kochi was pretty much what we expected with amazing views over the harbour and most days we strolled around the town taking in the ambiance.  After the North it was good to be in a warmer, more relaxed atmosphere with much cleaner air, so that for the first time in ages I felt I could actually breathe in deeply.  It makes me worry that there's an air quality crisis in the North of this country that is going largely unreported and practically everyone we met had a cough. The streets of Fort Kochi reminded me a little of Galle in Sri Lanka with its old colonial vibe, which I have to admit I rather enjoy.  But Fort Kochi is actually more run down and while some buildings are being salvaged there are a lot more that are approaching the point of no return.  Near the ...

We had an uneventful trip to Varanasi via Delhi, although it was strange to have a taxi driver point out the India Gate yet again on our ride from the railway station to the airport.  The journey from Varanasi Airport to our hotel however took ninety gruelling minutes, much of it inching through the insane traffic in the City centre.  Sue needed to rest, but that evening I had a stroll along the Gats and took this photo. On our first full day in the City we took a long walk through the centre and along the major Gats before returning exhausted to our hotel, a pleasant and more or less tranquil spot in the heart of the mayhem.  On day two we visited the run-down but fascinating Hindu University museum before again walking the Gats back to the hotel.  Both trips were broken by lunch at the Dolphin rooftop restaurant. What can you say about Varanasi that hasn't already been said?  Actually, it was all the stuff that has been said that was the problem....

The fog we hit at Bharatpur and its effect on the trains worried me, so I checked out our later bookings only to find that our Agra to Varanasi overnight train had been rescheduled to not stop at Agra.  After some furious checking on the internet I managed to get a refund and book new trains and flights.  After the Birder's Inn we then took a taxi to our hotel in Agra, arriving in the still fog bound city before lunch on 4th January. Our approach to the Taj Mahal was eliptical.  That afternoon we attempted to walk from our hotel in search of a view, but ended up getting hot, bothered and tired as we tramped the dusty traffic choked streets, before getting an auto rickshaw back.  On our walk through the dirty back streets of Agra we saw the most incredible squalor, including at one point a small herd of pigs wallowing in the waters of an open drain in a crowded slum.  On the 5th we visited Agra Fort which should have a fine view of the Taj, but the fog st...