Flashpacking Travel | January 11, 2013 | 8 Comments
Lucknow to Varanasi? After reluctantly leaving Varanasi, we would have liked to have stayed another night or so in this special and spiritual place, two nights just wasn’t enough but we needed to be in New Delhi in a few days time to meet our driver to start our tour of Rajasthan. We had already booked our train tickets […]
Travel Blog | January 9, 2013 | 13 Comments
Getting to Varanasi from Delhi The hardest part travelling to Varanasi was getting hold of the train tickets where we had spent a couple of hours queueing at the international ticket desk at Delhi station a few days previously. This is one of the places that I was very excited to see, many people had told […]
Travel Blog | January 5, 2013 | 0 Comments
Sightseeing around New Delhi New Delhi has been our first big city in India (we had visited Chennai, but this was more of a stopover) and it has been a real surprise. The first is that with the exception of key junctions and parts in the very centre of town, the traffic runs quite smoothly, especially on the […]
Delhi: Our North India Trip Begins
Travel Blog | January 1, 2013 | 2 Comments
North India Trip – Getting from Pondicherry to Delhi We failed to get any train tickets for our journey from Chennai to Delhi so we ended up flying with Spicejet from Chennai, it is all getting a little bit busier as we find ourselves on the more popular routes. We took the local express bus from […]
India East Coast: Pondicherry a Taste of France in India
Travel Blog | December 29, 2012 | 2 Comments
After enjoying our twinkling night-time scenes and a bellyful of temples in Mysore we headed East across Karnataka and entered our third Indian state of this trip. Tamil Nadu’s capital Chennai was our first port of call on our way to Pondicherry. We had decided that the city did not offer us much in the […]
India Travel: Things to do in Mysore
Travel Blog | December 26, 2012 | 3 Comments
Mysore, or Mysuru as it’s also known, is in the state of Karnataka. If you haven’t visited Mysore before, we think it’s worth including on your India travel itinerary. The city is rich in heritage with many royal palaces, interesting colonial buildings, a choice of temples, churches and mosques to satiate any religious creed and […]
Mysore Palace Lights Up Night Sky
Flashpacking Travel | December 23, 2012 | 3 Comments
We arrived on Sunday afternoon in Mysore after taking a private taxi from Wayanad, its a three hour, 150Km journey which allows you to wave goodbye to Kerala State and say a big hello to Karnataka. Travel on Indian buses on a Sunday from this location wasn’t really an option, think busy times ten. So we got […]
Kerala Travel: Kannur to Wayanad
Travel Blog | December 20, 2012 | 2 Comments
We had a wonderful relaxing time at our Kannur homestay, enjoying the beach, nature, and the wonderful food in our ‘all inclusive’ remote beach escape. All good things come to an end though ,so reluctantly we packed our backpacks and travelled by auto rickshaw for a 130Km three hour journey to Wayanad. Now it may […]
India: Kerala Homestay in Kannur
Flashpacking Travel | December 15, 2012 | 7 Comments
The Train from Kochin to Kannur We left Kochi and headed for somewhere a little bit more off the tourist map to a place called Kannur in Northern Kerala. Our five hour train journey was a giggle in our seated carriage, as we were the only tourists there. The children seemed fascinated with us, as […]
Kerala Relaxation, Backwaters and Ayurvedic Massage
Travel Blog | December 11, 2012 | 1 Comments
Kerala Backwaters Our second full day in Kerala was devoted to the water. No trip here would be considered complete until you have experienced the calm tranquillity of the Kerala backwaters. If you want to get the complete experience you can hire one of the Ketuvallam boats for yourself, they come in a range of […]
India Car Rental and Driver Hire
How to Rent a Car and Driver in India We’d like to share our experience, and a few of the stories we learned about renting a car and driver from our two week tour of Rajasthan. Like arranging other things in India, it is not always as simple or easy as you may first imagine. […]
Photo Flashback – Kerala Kathakali Dance
We are not really ones for the cultural shows that you regularly find in travel destinations. Often they are a thin representation of the actual song or dance traditions of a community, overpriced and leave you feeling a little bit cheated. This was certainly the case in Waitangi doing the Haka with some actors. Sometimes […]
Goa Retirement, Revamps and a bit of Home Cooking
We hang about in Goa for our remaining time in India sampling foods from home and join the large expat community and retired folk enjoying what is on offer. We had decided in Udaipur that it was time to invest some time doing some work on the blog. Our traffic has been growing steadily over […]
Udaipur And A Break From Travel Blogging
For those arriving at this travel blog post hoping to find out detailed information about our experiences and things to do in Udaipur, leave now, as you’ll need to look elsewhere instead. The hectic schedule of our last two weeks on the road with our driver had wearied us a little. The thought of seeing […]
India Rajasthan and Golden Triangle Itinerary
Two Week Itinerary for Rajasthan and the Golden Triangle You can get to see some of the top sights in Rajasthan and the Golden Triangle in India in fourteen days or less, it will not be a restful experience, but you will gain a lifetime of memories and images from the magnificent Taj Mahal to […]
Jodhpur and the Road to Udaipur
Jodhpur – The Blue City It was a long drive to Jodhpur, our second to last destination in Rajasthan, before waving off our driver. The three restful days in Jaisalmer and our separation from each other had allowed driver and passenger relations to be restored to more friendly less tense mood levels. So we set off […]
In our last travel blog post I mentioned that I had done another diving course. I’ve included some underwater photographs and videos taken whilst I was on this course. We stayed in Bohol, longer than anywhere else in the Philippines, because of the excellent diving sites at very reasonable prices. Bohol is a magnet […]
A delay in this post has been caused by very slow internet connections throughout the last part of our travels in the Philippines. Apologies. However, it now means you have a fun packed bumper blog of travel frustrations, cute monkeys, the chocolate hills and a small slightly disappointing beach. Weather Retreat Given the weather we […]
Donsol, Whale Sharks and Legazpi
Reluctant as we were to leave the beauty of Saud beach we had a lot more Filipino treasures to explore. From the relaxing, serene shores of Saud beach, we headed south towards Donsol in search of some whale sharks. The weather proved challenging, but the wildlife made it all worthwhile. From Pagudpud we reversed […]
Ilocos Norte, Pagudpud and Saud Beach
The ‘Borocay of the North’ is the strapline trying to attach itself to this beautiful part of Ilocos Norte in the Philippines. While I cannot make the comparison yet, I believe Saud Beach in Pagudpud really is a little hidden gem that may eventually give its more famous southern cousin a run for its peso. We […]
Manila and the road to Pagudpud
We arrived in the Philippines on board another Jetstar flight at around 8pm on a Saturday. Having left Bali we had a brief layover in Singapore before our arrival in Manila. The immigration, customs and baggage pick up went like a dream and we were out of the airport within half an hour of touching down. This […]