From Delhi Belly to the Dalai Lama

If I had to describe Delhi in three words beginning with “D”, I would choose:

• Delicious
• Drunk
• Diarrhoea

… delicious food, copious amounts of alcohol, and even more copious amounts of diarrhoea. But let’s start at the beginning.

The Chronicles of Kindergarten: The Child, The Pee and The Potty

Let me paint the picture for you. Tiny little children play in a dimly lit room, there’s laughter and crying, there’s running and shouting. In the corner sat a little boy and two potties. The tiny little Nepali child occupied one, and the other glistened with urine from it’s predecessor. And there, there in the cold hard light of day, the child on the potty looked at me. He locked eyes. And with one spare hand, he reached over to the other potty, soaked his fingers in urine and without breaking eye-contact, proceeded to place the pee-soaked hand into his tiny little Nepali mouth.

I shit you not.

The descend to the end…

ANNAPURNA BASE CAMP TREK (Part 3 of 3)

Day 8 to 10 saw us slowly descend our way down the mountains back into civilisation. Although we were retracing our steps for a full day the difference between the breathlessness of the way up and the jelly-legs of the way down provided us with a whole new experience. The purpose had changed. No longer were we pushing ourselves to reach a goal, now we were reminiscing on the beauty that was.

Conquering the top of the world…

ANNAPURNA BASE CAMP (Part 2 of 3) We woke to the sound of our alarm, untangling ourselves from our 5-in-a-bed slumber in an attempt to warm us through body heat. The door opened and we saw crisp blue skies above untouched white snow. We were surrounded by mountains, and the light of the sun was slowly breaking into the sky. We could not believe our luck. After downing yet another bowl of porridge, we grabbed our bamboo trekking poles and set off up the snowy pass towards ABC. We broke through the shadows of the mountain range and into the sunshine, the snow glittered around us.

Absolutely breathtaking… literally.

ANNAPURNA BASE CAMP (Part 1 of 3)

Have you ever woken up and looked out your window to see deep, cascading valleys with the sun slowly peeking over snow-capped mountains? Have you ever climbed completely breathless up stone stairs on the side of a mountain, only to turn the corner to be blown away by yet another spectacular view of eagles soaring between icy peaks? Have you ever climbed through the dark to summit a mountain to watch the sun rise over the world below you?

I have. And that’s only in the first 6 days of the trek.

It was complete and utter chaos… and it was 2am.

It had been 36 hours and I was still awake. I was delirious, but awake. And no, I was not on some mad alcohol-fuelled, pre-trek bender.

For those aware, JJ and I decided to spend a couple of days lapping up Western life in Kuala Lumpur. We navigated our way through KL on trains and monorails, and sweated our way through the neon-lit streets to find our hostel. Now this hostel was the kind of hostel we’d been struggling to find in Myanmar. This hostel was full of tourists who didn’t rise until 3pm, and who hadn’t left their dorm for any other purpose than to find alcohol. This was also where we met our first Australian of the trip – go figure.

From the mountains to Mandalay and Bagan to the beach

Over the past 10 days, we’ve weaved our way through Myanmar’s mountains, through the cities and to the glistening shores of the Bay of Bengal… which equated to a total of two overnight buses, two day buses, and a full day boat ride worth of travel time. Now let me tell you something I’ve learnt about buses in Myanmar.

Like Chickens on Chapati… The Kalaw to Inle Lake Trek

Bleary-eyed and freezing, we stumbled off the bus at 5am and into the mountain town of Kalaw. Decked out in the appropriate attire of shorts and a singlet, we shivered our way to Pineland Inn with a cohort of bus-friends – who were soon to become our “Myanmar Family”. Upon awaking a few hours later, we made our way to “Uncle Sam’s”, famous for his infinite knowledge on the Kalaw to Inle Lake trek.

Pagodas, Pigeons and Pods… Yangon in a nutshell

We arrived at the pod! Those talking to us prior to leaving knew that we pretty much had nothing booked on this trip except an outbound flight and two nights in a pod. Well, let me tell you friends, pod is the way to go! It’s spacious, and private, and it doesn’t move when other people move, and you lock all your things up, and you have your own light, and your own power point, and I LOVE THE POD. Anyway, while I’d like to fill an entire post just talking about the pod, there’s more to Yangon than just a brilliantly designed pod-hostel.

“Without that Ma’am, I can’t let you board the flight”…

Let’s backtrack a minute. We’ve spent the weekend packing up our lives, we’ve said goodbye to our loved ones, we’ve packed everything we could think of, and we headed to the airport. We had that thought process of “well whatever we don’t have now, we’ll have to just get over there”. Easy, right?