To the desert!

5/9 - 5/11

We barely made it to the bus on time, running through the streets after we were given a new and distant departure point just as we were leaving the hotel.

Talkin' 'bout a revolution

5/6 - 5/9

Tahrir square was busy every night with lots of flag-waving marching groups, locals out taking pictures and earnest political students. The students I spoke to expected the 'silent' (ignorant) majority to elect an army general for president in 6 months time, and seemed pretty depressed about the prospect, considering army rule a major step back for Egypt and potential disaster. Another guy, a very angry man, bemoaned the average Egyptian's political ignorance and all the unthinking cries of 'freedom!' "These people don't even know the value of the Suez canal!" he cried. Most people there were just really happy and full of hope.

Giza look at Saqqara

Visiting the Giza pyramids can be a harrowing experience, if the tales of other travellers and guide books are to be believed. It all depends how much you value your money. If you try to go in on foot and haggle for everything you'll have a rough time of it. On the other hand, one Japanese guy we met told us how lucky he'd been that a local had showed him round, treated him to lunch and been really kind, only asking for about 800 Egyptian pounds. To put that in perspective, that's double what we paid for a driver for the whole day, all the entry tickets, a tour of the Giza pyramids on camels, the Saqqara pyramids on foot, lunch, dinner and an evening horseback ride on the plateau. He was happy at his good fortune though, that's the main thing.

Cairo, mosques and citadels

Walking through town we were again struck by how hospitable and welcoming Egyptians were. So many cries of "welcome!" everywhere we walked. Whenever we told people this later they inevitably said "oh, they only wanted to sell you..." or something similar. That really wasn't the case. Total strangers walking down the street or driving by in cars with absolutely no desire to sell us anything were just shouting greetings as they passed by. It was weird, but nice. Of course we did meet some really persistent touts, and some stall owners would even go as far as grabbing my arm and not letting go for quite some time, but as long as you took it all with a smile it never became wearing.

Egypt! Well, a bit of Cairo anyway.

4/29 - 5/3

The overnight bus was less than fun, but not as bad as we had anticipated. We were unceremoniously dumped on the outskirts of Delhi though - I should have confirmed the exact destination. An hour of laid-back haggling while we woke up and sipped on chai got us a reasonable taxi price, but we got taken to a real shit-hole of a hotel. Luckily I recognised the area so we paid off the driver and found ourselves a reasonable place to stay nearby.

Northern hill stations, Shimla, Manali and Vashisht

4/21 - 4/29

CC trains in India, wow. Five seats in a row, yes, but tea, water, food and newspapers all served with a smile and included in the ticket price. Way more 'civilised' than the air-conditioned sleeper trains we'd been on, though for my money I prefer to have the option of going horizontal. Arriving at Kalka at noon we transferred to the 'toy train', another single-gauge tiny train that seemed somewhat overloaded when nearly everyone from the spacious CC train piled on.

New Delhi and two varieties of entrepreneur

Our first impression of New Delhi was of a metro station in the middle of nowhere. A policeman under a street lamp had a thick cloud of mosquitoes circling over his bare head. We stumbled about in the dark until we found a stall with a phone we could use, called Sidd and waited for him to show up. He surprised us with long hair, smart clothes and a motorbike - quite different from the backpacker we met in Malaysia!

Agra, home of the Taj Mahal

Met two Brits on the train, Warren and Joel, and chatted about our travels, bad air and asthma, filth and food. Restless night with an incredibly noisy family who moved in after dark to occupy all the lower level bunks and floor space.

After finding a place to stay in Taj Ganj with wi-fi we had our first view of the Taj Mahal from a rooftop restaurant. Note the bed in the foreground.

Varanasi, hanging out with Japanese backpackers

4/4 - 4/14

Jalgaon to Varanasi, the place where all those pictures of the Ganges come from. We found our seats and sat down despite the hostile young madam next to us who tried to convince us we had the wrong carriage! Not the best start to a 22 hour train journey. Luckily I had spotted a Japanese name on the passenger list before boarding, so partly just to be sociable but also to avoid the icy atmosphere in our cabin we spent a lot of the trip chatting with Makoto and Miisha further down the carriage. They turned out to be fun and interesting people, so we stuck together as we made our way to 'Baba's' hostel in Varanasi.

Daulatabad citadel and Ajanta caves.

4/1 - 4/3

Daulatabad seems to be overlooked by guide books in favour of the caves nearby, so we almost didn't visit but I'm so glad we did.