round two.

These photos will about bring you up to speed with where we are...from India, via Sri Lanka, and onto Spain. 

This is the huge temple that dominated the Indian town that, if anyone can remember my post, I was very sick in and quite frankly, didn't enjoy at all. I do like this photo though.

This is from that same town; while I was sick in bed Will went to conquer the big hill, as is his way, and found these monkeys at the top.

Pondicherry...the first time we've had cheese since Nepal and the first time we've had jam that didn't make us feel ill from chemicals since we left home...we are understandably excited about our picnic (even if we did have to have it on a hill to avoid all the poop on the grass...ahhh, India).

The town policemen doing the town policemen dance in Mamallapuram, the town we spent our last week of India in. P.s. they aren't really dancing, Will just happened to catch them in this hilarious pose.

The big rock! We summited this in Sigirya, Sri Lanka. There were some ruins on top and an excellent view.

Also at the big rock. Apparently there were hornets- we didn't see any but this sign is hilarious.

The tea fields of Sri Lanka- this is where your morning cuppa comes from (most probably).

Will dangling precariously on the edge of another big rock we climbed. This one was called Ella's Rock in the town of, strangely enough, Ella.

Tropical paradise. I think that is all that needs to be said.

Learning to surf in Basque Country. One half of the couple that were our first wwoofing hosts in Spain was a very keen surfer and Will took every opportunity to practise, even though the water was freezing (I know, I swum without a wetsuit...I'm real tough).

Tourists in San Sebastian. As well as taking this very posed photo we also paid way too much for some tapas, before finding the much cheaper and more delicious tapas laden bar in some side street. This city is also home to the most crowded beach I have ever seen. Ever. We considered ourselves lucky to find one square metre of human-free sand.

The Casa de Paja; our first wwoofing project in Spain, helping some hippies build a house of straw. See that smooth, smooth concrete? Smoothing that onto the wall was basically our job for the whole two weeks...we became very, very good. 

The morning view of the village we stayed in while wwoofing...there was no more than a couple of bars and a squash court. Very Spanish country-side.

Back into the city now. This is one of the sculptures outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which we visited on our very rainy last day in the city before heading south. The sack underneath the spider's belly is full of eggs; it is a sculpture to celebrate motherhood.

And this is the river-side facade of the Guggenheim. I like it because you can admire- for free- the sculptures and building itself without needing to part with hard-earned cash to go inside...it's bringing art to the people.

A big, building-side gecko made out of CDs in Madrid.

So that ends the photo journal post. Stay tuned for a Barcelona (aka coolest city we've all ever been to) update. 

I know you've all been waiting with baited breath...

Finally, some photos! Here is a small selection of India, starting from Fort Cochin. Enjoy!


 This is a very cool old tree we saw in Fort Cochin that has been graffitied into various animals. Not sure what this animal is but I like it...

 Some storm clouds rolling in over the cliffs of Varkala, the beach town we lazed away a whole week in. A few minutes after this was taken we were both drenched, having failed to seek shelter fast enough.

Varkala, again.

 An extremely full train. Will and I and all of our luggage were crammed onto this tiny bunk.

A crazy, colourful Mysore temple.

A photo-souvenire from the railway museum we visited in Mysore...it is an old Aston Martin that was converted by a train enthusiast so it could run on tracks; it was used to take the inspectors around to stations!

Welcome to Hampi! Temples. Lots of temples.

Apart from temples we also bore witness to this in Hampi...as far as we could make out it was some kind of Hindu exorcism/demonstration for the gods. Lots of shouting and making weird noises and falling about the place.

Temples and rocks.

Temples and monkeys.

And we saved the most Indian til last...an overfull ute/bus was struggling up the hill so out the men hop to push. (They made it to the top.)

So there is a small selection. There will be some more soon, but only for as long as I can use Isabelle's computer because, as we figured out, it is my crappy piece of technology that wont let us upload. 

something interesting is always happening

After yet another overnight train trip we finally arrived in Hampi, a dusty, little village surrounded by huge boulders, temples, banana plantations and coconut trees and bordered on one side by a river. This area is a world heritage site and, as we found out from an English girl we met there, the houses and businesses in the area are slowly being demolished and the people ordered to move away. It's a little controversial as there has been no compensation for these people yet and this began happening 3 years ago. I think the ultimate plan is to make accommodation only available in the town 1/2 an hour away and charge astronomical (by Indian standards) entry prices to the temples. Right now you only have to pay for one ticket but there are plenty of free temples to visit, and you can stay within walking distance of lots of them. So it's a lovely place right now; the time to visit would be now!

It's a very relaxed little area. We were there in the off season so it was quiet and there wasn't much open but we just wandered among the temples and rocks and felt as if we were on the set of an Indiana Jones movie. We spent a lot of time watching monkeys do hilarious things and climbed a big, rocky hill for views of banana fields, rocky crops and the big temple that dominated Hampi town. One day we rented bikes and rode out to other temples and old stone builidings, carvings and statues. It is all very impressive and the work that must have gone into each building would be astronomical; they are so detailed and intricate. Complete devotion to a higher being (or orders from a higher and very un-merciful mortal) are the only ways I can see these structures coming into being. No way would anybody be sitting down one day thinking, 'hmmm, you know what I feel like doing? Carving tiny, extremely detailed figures into rock. Should only take a few decades to finish...'

There were a lot of fake Sadhus in Hampi, waiting to catch unsuspecting tourists and charge them for photographs. Real sadhus are holy men who wander around India smoking, begging and creating huge piles of dreadlocks on their heads. The ones in Varanasi also smeared themselves with the ash of corpses. These men were just dressed in orange with peacock feathers in the hair and bangles on. They did manage to catch a few westerners who obviously thought they needed to rid themselves of some money though.

This was also a domestic tourist destination so we could not sit still, admire a temple or even stand anywhere for more than a few minutes before someone would be upon us asking for 'just one snap'. This became more and more irritating- imagine just wanting to sit and watch the river flow by and all of a sudden you are surrounded by an ever growing group of Indians who all want separate photos with you- so that the last picture I was in I graced with an enormous frown. Suckers!

We met a few other westerners in Hampi; it was a small place so easy to run into to people and get chatting. One of the days we passed some people and they stopped us and asked if we had been in Kalpetta recently. Turns out they had seen us opening the bakery there (dressed in traditional Indian clothing) and remembered us. So that was both embarrassing and extremely unlikely!

After templing ourselves out, eating chicken on the other side of the river- Hampi is super religious so no alcohol or meat, and Will having a dip in the river to try and escape the ridiculous heat, we were about ready to leave. Back to the train station and onward to a town that wasn't so much fun at all but which Will liked because there was always something happening.

I can't remember the name of the place, it's really long and starts with T, but it is kind of in between Bangalore and Pondicherry, which was to be our next destination. This town boasted a 10 hectare temple complex and a big hill to climb so we thought it was worthy of a night or two. Our time there didn't start well though; it was impossible to get decent accommodation at the right price and we ended up staying at the worst place we have yet been, paying way too much and being yelled at 3 times by management (not because we did anything wrong, just because they were big, fat jerks). They also had the audacity to ask for a tip when we checked out. I laughed at that one.

I was also quite sick and this town was really condensed so all the noise, smells and humanity was very tightly packed in and seemed very exaggerated. I was on the verge of tears whenever someone honked their car/bus/tuktuk horn.

But in our short time there we saw some memorable things...we visited the big temple and Will got blessed by an elephant- they are really smart creatures. They have been trained by their owners to recieve both money and food from people but they only give a blessing (a tap on the head with their trunk) if they have been given money. Seriously! We also had a conversation with an Indian man who a) spoke enough English to carry on an interesting chat, b) didn't ask for a photo at any point and c) didn't try to sell us anything. A temple miracle! We saw what seemed to be a funeral procession in the streets. Men were banging drums in front of a huge vehicle carrying the body and bedecked with thousands of flowers while more people followed, littering the streets with flowers and letting of entire boxes of fireworks at once.

While I was incapacitated in bed, Will climbed the big hill and saw just how crowded the town really was. And he could apparently still hear all the noise from the streets even from the top. He also ventured out one night, lured by fireworks, and chanced upon what he thought was a wedding- apparently it was similar to the funeral, with the flowers and fireworks and people on vehicles. Except there was a bride and a groom. Obviously.

So I don't have great memories of that town, Will has better ones. We left after two nights and caught an agonising bus to Pondicherry, a town of French colonial times where we can eat cheese, steak and crepes. Hello paradise! No but Indian food is delicious, you just begin to miss the small things like dairy that isn't yoghurt or chai. And meat that isn't chicken (or un-identified). Anyway, we are in Pondicherry for the next few days to pig out and then go swimming at the (admittedly not very nice) beach- we don't care though, I reckon it pushes 40 degrees here during the day.

the famous temples.

We are eating breakfast now, in a calm little hippie cafe in Siem Reap. If all goes to plan (which may be less likely than it seems, with the enormous floods Bangkok is dealing with right now) this is our last day in Cambodia. Tomorrow we catch a bus to Bangkok -hopefully- and from there we fly to Hanoi in northern Vietnam.

For the last few days we have been fulfilling our duty as tourists and visiting temple upon temple, because really, that is what everyone is here for. We hired bicycles and pedalled our way 8 kilometres out of town to the Angkor Archaeological Park, where we could ride around in peace as for the first time in a long time, we were not hassled by tuk-tuk drivers. And when people did begin to hassle us, we could just ride away from them, laughing our little heads off.
On our first day we explored a few of the smaller temples, the highlight being Ta Prohm, a temple that is slowly being engulfed by the huge trees that surround it.

These enormous trees are growing on top of walls of the temples! It's incredible. They are relying on the stone and also holding it together...if the stone collapses, do the trees as well?

Day two at the temples involved us rising at 4.30am in order to cycle over and see the sunrise at Angkor Wat -the famous, famous temple of Cambodia. Despite the difficulty of waking up at this ridiculous hour and the nervousness with which I rode along the dark, early morning streets on a bike with no lights, it was definitely worth it. We were by no means the only people waiting eagerly for the sun to come up but it was ok...we watched the sky morph from pink to gold to blue and then we could explore without hundreds of other tourists all vying for space.

When it looked like this was beginning to happen, we cycled over to Angkor Thom, a walled city that used to be the capital of Cambodia (a long, long, long time ago).

Here we saw a temple with towers that were decorated on all of their four sides with giant, smiling faces and in which almost none of the surfaces were left undecorated by carvings.

It is incredible the amount of work that must have gone into these buildings...especially Angkor Wat. The sandstone used to build this temple was quarried 50 miles away from the site and transported on rafts along the river...all this before they even began the building.

Back to Angkor Thom...we also saw a temple built to represent a mythical Cambodian mountain and a temple that was taken apart by archaeologists before the civil war with, I presume, the intention of being rebuilt in the future. Only during Pol Pot's years of insanity, the archaeologist's records were all destroyed, so they were basically faced with an enormous, hideously frustrating jigsaw puzzle. They did it though. It was reopened in 2008, although some parts still have not been finished.
Our bodies were exhausted after this...probably a consequence of waking at 4, two days of bike riding (after a period of almost no exercise) and hiking around temples in the hot sun...so we headed for home and rested.
Yesterday we hired a tuk-tuk to drive us 60 kilometres out of the city so we could explore an Indiana Jones temple of epic proportions. This temple, Beng Melea, was like an extreme version of Ta Prohm- it has been completely abandoned to nature, which is swallowing it up, one vine and tree root at a time.

Will had a blast and it turned out to be worth the slow bumpy $20 ride out there. Even if our tuk-tuk driver did try and coerce us into booking another long trip with him for today.

So that was Siem Reap. And that is the end of Cambodia, at least for now (unless our bus is cancelled, or we end up being abandoned because it can't traverse the floodwaters, or any other of the numerous, frustrating scenarios that travel in Asia holds promise of).

Onward to Vietnam!