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Rotorua: Boiling Mud And Urban Volcanoes
We’ve read several times that as you approach Rotorua, it’s possible to smell the town before you ever see it. Well it’s not strictly true but the pungent odour of sulphur hits us as soon as we open the car door and, as we are to discover, permeates through this most unusual city 24/7. The smell emanates, of course, from the excessive geothermal activity taking place just below ground level – the whole city of Rotorua is built over a caldera formed during a volcanic eruption around 240,000 years ago, and there is certainly no mistaking the level of activity still present today. It’s impossible to miss, in fact. But…
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NZ Road Trip: The Coromandel Peninsula
Time is an illusion, it has often been said. Somehow in the process of returning home from California and then heading out here to New Zealand we have moved forward 21 hours, meaning that we’ve lost, somewhere, almost a full day of our lives. Whilst the 8 hours from California was effectively repaying the 8 we gained on the way out there, we won’t be reimbursed the other 13 until we go home from NZ in mid April. Given that delay, wouldn’t it be good if, like a savings account, it was possible to earn interest on the time invested? You know, be given bonus time in return for investment.…
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Auckland NZ.
Irregular. That’s a fitting word for the view from the balcony of our 21st floor apartment. Irregular because it kind of plays games with the senses, looking across the rooftops to the sea, then after the sea, more land, and then after the land, more sea, then more land, then finally at last the sea once more. Such are the crenellated complications of the Auckland coastline with its multitude of islands, headlands and sweeping bays forming this strangely alternating view that no matter how many times we study it, we are still intrigued and amused. Irregular it is, indeed. Irregular behaviour. Just as irregular as the view from our 21st…
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Poovar & The Ayurveda Hospital
At last, right in the final knockings of this 8-week Indian odyssey, the stars finally align sufficiently for us to make a journey by train. It’s fifty odd minutes late pulling into Varkala, then trundles its way slowly through tropical scenery and past the bustling city with the commendably long name of Thiruvananthapuram, until we reach our stop at Neyyattinkara. It’s not just the place names which are longer than in England either: the train has many, many more coaches than you will ever see back home, consequently the station platforms are much longer – and so are the journeys. This train, number 16526, began its journey in Bangalore (Bengaluru)…
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On Holiday In Varkala
Red dust blows in flurries between the buses which sit with doors wide open waiting for departure time, street dogs using the shade of the big vehicles to sleep out of the glare of the raging sun. It’s H-O-T hot. So intensely hot. There’s probably a few mad dogs out there somewhere in the midday sun; certainly there’s a couple of English(men), humping backpacks across the “bus stand”, kicking up red dust, sweating as they seek out their next temporary home. Our host arrives, shows us around our apartment, and demonstrates how to switch on the washing machine which, much to his horror, sprays water right across the room from…
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Messing About On The Backwater: 48 Hours On A Houseboat
Shaking off the curse of Montezuma has taken far too long. On our previous visits to India we’ve avoided the worst of the Delhi belly, but not this time. Everywhere we go in the world we always try to eat like the locals, try every local food, do the “authentic” thing, so much so that we felt we’d both got pretty good constitutions and could deal comfortably with the consequences of unusual food. But after a quick to-be-expected bout around Udaipur, things recovered like they normally do, only to then dive backwards with what we think were bad prawns on Christmas Eve. Nearly three weeks later we’re still not firing…
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Over The Hills To The Tea: Days In Munnar
“Welcome to misty Munnar” announces the road sign as we approach the mountainside town surrounded by lush greenery. There’s no hint of mist this afternoon and it’s anticipation rather than precipitation in the air as far as we’re concerned: this is going to be yet another different experience of India. The 4-hour journey from Fort Kochi in the company of our driver Joseph has been very different from our journey earlier this week to the waterfalls at Athirappilly which took an age to shake off the sprawling metropolis which is Cochin. This time we are soon into Kerala’s renowned lush countryside, passing mango and pineapple farms in low lying pastures…
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Fort Kochi, Town Of Rich Cultural Heritage
Our journey through Kerala is set to take us to ancient coastal cities, up into the misty mountains, through tea plantations, into the backwaters then down to red cliffs, a seaside holiday resort and even a specialist ayurvedic retreat. But we start here at Fort Kochi, which soon shows itself to be an utterly absorbing, multi faceted city with so many elements to its character and so many different aspects that it’s difficult to know where to start. So we’ll start with its rather unique geographical setting. Fort Kochi, its neighbouring towns and cities and even the giant sprawling Cochin city sit on what you might term a broken coastline,…
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Kerala Calling
It’s one of those strange days of travel, one on which we have no base for most of the day: checkout is 11am and our flight to Cochin leaves so late that we don’t even need to head to the airport till after 5. Consequently a sun bed on the beach is our home for more than 6 hours, the backpacks left near the security gate back at the digs. It goes surprisingly quickly, then suddenly it’s time to say farewell to the friendly guy at Roger’s, goodbye to our favourite beach dog who claims one last tummy rub, and finally goodbye to the lovely trinket seller Karina with whom…
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From North Goa To South: Chilling In Benaulim
It feels a bit like we’re cheating. Public transport – trains, buses, ferries – and the occasional rental car, are our normal ways of making it from A to B, getting into the local spirit by travelling the way they do, rather than what we’re doing here, finding a driver to take us all the way to our next destination. Trouble is, here in India, public transport can be very time consuming with its regular delays and slow progress, plus also the cost of car and driver for long journeys is ridiculously low, which makes it just too easy to say yes. To our spirit of adventure though it still…
