Natural world
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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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Indian Safari: On The Trail Of Tigers
Well here’s something different, India without humidity. All of our memories of this country are of clothes drenched within half an hour and sultry cloying heat which saps the strength, but it’s not like that now, in December, where even in Delhi despite its ever present pollution there is an uncharacteristic freshness to the air. And as we are shortly to discover, it’s properly cold at 6:30 in the morning. With Alwar now off the agenda and trains to our next destination at unfriendly times of day, we explore the cost of travel by road and find that, remarkably, an “inter-city Uber” will take us the 350 kilometres for only…
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The Photographic Catch-Up #2
Reunited in Trieste after Michaela’s weekend alone and my football odyssey, she was ready to move on whereas I kind of wanted to see more of Trieste. But, regardless, we were committed to a bus across the border into Slovenia, specifically to its capital Ljubljana, a capital city with only 300,000 inhabitants. And we were quickly smitten. Ljubljana is a thoroughly quaint, beautiful city. Old ancient town, castle, river….well, cue Michaela’s photographs again….. Somewhat unfortunately our time in the city was dominated by heavy rain incessant enough to limit our activities a little. From lovely Ljubljana we moved on, via rental car, to the magnificent surroundings of Lake Bled and…
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Amazed By Corsica: Porto Ota-Calvi-Asco-Bastia
With Corsica boasting five scenic drives each reputed to be breathtaking we have planned to follow at least three of them during our stay on the island, so having had two days to explore the amazing Calanques de Piana we build a second spectacular drive into our journey to our next base. Corsica is very much more mountainous than we knew, these are proper mountain roads with narrow twists and turns, precipitous drops and sometimes unforgiving rock on each side. They are an absolute joy to drive but require maximum vigilance too. This one is a 22 kilometre drive from Porto Ota to the picturesque mountain village of Evisa, a…
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Arrividerci Sardinia, Bonjour Corsica
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Arrividerci Sardinia, Bonjour Corsica
We arrive in the port town of Santa Teresa Gallura with modest expectations, island ferry port towns are sometimes low key affairs which don’t score highly on the attractive scale. Not so Santa Teresa where we are pleasantly surprised to the point of amazed as we turn from a quiet street into the main piazza where gentle soul music issues from one bar and 70s disco from another in as welcoming a scene as you could wish to encounter. Numerous restaurants line several of the streets leading away from the square, chatter and laughter fill the air and the ambience is one of casual enjoyment, there is truly a feeling…
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Amazed By Corsica: Porto Ota-Calvi-Asco-Bastia
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Sardinia’s Eastern Coast: Orosei, Palau & La Maddalena Archipelago
I keep referring to the wind here as the Mistral, but it is in fact only wind in a certain direction which carries that name. Each wind, be it northerly, easterly, whatever, has a name in these parts, and there are seven in all, each with different characteristics and each bringing different weather. I guess when your livelihood – and indeed your life in the case of the fishermen – depends on such things, the knowledge bar needs to be high. The town of Orosei sits in the middle of a stretch of notoriously beautiful Sardinian coastline, rugged yet fertile, bold yet tranquil. The best way to view this stretch…
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Sucre: In The Footsteps Of Dinosaurs
No doubt about it, the centre of the city of Sucre is beautiful. Picture a city brimming with grandiose white buildings, each looking as if they’ve had a recent paint job from top to bottom, where armies of street cleaners are busy sweeping the sidewalks, where a battalion of gardeners are tending to every ornate corner of each smart plaza. Sucre is a city with all the grandeur of a Spanish gem, all the majesty of Vienna, but on a much smaller scale than either. Add a calm, relaxed atmosphere and one of the lowest crime rates of all South American cities and you have a very pleasing and welcoming…
