Shimla

Shimla is great. Its the old British summer capital, 2.5km up in the Himalayan foothills. A tiny railway crawls for hours up through valleys and switchbacks to get up here. Very clean, fresh, lots of treks, great views, I love it here.

There's a monkey temple on a big hill a few miles east. Millions of really crafty, cheeky monkeys. One of them did a commando raid swinging through the door to the temple (over my head), snuck into the alcove, into a chest containing a packet of nuts and out again before anyone could blink. (No one minded - in a temple dedicated to Jaakhu you let the monkeys do as they want).
The main street here - the Mall - is straight out of Brighton seaside. One huge church, big promenade with ice cream stands and donkey rides, mock tudor state buildings, hundreds of Delhites showing off their English. And the himalayas in the background.

Breaking Indian news:
The biggest story here (forget Ulrika!) is the lynch mob that killed 5 dalites who were suspected of killing a cow. The general consensus is that they were taking justice a bit too far into their own hands. Aparantely a post mortem on the cow revealed it had died naturally. Don't mess with cows in a predominently Hindu country.

Delhi

I've arrived in Delhi after a 23 hour train trip. They had hundreds of people selling Chai (tea) - I'm really not sure how that much tea could be drunk every few minutes.

Mumbai was just getting too hot and sticky. When its too hot to sleep, and too expensive for air con, its time to move on.

Thus Spake Zarathrusta

India seems to be the most religious place in the world. Forget the major religions -Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, everywhere has those. I just went on a tour, saw the Towers of Silence where the Parsis leave their dead to be picked apart by vultures.

And if you thought that was grim, aparantely there aren't enough vultures anymore so they're resroting to chemicals!

There's also the worshippers of Jain, who beleive every living thing is sacred. They pray with a cloth over their mouths to protect the bacteria that would otherwise die when exhaled.

Kashimir isn't a war zone

According to this tout who was from the area and trying to do some seriously hard selling. He implored me to get out my bible of travelling - lonely planet- and check what he said. It said: "Kashimir is a war zone. Don't go there. Beware of touts doing the hard sell on it."
After that, he kinda quietened.

Its started! I arrived in Mumbai at 01.00am today, the 30'C and humidity were a bit of a shock. Its a very busy city, you can't move without being offered a bongo / giant inflatable 1.5m pear (well, its pear shaped, dunno what its supposed to be) / dotted by a holy man.
I'm currently wimping it out in an air conditioned internet cafe. Bombay airport is aparantely used to long haul flights coming in at midnight, they had entire bureaus of 24 hour hotel booking places. Overpriced by several hundred rupees of course, but hey, that's less than a fiver and I wasn't going to argue.
All the tourist destinations seem to be $10 for foreigners, and 10 rupees (15 pence) for indians. Every street corner has fruit juice stands where they freshly squeeze it, hand you a glass to down it and take a whole 15 pence off you (I know, I've tried several!)

Just got my India Visa - took an entire morning. Aparantly, tomorrow is Dhurussa (of course) so everything's closing down, and everyone is applying today.

AAAARGH! The Star alliance counts miles travelled overland towards their milage! This is mad, they're not paying for the train or bus, I am. I could walk round the world never catching a flight and they'd charge me £1550 for the privilege. Time to re-check the one world alliance.

Update: Due to a slight miscalculation, I've had to lop 1000 miles off the roundtrip distance - so I'm now going overland Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro. I always wanted to see Iguaçu Falls anyway- 275 waterfalls over 3km wide of mountains, right on the Argentina- Brazil border.

A huge gap has appeared between posts, I'm not exactly sure why. Ah, I had convert line breaks on... lets turn it off.

I've got an itinary:
London -Bombay	18th October	LH4789/760
Delhi - Bangkok	15th November	TG316
Overland to Bali
Jakarta to hong kong	13th January	SQ143/2
Hong kong - osaka (kix)	22nd January	NH176
tokyo (NRT)- Los Angeles	15th Feb	RG8837
Los Angeles - Buenos aires (eze)	22nd Feb	UA867/855
Buenos aires (eze) - rio	15th March	RG8637
Rio - london	7th April	RG8756

Testing 1-2-3

I think I've got the hang of this blog

To anyone thinking of going, check your itinary with an actual rtw person, I've found travel agents are pants at this kind of thing. E.g. routing Buenos Aires to Christchurch via new york (18,000 miles) and claiming it blows the milage allowance (duh).
First stop will hopefully be brazil. If I can get the ticket. Otherwise its india.

I'm going round the world!

Instead of keeping a diary or writing tons of postcards, I thought I'd post an account on the web.

If you need to contact me, I'll be checking matthewharrup@removethiswordfornospam.hotmail.com

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