Articles from this Category
21 June 2012
Excellent Start Our hostel manager Sajjad put on an amazing breakfast of chickpea curry and naan (both bought) plus plums, peaches and mangoes. We washed that down with lime juice and then some chai. As we would have activities for the afternoon and the night, we decided to do nothing this morning. The heat was […]
20 June 2012
Above: Newspaper next day about the heatwave today. Flight to Lahore Our flight to Lahore departed at 1900. Our time at the airport didn’t drag on with time spent ticketing our domestic flight from Gilgit to Islamabad and then having a snack. The flight was an oldish 747-300 and we were placed in the nose […]
20 June 2012
Visit to Chaukhandi To avoid the heat at Chaukhandi, we decided to wake a little earlier at 0730 which required the use of an alarm since we had an internal windowless room. The hotel didn’t know anything about Chaukhandi but taxi driver (Asghar) which normally hangs outside the hotel knew about the place. It doesn’t […]
19 June 2012
Essentials and mausoleum Flying in from opposite directions, Marie and I had expected us to have different sleep patterns and wakeup times. I woke around 0800 (much later than expected) due to making up for last night’s sleep deprivation. I called her a few times and made a bit of noise in getting ready but […]
18 June 2012
Flying out from China The Airbus A380 departed at midnight on its 8h30 minute journey from Beijing to Dubai. It’s one ugly aeroplane but it is so comfortable … even though it was fully packed, the very wide economy seats didn’t feel cramped and it was super quiet. Strangely we had a full supper (described […]
31 January 2011
Check-out from my Port Blair hotel, Andaman Residency, is rather early at 0800. This is typical for this town as incoming flights are in the morning. Flying back to Chennai 1245 on Kingfisher, they have an inflight magazine like no other. It is purely about the glitz and glamour of Indian filmstars. Flicking through the […]
30 January 2011
Today I explored Port Blair’s sights … it was set up as a penal colony by the British to incarcerate political prisoners, ie. freedom fighters for the independence movement. Ross Island: Angkor of the Andamans I took a boat across the harbour to Ross Island which was the headquarters for the British in the area. […]
29 January 2011
Leaving my island paradise Check-out was at 0930 today but my ferry from Havelock Island back to Port Blair isn’t till 1630. Despite previous information, there was no earlier ferry. I easily killed the day with a long breakfast, a long lunch and an Ayurvedic massage in between. I’m not a big fan of Ayurvedic […]
28 January 2011
Naughty Ticketing Tricks After a leisurely breakfast I teamed up with Merja from Finland who was my dive buddy yesterday. We thought we’d go to Radha Nagar beach near Village No 7, which is supposedly the best beach around. I opted for a detour into town to buy my ferry ticket back to Port Blair one […]
27 January 2011
Above: It is possible to scuba dive with an elephant. In the Andaman they have one of the last swimming elephants. You can snorkel or dive with the elephant … if you pay … it is about INR10,000 (NZD300) for one snorkel or dive. That’s like 3x the going rate for two normal dives. I couldn’t […]