Tag Archives: planning

11 Jul 2011 · 6:00 PM

Elephant mahout, a humbling experience

When we came to Chiang Mai, all I wanted to do was see an elephant, but it can be pricey and our budget isn’t what you would call lenient. However, when my parents offered to pay for us to go on the elephant mahout day trip, we jumped at the opportunity. Little did we know that we would not only see the elephants but feed them, learn to ride them, and bath with them in the river. The experience was nothing less than incredible and the money WELL worth it, (even though we didn’t have to pay for it ourselves). The camp that we went to was called the Baan Chang Elephant Camp and is really well-run by Woody, a guy who has grown up with the elephants and trained them from a young age. The fees (upwards of 2400 Baht per person) are used exclusively to buy food (and elephants eat a lot!!) for the 8 or so elephants who live on the camp, and to pay their handlers who care for them day and night (interestingly, elephants only sleep for approximately 3 hours each night).

Below are some photos of our day at the camp!

Elephant Chair

Learning the commands from up top

"Yuut" to stop, "Baai" to go

Time for us to try out all of the commands we have learned on our own on a walk in the jungle!

Stopping for a short break in the jungle

Time for a dip in the river

Bath time-scrubbing the elephants clean!

Having fun in the river

Lots of fun!

The elephants and our group

Big strong elephant

Time to say Goodbye

If you would like to know more about the camp or book it for yourself (they also do 2 or more day camps) visit Woody’s blog on www.woodyelephanttraining.com and check out the photo gallery page in the next few days to see more photos of us in action! :)

D, T and M x

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20 Jun 2011 · 7:46 PM

On the Weh to Leh…

So despite the fact that we never intended to end up here in Kashmir, Srinigar has been really relaxing and quite a change from the dense, hard life we saw in Delhi and Mumbai.

The view from our room at the Jeelani Guesthouse

We were seriously apprehensive at first, and when we arrived we were almost too scared to leave our room…but we soon realised that the people are friendly and happy and most of them are only too pleased to meet a foreigner, and they always ask if we like Kashmir. We have been stared at, asked to stand with the family and have a photo, chatted to in every shop and on every street and even made a ‘friend’ in a young student named Waseem, who took our email address with a promise of “learning everything about each other.”

We haven’t been out that much; we have been enjoying the hospitality of our hosts Ashraf and Laura, at Jeelani Guesthouse. We ate meals together with the other guests, an older American lady and an older German man. In the evenings, we read or watched one of the old movie reruns on TV.

On Saturday we spent the afternoon on the Nageen and Dal lakes on a Shikara (like a Gondola but with a roof).

Shikara's waiting for tourists

We were rowed along the serene lake by a guide who spoke pretty fluent English, and was generally a really happy person. He made us tea with Cardamon and Cinnamon by boiling water on a little gas burner on the back of the small boat. It was a fantastic afternoon, we watched the locals enjoying a swim and saw the villages on the islands in the middle of the lake. The villagers grow vegetables in ‘floating gardens’ around the islands. The gardens can be reached only by shikara and the vegetables are sold every morning at the market. Every so often someone would row along next to us and ask how we are, where are we from and ask if we would like to buy flowers or see the precious stones that he is selling. What I enjoyed was that they were not pushy, just opportunists!  We stopped off at Nishrat Bagh, the Moghul gardens, where thousands of Indian’s were enjoying their Saturday afternoon, kids playing in the water and big families sitting and taking photos in the manicured gardens.

Our Shikara on the Dal Lake

The Nishrat Bagh Moghul Gardens

Water Lilies on the Dal Lake

Camel Bridge from our Shikara on the Dal Lake

On Sunday we decided to take a walk down to the market near the local mosque, Hazratbal. It was not far from our guesthouse and we managed to find it pretty easily. Quite close to the market is also the University of Kashmir, where it is popular to study business or engineering – they even do “Short Courses in Mechatronics”?! We spent an hour or so walking through the market and even bought a couple of Kashmiri handicrafts; their specialty is delicately painted papier-mâché elephants and bells.

A shop full of papier mache hand painted ornaments

The market at Hazratbal

Today we found a lift into the town of Srinigar and walked around the shops and bought some supplies for our trip to Leh. We were surprised to see how modern and global it is, even in comparison to what we saw of Mumbai and Delhi. There seems to be more English signage and people are willing to speak English to us.

This evening we visited the Pari Mahal – the Angel Palace or Fairy Abode . It is right up in the mountain and boasts incredible views of the Dal lake. The “palace” itself is a stone-built fort with four or five levels of gardens, each with a more spectacular view than the last. There were many tourists and we found ourselves chatting with a few people about cricket or about South Africa and where we are from.

Pari Mahal - the Angel's Palace

One of the highlights of this place has been watching the sun setting over the lake. The orange sun and the reflection of the shikaras on the lake really is a breath-taking sight.

Sunset over the Nageen Lake

Tomorrow morning we move on to Leh, we will be sharing a Jeep with some other tourists and will drive via Kargil and arrive in Leh in the late evening. We have been told that the scenery is fantastic and although it will be another long drive, it will all be worth it when we get to Ladakh! :)

 D x

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09 Jun 2011 · 9:00 AM

A Mighty Great time in Dublin

Dublin is a fantastic place, just the fact that the main tourist ‘attraction’ is heading to the most authentic Irish pub you can find for a pint if the black stuff, should explain why Dubliners are so much fun. We had not been in Dublin fro two hours when we went for a walk and ended up in the middle of the Bank Holiday marathon. Thousands of women filled the streets and it made for quite an interesting day! In the evening we met and mingled with the Dublin student crowd at the local pub down the road.

We were lucky enough to be staying in Trinity College, a 400 year old university modeled as a continuation of the “Oxbridge” universities in England but now is Ireland’s premier tertiary education and research institution. Amandine, my very good friend from school days, put us up in her front court apartment on the top floor so we really got to see what student life here is like.

Trinity College Dublin Front Court

Her boyfriend, Barry, is also an excellent guide and he gave us the ’10 Euro’ tour for free with all the interesting facts thrown in. For instance, the two Oregon Maples in the front courtyard of the college are the oldest trees in Ireland! I wish I could remember more of the facts. The buildings at Trinity are amazingly beautiful, and quite majestic too. One building in particular that stands out is the building which houses the Long Room and the Book of Kells. The Long Room room holds over 200 000 of the oldest books owned by Trinity and is somewhat like a ‘book cathedral’. As you walk in the room you are overcome with an ‘old book’ smell and the beauty of the room with its dark oak bookshelves and vaulted ceilings. We snuck in at the last minute, as the guard closed off the one side of the Long Room, to see the original charter for Trinity College signed by Queen Lizzy the elder (QE1 for short). Of course, the Book of Kells is also really interesting to see as it dates back to the 8th century and is amazingly well illustrated for that period. What is most amazing is that in the 8th century Ireland was probably a pretty inaccessible rock in the middle of the Atlantic, so the fact that some of the red paint used to illustrate “the Book” came from a species of beetle native to Persia, is pretty remarkable. (Photos are not allowed in the Long Room but click here to see a 360 degree panoramic view of the room!)

An Excerpt from the Book of Kells

One of the main attractions that Dublin had for us was to visit the place where Arthur Guinness started brewing Guinness Stout. It’s a vast facility that includes a step by step explanation on how the beer is (and has been) brewed for 252 years as well as displays on the Guinness advertising through the years, a tasting lab and most importantly… Somewhere that you can pour your own REAL pint of Guinness. The Storehouse, as it is known, is in the shape of an enormous pint glass of which the atrium stretches 5 storeys and to top it all off is a 6th level called the gravity bar offering not only panoramic views of the whole of Dublin but of course… more Guinness! It was excellent!

Trist loves Guiness

On the North side of Dublin is the GPO (General Post Office) building where you can now get your stamps, but used to be a stronghold for the Irish Republicans in the war of independence in 1916. The building was shot at and heavily shelled at the time and you can still some bullet holes in the columns in the front of the bulding.

The GPO on the North Side of Dublin

In true Irish style we headed to the Porterhouse Brewery after dinner yesterday for a pint or two and some local music. Well, we certainly got more than we bargained for at this really great pub in Temple Bar – the name comes from a time when Jewish temples were banned in the area. Firstly, as you walk into the smallish front area and head for the bar you realize that above you are 3 other levels also housing bars and tables and even a stage for live music. The pub used to be a micro brewery and still has the copper boilers, pipes and brewing equipment running throughout the place, and on the walls there are hundreds of bottles of beer from all over the world. The best part about it was the live music, an Irish guy and his guitar. Needless to say the girls were melting at the sound of his voice and even the boys were singing along to his Bob Dylan and Counting Crows covers. Check Kris Finnerty out on iTunes to hear some of his original stuff!

Kris Finnerty at the Porterhouse Brewery

Dublin has a great small train system called the Dart, nothing quite like the maze of tubes in London or the trams in Berlin, but we took it out to a small town called Killiney (Kill-eye-ney) that was suggested to us by a good friend Mike G back home. Dublin is a pretty small city and within about twenty minutes we were on the seaside and in forty five had reached our destination. The village is well known for being a haven for the wealthy, some notable celebs who have houses (or castles) there are Bono of U2 fame and also the celtic singer Enya who really does have a castle on the hill. Not knowing where we were going, we just went up and up with a goal in mind of reaching the monument on the top of the hill, which we did by walking up ancient passageways slippery with moss and the occasional but persistent shower. See pics!!!!

Passageways in Killiney

Killiney from the top

We stopped at the Druids Chair, a pub almost at the top of the hill, for a pint and some Wifi (that didn’t exist) and almost fell asleep because it was so cozy. Deciding that is was a good idea to go to another Dart station instead of the one that we arrived at was in fact a mistake and after walking for what seemed like hours we finally found Station Road and a completely different station that we had passed through a while earlier on the way to Killiney… great sense of direction on our part! We had a plan to stop in Dun Laoghaire (Dun Leary) for some fish and chips but it turned into a hunt for some public loos as the pints from the Druid came back to haunt us! No luck in the fish and chips department resulted in a rather disparaged couple of saffers jumping back on the train and straight to Temple Bar where we knew that we’d find some reasonably priced supper, incidentally also fish and chips, to bring us back to the happy place!

We had a special request from one of our avid blog readers, Uncle Viv, to take some photos in Saint Patricks Cathedral, and although we didn’t go in, as it was 4,50 Euros each, we got some photos from the outside in any case! If you would like to see something specific in a place that we are visiting, let us know, we’ll be happy to explore it for you and send the photos!

D+T x

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19 May 2011 · 4:47 PM

A little break from the chaos

Yesterday in London was just as fun and busy as the two days before. We started out at the British Museum, that I had forgotten I had been to many years before, but T hadn’t been, so off we went. It was very interesting and we could have spent days there if we wanted to see everything! Highlights of mine are shown below!

The Rosetta Stone

The ancient Egyptian history

Head of horse of Selene from the Parthenon

One thing about museums like this one during the week, they are FULL of school kids, so next time we may go after school hours to avoid the masses :) After the museum, we headed back through the parks to Covent Garden to find some lunch. We ended up at Tescos Metro and found a spot in the garden of St Pauls Church (not Cathedral), to eat our lunch and recharge. With fuller stomachs and better moods, we headed off down the Mall to Buckingham Palace. We hadn’t been in a good while so we thought we’d give it a visit.

The two of us at Buckingham Palace

We spent half an hour or more just sitting on the steps looking at the castle, speculating on where the Queen sleeps, how Harry and William get in and out of the Palace and how many rooms there are in there! I would have LOVED to go into the Royal Mews, aka the stables for us mere mortals, but the last ‘tour’ was finished by the time we got there, and besides it was a little pricey.

From there we thought we’d get to Oxford Circus and take a stroll down the road, but as we got up on Oxford Street, the heavens opened and down came the rain! Needless to say, with no umbrella and a thin jersey or t-shirt, we got soaked! We hopped straight back onto a bus to Notting Hill Gate during rush hour traffic and got back to the apartment about 40 minutes later. There we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to Richies housemate (Rich left yesterday morning very early for Budapest), got our backpacks on our backs and headed to Richmond to meet Mike O’neill for drinks at the pub. We also made the fatal mistake of using our oyster one week travel card (zones 1+2 only) to get to zone 4, and this cost us dearly! After a nice couple of drinks and a catch up at O’neill’s (no relation apparently), we got on the National Rail to Orpington to stay with my gran’s friends the Baldwins. Dorothy very kindly picked us up at the station with all our worldly belongings, and we got to their house at nearly midnight for a nice cup of tea.

A loooong sleep in a very comfy bed and here we are. We made a strategic decision not to head back to London today as our travel cards are no longer, we had a great afternoon driving around the area and visiting the parks with Keith and now we’re going to take a bus to Bromley. (I hear there’s a Primark-yippeee!)

A big thank you to Rich and to the Baldwins for having us these past few days!

x

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17 May 2011 · 10:04 PM

Another day of walking…London day 2!

Just a quick post to say we had another rad day in London, although a bit of a late start :) Replaced my broken lens with another second-hand one, love the London Camera Exchange-great service and they even recycled my old lens!! We wandered around Trafalgar Square and saw gold, bronze and silver men, buskers with husky irish accents, tour groups of school kids and old couples sharing lunch next to the fountains. A place full of atmosphere and life. From there we went on to see the mounted guards outside the horse guards parade, I had to laugh at the one guard who looked barely 20 years old and so bored out of his mind, I felt quite sorry for him actually, with hundreds of tourists standing next to him posing for photos.

We walked past Churchill’s War Rooms, the Prime Minister’s home at number 10, and ended up at Big Ben. I can’t believe there are still peace protesters camped out outside Big Ben, absolutely insane. We took today really slowly and stopped for a little lie down on the grass outside Westminster Abby and watched the people passing us by. I marveled at the fact that this historic building has seen so many occasions, be it war, funerals, weddings…its pretty incredible!

From there we made our way to the Thames and walked all the way along banks of the river to the City area. Mostly we just watched people around us and enjoyed the contrast between the old buildings, the little gardens and the massive glass skyscrapers.

We made a plan to meet our good friend Richard De Villiers at the pub right across from his workplace. We had a good catch up with him over some Italian beer and Irish cider, and we even got free pizza and chicken wings from the pub-RAD!

After we said our goodbyes, we headed ‘home’ to Notting Hill and here I am sitting here catching you all up :) We even got to chat to our fam on Skype and show them Rich’s cool pad-gotta love Skype!!

Anyway, now its time for some dinner and a good nights sleep, my feet are still recovering from all the walking, hopefully they will toughen up soon!

Okay so my quick post wasn’t that quick, but at least you know what we did today now :) Have a good one, wherever you are in the world!

x

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· 2:42 AM

London, it’s either Black or White…

It has been a couple of years since D and I were in London. We stayed on a few days after a family holiday and had such a blast! Now we’re back! Revisiting old memories, checking out new places and generally enjoying what London has to offer has been so ridiculously amazing!

So after leaving Cape Town amidst much wailing and a flight that wasn’t too bad *clenched teeth* we arrived in London Town.

Rich (our host for the first two days, and very good friend from home) was fast asleep when I called the poor guy at about 8am, apparently the first good nights sleep he’s had in months! But a decent cuppa and we were all raring to go, come on its freaking London… 4 days is toooooo short!!

What I mean about Black and White is two-fold. Firstly, this is a cultural mish-mash of epic proportions. We were scrutinised at the immigration desk by a guy who was no closer to English than my left hairy…. Toe… (shame on you who thought I was going to be rude). There are so many different people here, and the more you think about it, the more you are drawn in to the unbelievable thing that is a First World capital city. Secondly, I decided this morning that I would try out a new direction with my photography, so check out the Flickr feed for some B&W shots of London today. I’ll pop my favourites from today below also!

Sim cards and travel cards were the main order for today and we’re both set up. Dom is on 00447924551775 (international) and I have a local number that is free to call in from anywhere in the world so go wild J (00447425312275)

It is horrendously expensive to get around here, but unfortunately apart from walking there is not many other options, so we had to bite the bullet! Oyster cards!

Let me say one thing, Camden Town is out of this world cool. We went there for £5 lunch today and had a couple of hours to wander the markets and window shop. From hand painted shirts, Thai Sweet n Sour chicken with chow mein and jewellery… to small tanks where you can have small fishes exfoliate your feet… this place has something for everybody. Dom was in her element amongst all of the vintage clothing stores inside the 19th century Stables section of the market area.

This is a place where everyone can come and not feel like they’re judged, punks, the urban hip and trendy and the every day person can wander around and find something to look at, purchase or eat. It is just too fantastic!

Dom has also specifically asked me to mention the diversity of the stalls in Camden,

where the music, people and smells of each stall change by the metre. That is just a small explanation of what this place is like.

Disaster struck earlier when the kit lens for D’s camera decided that it didn’t like its aperture diaphragm and will no longer allow the camera to actuate. In other words, no lens = no photos = unhappy Dom (who said this blog wasn’t going to be intelligent, I mean simultaneous equations and everything).

This resulted in our next destination being Tottenham Court Road, to see what it would cost to repair/replace the lens… we didn’t… And then the days walking started, Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly… more Oxford and a bunch of other small streets inbetween J We even found a cool underground bar where we spent a crazy night with Anton a couple of years ago!

To soothe Dom’s tired feet, and her insatiable desire to finally have some retail therapy (for the feet of course) we popped in to Primark to buy some 2 quid sneakers! Bunfight to say the least, I have decided to call it the “Half Price Sushi” retail strategy, sell something for half the price and people will buy twice as much!! Needless to say, D has learned her lesson, vanity in fact knows a lot of pain and she will be wearing her comfy shoes tomorrow and not the pretty ones!

So as I write this it’s ten-to-eight and its still light outside, I have a Budwieser that I mistook for a Kronenberg 1664, and we are thinking only of dinner and a night sleep in a horizontal position! Did I mention I hate aeroplanes?

Missing everybody at home, but not too much ;)

Trist out!!

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15 May 2011 · 9:00 AM

All packed and ready to go…sort of!

So its now D-day… todays the day our adventure begins! Firstly I just want to thank EVERYONE for your words of encouragement, advice and support, it has been so amazing to have so many people behind us in this grand escapade of ours! It was a far off dream of mine to travel around the world, and then it became a goal and now its actually happening. We could not have done it without the support of you, our friends and family, and without the advice of the many other world travellers out there.

So now that the soppy bit is over, back to business. First stop is London: tonight we leave Cape Town at 18:45 and arrive in London early tomorrow morning. Luckily, we now have passports in hand, complete with the five visas needed for the trip. <We had a bit of a hair-raising moment on Friday when we thought our passport would not arrive at the VFS offices, and after a minor panic attack and a bit of a wait, we finally got our passports at 13:00, just before closing time…talk about ‘skin of our teeth’!!>

Well, thats all from us for now…next time we post it will be from London and hopefully we’ll have some more exciting news and photos to start loading! :)

xx

P.S: As I am writing this, Trist is still deciding what to pack in his backpack, hence the ‘sort of’ comment!

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06 May 2011 · 11:35 PM

10 things we’re going to miss about Cape Town

Today marks 10 days until we embark on our adventure around the word and so we thought we would tell you the 10 things we are going to miss about Cape Town when we are gone.

1. Table Mountain: whenever I leave home, I miss the mountain. I know, its a funny thing to miss, but somehow living under the mountain all my life means that when it’s not there, I feel so lost!

2. A couple of beers with mates on a lazy Saturday afternoon…especially the Windhoeks.

3. Cape Town’s easy going people… you can never go a day without an experience with someone who enjoys life as it ambles by.

4. Beaches, forests and mountains all in one city: Cape Town’s great cycle routes along world famous Chapman’s Peak and beautiful horse rides in Tokai forest are our Saturday morning favourites.

5. Braais, Beorewors and Biltong: what would life be like without these staples!!?

6. Sport, Sport, Sport! In South Africa, sport is like a religion. On Saturdays, the whole of Cape Town comes to a stand still while the Stormers play rugby at Newlands, and what would we do without a lazy Sunday afternoon watching cricket?

7. The wine… I may not appreciate the fine wine here in Cape Town as some of my friends and family do, but I definitely enjoy a great day out in the vineyards, even if it is mostly for the views.

8. Long picnics at Kirstenbosch, and great live music to go with it.

9. Kalk Bay for fish and chips, and vintage shopping, and great ice cream. Okay so Kalk Bay is just fabulous in general!

10. Seapoint promenade on a sunny day: always a good spot to watch the people of Cape Town enjoy the weather, or if you’re energetic enough, you could even go for a run here…I prefer the former of course!

So thats our list…What would/do YOU miss about Cape Town?

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