Due to a late night last night, I woke up relatively late at 0730. I rang to get the hot water turned on and after 20 minutes it was just warm enough to have a splash before breakfast.  I popped out to the nearby Sikkim Nationalised Transport terminal to check if the Tourist Information Centre […]

I had a lazy morning after my hotel’s South Indian breakfast.  It was nice to have the internet again.  Having done all my “must dos” yesterday, I did some reading and generally surfing before checking out at 1145 before the 1200 cut-off. It seemed like a perfect plan that my train departed only nearby at […]

Above: Random sign for a restaurant. After a very restful day of doing nearly nothing yesterday, I’m moving on from Cherrapunjee to Guwahati through Shillong.  I had sore calves yesterday from the hike the day before; a little unexpected as I thought I’d get sore quadriceps perhaps.  My knees lasted surprisingly well. After breakfast, I […]

The sun rises around 0530 here so I woke early.  I had breakfast at 0730 and had organised a packed lunch.  Having not heard from the girls last night I had resigned myself to getting my own taxi at INR800 roundtrip to Tyrna, the starting point for the hike for the living root bridges. But […]

There was a bit more light this morning when I woke compared to yesterday.  But it was only 0530 when I checked my clock.  That’s because the weather wasn’t gloomy like yesterday.  With a 0745 report for my tour, I talked my way into having tea at 0720 in the restaurant, 10 minutes before it officially […]

My hotel room included breakfast starting at 0730.  I had semolina, potato curry, hard-boiled eggs and puri.  That all went very well mixed together even though I don’t think it was meant to be.  A banana made the breakfast complete. I explored the area around Lake Ward which was the centre of the colonial town.  […]

Above: View on the flight from Delhi to Guwahati. Having retired early last night, I was up before my alarm and left the hotel at 0615.  Delhi before dawn is a different world with people sleeping on the streets, stray dogs sleeping on the streets and hawkers starting to fire up their tea stalls.  Quite […]

Today I leave Central Asia but I’m headed to the biggest “stan” of all … Hindustan.  Also known as India or Bharat. As usual for me, when there is an early flight to catch, I didn’t sleep well.  Alarm was set for 0430 with a 0500 taxi.  At the airport, I got my boarding pass […]