It's well known that McLeodGanj is the home of the Tibetan government in exile. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama himself, the Buddhist spiritual leader of Tibet, made the journey from Lhasa to India over the Himalayas back in 1959 when they began to fear for his safety after the Chinese invasion, and India have [...]
Bhagsu and Dharamkot consist entirely of hills and the trick is to try and minimise the hillage between where you're staying and the nearest beer. We massively failed at the first attempt and ended up staying in what was basically a small flat in Bhagsu at roughly the height of Everest. At least that's what [...]
There's only one reason to go to Dharamsala and that's to get a bus straight to McLeodGanj. Fact. And the best way to get there from Amritsar is to bus it to Pathankot first and change buses there, and it was there I realised that I was sans phone. Ohhhh fuck. I mean, it wasn't [...]
As I said in the last post, if you loiter long enough someone will approach you and bundle you into a tuk tuk to head to the Wagah border closing ceremony. If you're foreign, take your passport. You'll be dropped about a kilometre from where it takes place and you'll need to clear three security [...]
There's nothing like waiting for a train in India to make you feel like you've got three heads and 10 metre tentacles instead of arms. There I was, sat on my bag on the platform at Bareilly, when someone asked me where I was from. I looked up. Guys, I was surrounded. Literally 360 degrees [...]
It was surreal heading back into Kathmandu. I'd come back to apply for my Indian visa as I'd heard they'd started issuing them again, and whilst it's possible to arrange it in Pokhara it's already more expensive for a British citizen than other nationalities because our government is a twat to them so they reciprocate [...]
It wasn't all work and no play in Pokhara. There was lots of play. Sometimes too much play. So much play I don't know if my liver is ever going to forgive me for what I put it through. There are many fine bars that will happily assist you in the systematic destruction of your [...]
I had literally no idea what to do with myself after the earthquake. My insurance company told me in no uncertain terms that I was no longer covered for trekking in Nepal and I didn't fancy being stuck up a mountain at 5000 metres with no way of getting down if altitude decided it wanted [...]
Just before midday on the 25th April I was sat in the garden at my hotel in Pokhara when there was an almighty rumble. I thought it was just a truck about to come past, and when the truck didn't appear and the rumble didn't stop my brain couldn't quite make sense of it and [...]
Well if you will insist on rocking up to Lumbini in April then the first thing you're gonna notice is how fucking hot it is. Seriously. It's oppressively hot. It's like someone smothered you with a blanket and you're forced to breathe hot, stale, still air. Except someone set the blanket on fire. It's really, [...]
Travel & Shit 