According to our hotel staff, it has been raining forever. It’s unusually wet. In Batumi we were fortunate to have one really nice sunny day where we managed to see all the highlights of the place but today as we left to go to Kutaisi the rain came down. On the road out of Batumi… Read More »
What I wasn’t expecting from Georgia was to see so many street dogs. We saw a lot in India and there are similarities in the way they’re tolerated and even cared for. In the parks and on waste ground can be seen rudimentary kennels made from scrap wood and metal. Some even have the names… Read More »
We got last minute tickets to Batumi and found ourselves sitting on the top deck of a double-decker train. We were joined by Anas, a Jordanian student who had given up his dentistry degree course to bum around the capital wondering what to do with his life. He devoured every bit of food we gave… Read More »
The mountains of Georgia divide Europe and Asia but the narrow tree lined avenues, pavement cafes and bars and the cobbled streets give the place a distinctly European feel. All this wasn’t apparent until we woke up this morning and looked out of our hotel window, straining to see past the derelict building next door,… Read More »
I went to Kenya in 1983 as a very young woman and it has taken me 42 years to transcribe my diary. Thank God for AI which helped me otherwise it would never have got done. The trip was epic and very nearly fateful. Many people got sick, we got attacked my lions and we… Read More »
And this is the reason I wanted to come to India – for Kerala. It didn’t disappoint. Arriving in Kochi by train was not much fun so we were tired and dirty when we checked in. It seems a little more well-kept and maintained in Kochi, the roads are better and less crazy. The streets… Read More »
Initially I had planed to get around India on the trains like the locals but it turned out to be almost impossible to get tickets so we were left with only one long overnight train and that was from Goa to Kochi. As it turned out, this was lucky because one was plenty for the… Read More »
Goa was a later addition to the trip – I thought it would be nice to have a beach element. The route to Goa was supposed to be from Chennai but because of the difficulties getting train tickets, we ended up in Jaipur and then having to fly to Goa. We arrived after 10pm and… Read More »
Earlier in the day we had walked past the polo club… well, the others walked past but I walked straight through the gates and into the very grand club house. It turned out that later in the day was the final of some trophy. We were welcome to come along FOC. What a result. We… Read More »
We decided to take a bajaj/motor rickshaw/tuk tuk up the hill to the Nahargarh Fort. Here the guide books tell us we can get amazing views of the city. We were at the lake so we needed a vehicle to get the 10km up the hill. None of the drivers we booked on Uber would… Read More »