East Africa

Kenya

With Botswana a close second, this was everyone’s favourite place. We were only here for two nights due to our impromptu two extra nights at Zambia. The people were super friendly. The food was closer to Indian than Swahili and the views of Kilimanjaro at Amboseli out of this world. I was not prepared to see it above the clouds on the flight back from Zanzibar either. Then, at night, the skies cleared, and you could see the skies in the horizon, as though you were travelling through space.

There are still elements that are unpleasant. There are vacant lodges and so many unemployed. It would seem, from a cursory glance, that they treated their animals much better than they treated their people. If the Masai were not as photogenic, I question how much the government would allow their existence.

The Masai were gentle people, with soft spoken voices. They showed us their homes and their self-made single room school, where children smiled at us. 

Tanzania

The megafauna is truly amazing. Lions chewing on baby warthogs (:( ) right next to you, and zebras blocking the road, even the elusive leopard lies unperturbed in their trees. Ngorongoro crater stood out for its views, and you really could see why Serengetic means ‘endless plains’ in Masai.

The small airplane we took getting into Zanzibar was not as frightening as we though. It was helped by our French pilot, Guillame, who sipped his coffee, ate his pastries, listened to music and read John Updike all while flying an airplane smaller than my bathroom. At one stage I’m sure Guillame napped.

Snorkelling turned out to be REALLY fun. And being stung by jellyfish REALLY hurt. I didn’t learn after my first time and went out again. I was told by a local (he was grinning) that it was jellyfish season. Was it then mean of me to then watch from my sunbed as various pasty looking tourists then took the same foolish move as me by wading deep into the pristine, clear waters, below yowling and scrambling back to the sand?

Tanzania presented even bigger problems. It was the same we encountered in Zimbabwe. See, in Bostwana, Kenya and Zambia (South Africa and Namibia have their own historical issues…) you see locals and a range of people travelling. And by locals and range I mean blacks, browns, yellows. In those countries, there were as many blacks as whites. The service was always friendly, but importantly, genuine. In Zimbabwe and Tanzania, the tourists were all white. There were no exceptions. Except us, and one day, there was an Indian family. We were there for nine nights and the people were overwhelmingly homogenous. The service was truly subservience. And for no one to notice, that was surprising. It was like they were in absolute oblivion. It was very uncomfortable. The staff were subservient in fear. In one of the places, we were in a room literally five meters from reception. We pushed our bags over to reception, where the man looked mortified. He was contrite with himself. “Please call us next time! We will get in trouble with Marcus!” He implored. Marcus was the white owner. He was not even joking. It made me sad. Less than five hundred meters from the lush resort, locals lived in shipping containers. I can’t imagine if I were to visit Australia as a tourist, and see ONLY wealthy asians in hotels, served by wide-eyed, cowering white locals, who lived in shanty towns. It’s unimaginable that this is the status quo. I would gladly go back to the continent, but I simply cannot see myself re-visiting Zimbabwe or Tanzania again. So I guess, I’m safe from African jellyfish then.

I’m glad I saved Africa for last in my travels. It was the best. The one I want to go back to again. Everyone should go. The big five are the icing. The landscape is worth it on its own.

Victoria Falls and Chobe River

Vic Falls: Zimbabwe and Zambia

The lodge we stayed at was in the national park, so animals like antelopes, warthogs, and baboons lounge around, with the ominous eyes of the vultures constantly watching from the tallest tree. And they’re not allowed to kick the animals out, so if you happen to find the alpha baboon in your room, well, that’s your new girlfriend. The place was equally full of spiders and the ominous sounds of mosquitoes salivating. We shared one bed as the room upstairs could only be breached by a set of stairs a mountain goat would have found treacherous. In the middle of the night I thought a baboon had climbed in, but it was only the sound of my mother snoring and my brother grinding his teeth.

Somewhere along the way, the anti-malaria tablets we were taking must have mushed up our brains, or maybe all the insect repellent spray did that. Whatever the cause, our family would develop unstoppable laughing fits whilst on river cruises and game drives. It wasn’t helped by my brother and I having a competition to see who could take the funniest pictures of our mother. Our mother was very abiding, during the game drives she kept taking pictures of other humans in jeeps and telling us she’d spotted weird looking game. She’s short-sighted that way. Then she’d take photos of the ropes hanging from the jeep and assume they were weird looking insects. She’s also long-sighted that way.

Vic Falls has a nice mist as you walk through it. I would rate it as better than Niagara (but then again, what isn’t…) and below Iguacu. I definitely liked being able to walk up real close to the edge, oh wait, no, I’m a wuss with heights and nearly pooped my pants. The guide was offering a free bungee jump seeing as how it was New Year’s. I volunteered as no one else wanted it, but my mother refused to let the guide take me. Sigh. I mean, granted I would have been that 1% of bungee mishaps where I’d have passed out but it would have been fun before the coma.

We then got stranded at Zambia for two days, where we ate and slept, and my mother sweeped up hair from me and my brother because she was embarrassed by her shedding children and feared the janitor would think we were abominations.

Chobe River: Botswana and Namibia

I wasn’t really too sure about Chobe but every travel agent had suggested it, and now I can see why. It’s very impressive in its abundance of animals. So far Bostwana is my favourite.

Hippos are frigging adorable! They are. I have a hard time being scared of them. Baring their teeth is supposed to be a sign of aggression but do they know how cute they look? Are they trying to out-cute each other?

The guide would tell us, “this is a bad time for animals.” But within five minutes of entering the national park we’d see hyenas, impalas and baboons (deer and baboons are always together. I know it must be because they help each other spot predators, but let me imagine for a moment that deer and monkeys are best friends because they take turns riding each others’ backs). Within half an hour we saw lionesses sleeping. Then elephants crossing the road. Then giraffes. Then water buffalo. I mean come on, what’s the good time for animals like? Right, wildebeest stampede.

As far as food was concerned, we ate a lot. You know how if you left food on our plate as a child and your parents would say, “there are children in Africa who don’t even have food…”? Well. Everywhere we went there were buffets. We didn’t see the starving children because we saw lots of tourists, each with their own, “I have to finish ALL the food because somewhere around the corner, an African child doesn’t even have food.” Which doesn’t make that much sense, because if there are children who don’t have food, why are we eating all their food? The food was good, because despite my slight nausea (Chobe and Vic Falls are 3,000m elevation) the entire time I always ate. Damn you, guilty, tasty food.

Anyway, after eating too much food, I endeavoured to try clothes on. Looking through my phrasebook, I can’t find how to say, “I would like something to fit a person without tits and arses. And I can’t wear yellow, because I’m yellow already.”. Then I removed a shirt in the shop (I had tried four tops on, and forgot to go back into the change room stall), and my mother and the shopkeeper burst into laughter. Yep. So that happened. When you’ve flashed people in a different continent and in front of your mother, at least nothing worse can happen.

South Africa: Cape Town, beaches, prisons, absolutely nuts

The Flight Bit

I was fairly excited about the trip. I mean, besides from the usual feeling of doom that someone’s going to die while I’m away, I’m generally excited about travelling. So it’s for the best that I didn’t hear about the Air Asia flight that went missing the day we left. What’s up with 2014, Aviation World? Also, what’s up with duty free selling abalone-flavoured macadamias? Cos you know my mum can’t help but buy that sort of nonsense. Like a kilo of it. But the more pressing matter as far as my mother was concerned was Ebola. So she brought along 300 surgical masks. She hasn’t worn one yet, but I suspect that’s because it’s under that kilo of abalone-nuts (Ab-nuts? Abanuts? Absolutely Nuts?).

The trip did eventually wear out my energy. I’m not the greatest at calculating numbers, so I’d been telling people I’d arrive in 8 hours. But a quick calculation of the military digits told me that I would be spending 25 hours awake before reaching our destination. During which point my fine motor skills gradually deteriorated to that of a four-year-old’s. I wore these khaki/safari pants (with the zips-off-into-shorts option like a Chevy Chase movie from the 90’s, I am SO cool) and during the flight(s) dribbled different things between my legs (water, lotion, balsamic vinegar). Then when I was done feeding my crotch I got all sorts of cramps in my legs (legs day, bro. No, not really, bro). But then we arrived, and it was good. We discovered that our hotel was also a university, and before that, it WAS A PRISON. Sorry, going to prison is on my bucket list. I mean, it’s not as good as going to prison for first degree murder or armed robbery, but I’ll take what I can get. The cars drive on the right (and by right obviously I mean left…) side, and they have roundabouts too. Except the driver kindly said that they’re actually called traffic circles. And it suddenly occurred to me that no one else says roundabout. It’s a yobo word when you think about it. Chuck us a U-ee (Youi? You-ee?) on the rowwwwndabout, mate.

Cape Town Bit

It’s hard to reconcile the grisly past with the majestic landscape. It’s like the south. I love the south. They deep fry everything, they speak like an old western movie, the leaves change colours like a blushing Irishman. But it’s the south. South Africa is like that. In some ways, the two make sense. Because it’s so beautiful, I can see why the Afrikaaners got colonial and possessive. By possessive I mean biblically racist.

Seeing as how apartheid only ended in 94, I was curious to see if it was as diverse as the 2010 World Cup ads had us believe. It would seem that twenty years later, it’s sort-of-kind-of reconciled. There are still large statues of every single oppressor (it was almost refreshing to see the wife of one of them. I mean, there are only so many white dudes on phallic statues you can see before one feels torn about the colour imbalance vs the gender disparity), they haven’t removed the bridges (one that’s nice and one that’s rickety), and out of everyone I looked at who wasn’t a tourist, I saw one interracial couple. If I were a Martian visiting I’d say the whites are Aryan looking and the blacks are poor. They speak separate languages. And there are llama farms. More beaches per capita here than cigarettes in Greece.

It doesn’t help that there are many townships living side by side with affluent areas, though both feel like prisons. A township is rather euphemistic. It’s a shanty town. With shipping containers being used for housing. And affluent homes have high walls, barbed wires, cages over windows, gates, Dobermans, cameras.

Yet there is also a ridiculous amount of beauty. My mother wants to live here. And I do too. Despite how uncomfortable the demographics are, it’s one of those places that seems blessed by nature. There are vineyards, and deer. Baboons and penguins. Beaches and valleys. Crayfish and calamari. The Atlantic and the Pacific. Perpetually 28 degrees and breezy. No mosquitoes.

The Epilepsy-Epiloguey

Speaking of which, we’re taking anti-malaria tablets. We couldn’t take one of the options as they were kind-of-sort-of bad for women, and we couldn’t take another option as they pretty-much-certainly cause seizures in epileptics, and my brother and I had childhood epilepsy. So we’re taking malarone, which is supposedly good. But they have a rare-yet-possible side effect of hallucination. Now I thought that meant woo! Par-TAY in the prison/dorm/hotel! But no, it resulted in me having one of the most frightening nightmares I ever had.

Look, no one likes listening to someone’s dreams (and I forgot most of it), but to sum it up, basically, I was losing my sanity. I don’t mean like I was going crazy in the dream, I mean, the nightmare was so real I was forgetting who I was and names of people. I felt if I couldn’t escape this dream I would go insane (and yes, going to a mental asylum is another thing on my bucket list, but in a Girl, Interrupted way. I only like the idea if it comes with an Angelina Jolie and a Whoopi Goldberg nurse). Then I realised it was a dream. And that made it worse. As soon as I went lucid I realised, scarily, that I couldn’t wake up. I could feel my own eyelids refusing to move, my arms and legs paralysed, my mouth unable to produce a sound. It was bizarre and was not mitigated by the fact that when I finally managed to open my eyelids I was hit with the full power of jet lag and woke up like, “HOLY SHITBALLS ON A GOAT’S TITS, WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS?!” (yeah, I forgot I was in a prison/dorm/hotel in Africa. The place didn’t look like my room). I put the event out of my mind, figured it was the 19^th century dessert wine I had (the winery tried to sell that bottle as Napolean’s favourite wine. Seriously? Why don’t you pull out Stalin’s favourite vodka, or Idi Amin’s favourite scotch?). As it turns out, my mother had a poor time sleeping (she thought it might have been from the Abanuts), and my brother whimpered in his sleep, going through motions similar but not quite the state of a seizure. So I learnt that hallucinations can be bad. Don’t do drugs. And that is my two-day take on South Africa. I was impressed, and sad, and a bit crazy.

"Did you see kermit the frog?" Canberra marathon

So my time for the marathon was very slow, not only did I not beat Oprah (4 hours, 29 min or 6:22min/km pace), I'm pretty sure I didn't even beat puff daddy. I might have beaten Pamela Anderson and Katie Holmes though that's not exactly bragging rights because one was known for running in slow motion and the other is well known for running whilst yelling, 'DAWSON, DAWSON, DAWSON'.

BUT, I had the best run of my life. I was worried as I trained a whole lot less post honeymoon for the last two months, though when the gun went off, it was like I had become the wind. A stocky-calved, big-headed, wind. I had to force myself to slow down so as not to over exert myself. At the halfway mark my time was a very nice 2:10 (6:10ish pace) so I was on sight to finish in 4:20ish. My heart rate was about 172, not pleasant, but not dire. However, somewhere into the 29th kilometre the lactic buildup in my legs was so great I was getting cramps in places I didn't even know one could get cramps (seriously, there's a meaty area between your butt and your hamstring. Speaking of, et tu, hamstring? What do you even do anyway? Make ham? Make strings?). The strange thing was, while I couldn't run, I also couldn't walk, because my legs would also seize up. It was like the movie Speed, the bus goes too fast? THE MUSCLES EXPLODE. The bus goes too slow? THE MUSCLES EXPLODE. Keanu Reeves doesn't say, 'whoa, dude'? THE MUSCLES EXPLODE. I was forced into The goldilocks pace of 7:00/km, a leisurely jog for me. it was at this point I threw out my time goal and decided to simply finish the race, and once I decided that, I had the most amazing time.

There were many people who were genuinely running at that pace, but there were others in my predicament, and plenty of veterans who were simply doing it for fun. I had a great time chatting to them at this pace, I actually broke out in song, to Madonna's Borderline at one of the rest stops where they blasted songs from the 80's. There were people running for cancer, people running for their health, a German couple who were running because they wanted to get a nice view of the city, and all their reasons were so noble.

And I realised then I had discovered my marathon quest. People say in a marathon you learn something about yourself, and I realised that I was doing the marathon for all the wrong reasons. I did it cos I was a narcissist who wanted to see how fit I was,  hoping it would make me feel great about myself, but I knew then, as I questioned one lady why she had a slice of cheesecake in her bra (her guilty pleasure that she only allowed herself to have if she runs 42k haha), that there was literally no time I that could have been satiated my own craving. No matter what my time might have been, whether it was sub 4:30 or even sub 4:00, I wasn't going to be happy with it, I wasn't going to be proud of it. Because if I were running the entire time, my heart rate would have eventually hit 180+, I would have internally, felt unfit. I did an 8k fun run last November and I found that experience much, MUCH, tougher than the marathon, because the entire time I was wheezing like an old car. If I could travel back in time I would have told the Egotistical Me of Past, 'just run it without looking at your damned watch, go slow.' For the ten kilometres in the marathon that I was going at the pace of a normal easy run, I truly enjoyed what it was like to run easy and long. I never allowed myself an easy run longer than 5km, even my 'easy' long runs are tough, due to the terrain. In canberra the elevation is about the same as my A-cup bosom. As in, I barely noticed it. In fact, it kept going downhill.

I high fived every kid (and there were LOTS), I encouraged every person I passed and belched very loudly at one water stop, causing everyone to burst into laughter. I got to know many very inspiring runners, and shouted many words of thanks to each volunteer. A guy with a megaphone ran with us for awhile and I screamed into it (sorry if you lost your eardrums, residents of the capital). I admired the scenery, which despite the lack of elevation, had very impressive mountains in the distance, and we ran near the lake almost the entire time. I waved at cyclists (one was dressed up as Kermit) and, despite the muscular agony, my effort felt so comfortable that i'm sure my heart could have kept me running for hours. So as crazy as it sounds, yes, I feel more confidant in myself for being able to run for close to five hours comfortably rather than running hard for four. And if I had run it hard, i wouldn't have had a different experience than simply running that distance at home. As a bonus, I also met Supportive Spouse's goal that he had set for me, which was a very hard goal, actually. It was Thou Shalt Not Poop In Public (with an addendum of If Thee Dost Shat That, Cover Up Thy Bib, So Our Friends Don't Find Incriminating Photos Online). Supportive Spouse also overheard one woman who openly announced how she did exactly that, over a bridge, in full view of everyone and I'M NOT THAT PERSON! Yayyyy!

By the time I reached 39k, I had a stupid smile on my face that I couldn't get rid of like my dog being fed her supper. Because I knew then that I was going to finish, and then I made a last dash, which retrospectively, was a little early. I figured even if my muscles lamed me, I could bloody well crawl the rest of the 3km. Supportive Spouse also would have been waiting for almost an hour by now, and I really wanted to finish running. The last three k's were tough, I whimpered pitifully with every step, and every damn volunteer would yell out, 'it's only around the corner!' Or, 'it's only another 100m!'...now I'm not saying they were liars, but when your legs feel like the piece of cow Rocky Balboa's been pummelling in that long Eye of the Tiger montage, 100m better be 100m.  Anyway, my garmin was very accurate and matched the course markers, until the 29th, because I started to meander, I was zig zagging across the road to high five people, or I was keeping left even if I should have taken corners closer, that by the time we got to the end, I had run more than 1k more. You know, for funsies.

I conclusion, if I were to encourage anyone to do a marathon (and I'm not sure I would), I would say, do it for the fun, the atmosphere. Bring a friendly attitude, a strong heart, a supportive partner, and an Imodium.

Jodhpur, Udaipur & Nepal

Jodhpur

I hadn't actually written much about Jaipur itself, it was in fact the most interesting place we'd been to so far. The elephant ride (whose name was jamelia), the lake, the walls, all spectacular. The guide, who was lovely, being the only one who indulged and helped me shop on the streets, then nearly put me into a coma however because we went through about twelve sun dials, all of which he was sadly very knowledgable in.

On our last night in Jaipur we also went to a buffet called barbecue nation, recommended to us by Aneeta. You're given all the skewers of meat first, then you have a buffet. I went through about four skewers. Tom went through ten. Then we had the buffet. Then we had dessert. Then I nearly threw up in the elevator back to our room. And I'm pretty sure it cost us twenty five bucks for the two of us. I ate so much I then had the most frightening reflux induced nightmare of my life. I dreamt that the whole wedding was a practice run, and the celebrant tells me, 'that was a good trial, now let's do the real thing,' before I woke up Munch's Scream style.

In Jodhpur the petulant fog lifted somewhat and we were able to see atop the Greek blue acropolis, and for once a guide who didn't know any of his dates, and therefore didn't recount the entire history of his region. What I liked about him was how proud he was of this place, a genuine love for his city. He would walk calmly into the middle of the traffic, like a local cow, slowly, with sanctity. And we would try to follow him, like squirrels, frantically, with our nuts clenched.

At the base of the fort were the hand prints of the thirty something wives of the maharajas who'd committed stuti upon their husbands' deaths, which is self immolation. Tom asks if I would do the same, and to be honest I can barely say the word, much less perform it. One more reason why I'd like to be the one who dies first.

The place we stayed at had a massive balcony and overlooked the garden, where a band of men played traditional music. The drumming was good, but unluckily for Tom, who went to bed early, they played well into the night, and the main singer's inspiration seemed to come from the sounds of root canal surgery.

Udaipur

On our way to Udaipur, India tried fairly hard to kill Tom with gastro, to the point where he didn't eat breakfast, lunch of dinner. That's like saying Seth McFarlane didn't make fun of black people, fat people, and women. You know it's either a doppelgänger from an alternate universe, or he's about to die. And since we were previously speaking about stuti, I'd very much like to keep my week-old husband alive so I don't have to set myself on fire. We were able to get our hands on some decent antibiotics in Australia, so he'll go back to eating 12 kilos of meat and chasing poultry like he did to one particularly slow peacock that roamed the hotel garden at Agra. The next day I'm sure the staff were talking about us because I was ordered and ate all the meals while the big man I was with only had bread or fish and chips. 

The hotel we're staying at is ridiculously gorgeous, with a view of the lake and the mountains. I'm sorry my blog is so void of pictures, I'm using a camera instead of my phone so uploads will have to come later. You won't be missing much as I'm a an ordinary photographer, every now and then you'll see a photo that's both straight AND in focus. 

Cross what I said about Jaipur, this place is the cleanest and clearest by far. I managed not to get the infection Tom got, as I most likely have enough germs inside my digestive tract to host the Bacteria U.N., a place where E. Coli, Salmonella and The Bubonic Plague convene to discuss macro economics. 

The guide was highly enthusiastic at showing me the lakes, the palaces, the camels, the temples, to the point where he grabbed a random street sweeper and pointed out the different types of jewellery on her face and didn't notice she had all her front teeth missing and Tom Selleck's moustache.

Leaving India and Udaipur turned out to be hard, and I don't mean emotionally or gastronomically. A fog from The Bold and the Beautiful prevented us from flying out and Roger Ramjeet had to drive us six hours back to Jaipur and another five hours to New Delhi the next morning so we could make our flight to Kathmandu. Overall, I enjoyed my time, from the breakfast dosas to the surprise blackouts, the guava juice, the coccyx-bumping rickshaw ride, the confusion between the number four and the number six (chaar? Char?) and even that awkward moment where you need to tip the toilet attendant after you've just washed your hands but don't want to touch the money so you hold it through your sleeves like a leper. Goodbye, and thanks for all the saris.

Nepal

Despite losing a whole day in Nepal our guide there was able to shuffle things around so we didn't miss anything. Unfortunately we missed the mountain flight to see Everest but our fortunes turned at Chitwan National Park where we saw more than the normal share of wildlife. On our elephant ride we saw cute nuclear families of deer and rhino, along with peacocks. One Chinese husband also asked his wife, 

'hey look at the beautiful flowers on the elephant, do you think they were drawn on?'

to which she responded with, 'nahhhh they're born with colourful flowers on their faces...'

On the jeep safari we saw herds of spotted deer with very impressive, fuzzy antlers, more peacocks and plenty of crocodiles. An extra treat was a large rhino, who for a moment, charged right at us. Then we all held our breaths as we saw a leopard crossing our paths.

As I'm writing something wicked is surely going to befall Tom. Bad things come in threes. First I (accidentally) chucked his toothbrush on the ground. Then Fatty sat on his sunglasses. So who knows what'll happen next. I'll probably give him mono.

The food had all been prepared at the lodge we're staying at, there was fried fish heads, fried chicken, tempura veggies, buffalo sausages, most of which I enjoyed. They even packed us the most adorable lunch that had a juice popper in it, they wrapped everything up, including the salt.

One of the guides we had was describing a local house made from made and cow dung, and knocked off a piece of their house in he process of waving his stick emphatically about. Another took us bird watching, which is about as interesting as it sounds, we managed to laugh immaturely about spotting tits, though at one stage the youngest baby elephant of the national park walked over to us and sniffed Tom's crotch.

On our jungle walk we spotted more spotty deers and on our canoe ride there were many crocodiles eyeing us out, and way too many mosquitoes sniffing me out.

In the evening we went to a cultural dance where it seemed they got the local teenagers to perform for us. They might be doing it in exchange for getting out of detention, i.e. write an essay on global warming or dance for the foreigners. I joined them as a part of audience joint humiliation for the world's longest dance ever, it was fun.

I would certainly come back to Nepal against. The place is beautiful, the people friendly, children smile and say namaste not because they want anything, they seem to be happy to look at the funny tourists who buy their elephant dung paper (yeah you bet I got me some). Nothing in this place is afraid of humans, not the deer, not the rhinos, certainly not the chickens and the dogs (and Japanese Spitzes! Nepalese Manny!), so much so that I fear That the Nepalese people might be taken advantage of by others who are greedier. It doesn't help that they sit in between China and India, and from what I've seen of both those countries, Nepal is certainly the David to their Goliathian powers. 

On our last day at Kathmandu we visited a lot of temples, and saw a beautiful purple sunset of the Himalayan mountains which was surprisingly, only about 50km away. Then the guide took us to a local place and we ate all the momos, a dumpling with buffalo meat, along with fried paneer and an assortment of other fried meats, including buffalo lungs (and you know how much I like offal). Now we're heading back home, where far fewer people will be my height, or wear The North Face. I've been really lucky to visit these places, and if our plane crashes, someone 'rescue' my dog from my mother who's no doubt over feeding her because Manny 'looks so hungry'. 

New Delhi, Agra & Jaipur

New Delhi

Was a foggy, bird filled, busy hub with a lot of people and even more rickshaws. As we went around the town only a few people stared, and only a few children begged incomprehensibly, with your usual quota of stray dogs napping around rubbish piles and their ribs protruding. India has a reputation for being worse off than it is, I certainly didn't feel crowded, though sitting in a car where the traffic involved scarce indicating, frequent near calls and constant honking meant I did actually missed Sydney's traffic, where your biggest concern is finding a radio station that doesn't play Kesha as you wait four hours to get home.

The food was abundant, we had so much for breakfast that we skipped lunch, and had so much in the late afternoon we skipped dinner. There's buffet and then there's indian buffet, where your choices are English Food done like the English themselves ie badly (bacon, Something Meaty A La King, sausages), Hot Indian Food (curries, biryanis, skewers), Mild Indian Food (rotis, naan, dosas, paneer, various fried things like idles), Chinese Food (Things Stir Fried with Garlic), and of course Desserts (cakes, pastries, yoghurts, strange balls covered in coconut, strange balls that are sticky, strange balls that have been deep fried, etc).

Tom wanted to add: The tour guide was a font of unwanted detail. He thoughtfully informed us that India makes things using precious stones and that these stones could be yellow or blue or green or red or... there were probably a few more colours but I'd nodded off by then.

The pool at the hotel was heated to a warm 27 degrees so I was hoping to go for a swim where the night sky could light up the water's warm breath as I listened to the music that was playing under water, and you know, have a wanky ethereal experience or something. I sort of got that, but every thirty second the only other person in the pool, a tall Indian man, would thrash for about 5 metres across the pool. The pool was only 4ft 5 in the 'deep' end so I thought he might have been doing resistance swimming, or trying to make butter. It was about twenty minutes of this, and seriously it was like swimming past a rip every time he was churning the water with his big long legs, before he turns to me bashfully and asks, 'excuse me! how do you keep your head up? I am trying to learn how to swim'. At this point the two staff attendants walked over to watch. The poor guy. I started to show him, and used as many analogies as I could, such as 'like a frog' or 'imagine you are a motor on a boat, not a blanket being slapped onto the water'. It didn't work. Then, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps as a cosmic joke, I tried to get him to float on his back. He would sink as surely as Enron stocks each time and each time he would panic and emit small sounds like a parrot as he flailed his arms, and each time the staff would laugh, eventually not even covering it up with their hands. A good ten minutes elapsed before I bid him farewell. I hope he succeeds in learning how to swim, because it would be embarrassing to drown in water that was chest height.

Agra

So the pool had the last laugh after all.

The Taj Mahal was indeed spectacular, there are no photos than can replicate the details. What made it hard to appreciate the beauty was worrying about if the mosquito bite I had was dengue or malaria, as well as the omnipotent diarrhoea. and let's not pretend we're surprised I got it. If anyone was going to get the shits, it'll be me. I get the shits in Australia on a weekly basis, and that's not including that one time I ate a piece of toast which fell on some rat poison (3 second rule!). However we've only eaten at the hotels, so I'm thinking, it must the pool water. Anyway, thanks to Tom who carried me and sprinted the 200m to the toilets at one stage when I almost blacked out. And if you're the toilet wallah at the Taj, I'm sorry I flung rupees at you and then grabbed the roll of toilet paper, and crapped everywhere. Twice.

The hotels on the plus side, are gorgeous. Water features, marble, acres of gardens, and each one so far have provided very cute congratulatory cakes.

Jaipur

Some pros and cons about travelling on the road, firstly, this tour is fantastic, we get the same driver who takes the two of us everywhere, and we don't need to be on a big coach with randoms with their varying lack of punctuality and invariable consistency of BO. our driver, Ramjeet, or as Tom says, Roger Ramjeet, is pretty astute, and must think I'm a narcoleptic who sleeps all day, or that Tom is some sort of horndog Adonis who never lets me sleep, because all I do in the car is nap. My mouth is usually open too. However there are cons too, like When Roger Ramjeet points to the side of the road at one stage where there were makeshift beds and very young women lying on them, and points out that it only costs about 100 rupees to sleep with one of them, and that really puts your souvenir shopping to shame because I'm sure I bought a fridge magnet that cost that much, it equals about two dollars Aussie. (Speaking of shopping, why do the guides insist on taking us to very obvious tourist traps where they hope we will buy their carpets? Do they imagine we are stone dwelling people with very sensitive feet?) We saw a dog that was run over but unfortunately not dead, in the middle of the highway where no one could safely put it to peace, and we are sometimes hawked at by young, disfigured children, at other times by those who have monkeys stringed at the neck with their pained faces looking so very human as they do tricks.

Now, to try to lighten the tone, I'll tell you about the time I was cackling like a Macbethan witch. The preface is this, all the toilets in the hotels here have a small hose near them, a fancy type hose that I thought might function like a flexible bidet. But after my crisis of dysentery yesterday, I thought, perhaps their function was more simple.

So we are at the lobby of this swanky hotel as our guide checks us in, and I ask Tom,

'do you think the hose next to the toilets is for washing your bum or for cleaning the toilet when you have a particularly nasty poop?'

And he replies,

'I don't think you could use that hose without getting arse juice everywhere'

And I laugh so hard at arse juice that I was unable to stop when the tour guide and a hotel staff walked over. Actually I'm still laughing right now and I should get some sort of certificate for being able to type legibly. I laugh so frequent at the thought of arse juice we now refer to it as AJ in public.

At dinner the hotel buffet was nuclear level spicy. I lost my hearing and went around asking for a lassi, shoving pineapples up my face in a desperate attempt to stop my face from turning into an eggplant. Of course I went back for seconds. The tour groups from Italy and Germany were noticeably upset when they ran out of mashed potatoes. 

2013 in pictures

So here is my rather mundane year in pictorial representation (I nearly said pectoral, in which case that would have been easier, you could see the gradual growth of my biceps, but there's no need to make roided up boys jealous, so let's nip that). There is one for each month, with a sentence (ish).

January

I baked all the things in January, because the delirious summer heat makes me think, let's turn the oven on all day. I am however quite proud of producing the beigli (no, autocorrect, not a beagle, us asians don't eat dog ALL the time).

February 

Got a new bike, which was alarming news for my knees, who barely recovered from my first bike, aptly named Bruiser. This one, by all accounts, should have been named The Undertaker.

March

Went to a Garbage concert, and ok, fine, it was actually at the end of Feb, it's just that my calendar pretty much goes: nothing-nothing-nothing-nothing-EVERYPARTYONPLANET-nothing-nothing-nothing. And Shirley Manson's FB page is worthy of an entry, she has about as many posts as I do about her dog.

April

It was sometime in April that my iBooks sold more than 2,000 units, and could make enough money to buy, say, a hat.

May

May was when Little Head (or "my partner", in civilised company) proposed, and when I saw the Toblerone in the ring box, I made that otter face.

June

Now I don't know about you, but in the winter I store fat like Gina Rhinehart stores lawyers.

July

Obviously you can't beat a ring/toblerone as a birthday present, though I did get Little Head a massage chair, and when you sit in it, it's like an angry goat is stomping its small, hard, satanic hooves on you.

August

By now all that Facebook ever tells me is how to lose weight for my wedding, and my relatives have started to send me gifts. I have a traditional Chinese tea set laid out in a box which appears to be made from my dog's hair, I have traditional Chinese hair combs, made from the ancient trees where Pandas dance the tango, and I also have, well, what can only be described as lots and lots of woggy crockery.

September

My first year of marking the HSC was great. There was so much camaraderie (and socialism. mostly socialism), and despite the sleep deprivation, it was something I'm sure I'll be signing up for every year. I photoshopped that picture because it's pretty much my career, the Asian teacher who rote learns capitals, and appallingly, struggles to spell one of the days of the week (wehd-nezzz-day)

October

Entered my first run and wore a costume along with some superheroes. Excellent. Then as we were starting I realised I forgot to apply deodorant. Excellent.

November

Now you know I can't show you my students' faces, but this year I got a real laugh out of the dress up day which happens before their graduation, so here's one I blurred earlier. (yeah, corny, but graduation is one of my favourite days of the year. it's the only time when boys can cry, besides when playing sack-wack or when their rugby team loses).

December

It always gets so hectic in December, OFFICE PARTIES! PRESENT SHOPPING! GAH, BIGGEST TURKEY IS SOLD OUT! OH MY GOD ALL THE MOSQUITOES ARE EATING ME ALIVE! and many wonderful things also happen, like my mother's birthday, Americans arriving, the end of the school year, egg nog, but alas, panic ensues in the household.