Exit Interview!

What were your favourite foods?
Steve
Lok Lak - Cambodia
Amoke - Cambodia
Steaks - Argentina

Beth
Green curry and pad thai - Thailand
Any curry! - India

What were your favourite drinks?
Steve
Chaye tea - India
Lassie - North India
All Asian beer
Capriosca and caprihana - Brazil

Beth
Fresh limejuice - Singapore
Coffee - Vietnam (with condensed milk - yum)

What was your favourite natural place
Steve
Mt Sunday - New Zealand

Beth
Inca trail - Peru
Mt Cook, Waimangu, Waitapu and Milford Sound - New Zealand

What was your favourite manmade place ?
Steve
Sydney Opera House

Beth
Angkor Wat - Cambodia
Macchu Pichu - Peru

Which place are you most likely to revisit
Both - New Zealand (in summer)
Steve - South America

Which place are you most unlikely to revisit?
Both -India

What was your saddest moment
Both - Saying goodbye to Lucy in Australia
Beth - also saying goodbye to Auntie Maureen and Uncle Rob in New Zealand

What will you miss about travelling?
Steve
Excitement of seeing somewhere different every day

Beth
Being with Brown 24/7
Freedom!

What will you be glad to see the back of?
Steve
People who rip us off
Heat and unbearable humidity

Beth
Being with Brown 24/7 (only joking!)
My backpack

Which country is next on your agenda?
Steve
Canada
Bolivia
Indonesia

Beth
Japan (scuba diving and snowboarding in one country - result)
Trans-Siberian express from Russia to China
Mexico
Italy

What has been your greatest achievement?
Steve
Managing to get through a whole year with Beth!
Avoiding food poisoning

Beth
Leaving home!
Loosing three stone
Completing the Inca Trail

What are you most looking forward to?
Steve
Temperature
Fast Internet
Seeing friends and family
Clean streets with no litter

Beth
Salad cream on warm pasta with sweet corn, raw onion and black pepper
Marmite whenever I want it
No bartering
Toilet paper in public loos
No stray dogs
Seasons
A routine
English weather!

Home, Sweet Home

Heading to Chennai it was clear that 1000km to the east made little impact on the heat - or our waning enthusiasm. We searched within ourselves and found our hearts weren't really in travelling anymore - our heads were in England finding jobs and buying 1971 vw camper vans (singular we hasten to add). We decided to forget the plans for a week in an ashram, after all who wants to be woken up at 5.30am every morning (without the aid of caffeine), chant and then sit in funny positions all day only to go to bed at 10pm without alcohol. After all nirvana to us has always been a rock group and we are not 'jugglers' at heart. That rationale combined with the homesickness we had been fighting off for months concluded the debate and we brought our BA flight forward by two weeks. Checking into a five star hotel with air conditioning and a bathroom (for the price of a Travel Lodge!) that amazingly appeared to have been cleaned in the last two years, we stuffed our faces full of the last genuine Indian food we may possibly ever eat and caught our flight home.

We landed at Heathrow to a disgruntled pilot informing us of drizzle in a grey London. We just looked at each other and said 'brilliant'! Walking into Heathrow was surreal - systems worked, queues were orderly, people spoke our language and noone was farting in public. We saw no litter, we seemed to sink into the carpeted floors and the toilets had seats with paper that you could actually put in the bowl. A coffee cost the same as a nights accommodation in most of the Asian and South American countries we had visited and our dress; flowing tunics and baggy trousers (Steve), ribboned skirt (Beth) seemed decidedly out of place amongst the non-descript English uniforms of jeans and suits.

Seeing our parents was amazing and we re-enacted the Heathrow scene from Love Actually as we (well, Beth and the two Mums) launched ourselves on each other in a frenzy of hugs and kisses. Steve went to Bedford and Beth went to Stroud - it was very difficult to part after being together for 24 hours a day, seven days a week for an entire year but overcome by the temptation of being mothered for a few days.

Even the queues on the M4 held delights - no incessant horn honking and the fields beyond? Stunningly green and the houses all had roofs (forgive us, it has been some time). We rediscovered the beauty of England with it's country cottages, brilliant yellow fields of rape, cow parsley lacing the hedgerows and the spring-time sun bathing the green fields and dancing over the clusters of bluebells and sweetly smelling wild garlic. Ironically it is has taken one year of travelling across 15 countries, three continents and throughout a myriad of cultures to discover that the most beautiful place in the world is actually home.

Our Indian Adventure

"The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it" was penned by Rudyard Kipling and was surely inspired by India. The smells (not all pleasant) are one of the keys to the level of acclimatisation that must be achieved before the wonders of this culturally diverse country can be appreciated. India is a country that is nuclear enabled; has just purchased warplanes and is about to enter an alliance to "position India and China as the centre of the technology world" (in the words of the newsmen). Also a country that has no sanitised water or sufficient plumbing to supply much needed supplies to areas of rural India where millions have died in droughts or through disease from contaminated water supplies. A country that provides no social welfare system and so ignores the plight of (the many) physically handicapped beggars who rely solely on donations from the public to stay alive. You have to wonder about the priorities of such a Government.

Women travellers in particular find themselves under scrutiny and it is little wonder that centuries ago Indian women observed Purdah - an act of hiding themselves away to avoid the lustful looks of men. An Indian told us that whilst women may rule the home, on the streets the men rule and little has changed by way of the lustful looks; it is just that women rarely are seen on the streets by day.

Yet despite the challenges visitors to the country must confront and a modern India faces, the country is tremendously beautiful; from the hostile and strangely unworldly desert scapes to the architectural wonders of the Taj Mahal and imposing hill forts and the beautifully coloured cities. The culture too is an adventure from the food, which is prepared with a fierce pride that has proved an inspiration for many other countries that fuse Indian curries with their own cuisine, to the influence of the many religions on a nation that is surprisingly materialistic in their aspirations for social stature.

People who have visited India often say that you either love it or hate it. That is like saying that there are no shades in the spectrum of colours. It is possible to experience an entire repertoire of emotions in the space of 15 minutes often of such an extreme nature that you learn depths of your character that may otherwise lie dormant. It is not simply a question of summarising and filing India away - such a country is too unique and besides we could not insult the memory of a country that has allowed us such life-changing experiences.

Backwaters of Kerala

The deep green vegetation of Kerala was a welcome sight after the desert landscapes of Rajhasthan and the equally sandy Goa. From the comfort of the air-conditioned train carriage we pondered the similarities between south India and Sri Lanka and looked forward to loosing ourselves in the wholesome scenery. The humidity and heat however had other ideas and we have never been so conscious of travelling on the Asian sub-continent out-of-season and before the relief of the monsoon arrives. We had been outside for no longer than five minutes when we found ourselves dripping in sweat and at a loss to know what to do with ourselves in the unrelenting, oppressive heat. So we did what we do best and headed for a restaurant. Our first sample of Keralan food (under a large fan) was blissful. We tried idlys (lentil and rice batter) and spongy dosas soaked up in thick pellets of rice and spicy pickles offset by creamy okra curry and served on a banana leaf. Weight gain was obviously going to be a problem in this region of India.

Kerala is famous for the remote beauty of it's backwaters and we spent a peaceful day floating down the rivers in a rattan boat listening to the cries of the water birds and watching the reflections of the palm trees rippling in the river. A Keralan lunch preceded a canoe ride through thick vegetation where pineapples grow wild and water hyacinths were plucked from the river to make necklaces for the girls. Hibiscus flowers tangled with mango trees and ducks fought for space with the water boatman in the narrow waterways.

Back at the hotel we struggled for sleep. 35 degrees heat and intense humidity is not conducive to rest and we may as well have had a revolving door on our bathroom for the amount of cold showers we took through the night. After two nights like this we decided it was time to move on before we lost our sanity and with that decision taken we headed on the night sleeper to Chennai (formerly Madras) in the Tamil Nadu region of southern India to seek some respite from the heat.