Day Zero I don’t like Luton Airport. It takes forever to get there, there’s nowhere enough facilities for the volume of passengers and the whole place feels like a shack in the middle of nowhere. Dire. However, its cheapness is why the budget airlines fly from there, so I endure[…]
Arrival I arrive late on Thursday night – Ange has already arrived after fifty hours of flights and trains from the other side of the world, and so is already checked in and waiting. I grab a cab from the airport and am surprised at the speed and cost –[…]
After paying for our meal at the Reichstag Dome we head down to the Starbucks beside the Brandenburg Gate and wait for our free walking tour of Berlin to begin. It’s a lively scene, with crowds coming for the tours, to see the Gate or to drum up customers for[…]
Location There are at least two Berlins. One of them that we’d spent a couple of days walking around: Historic Berlin; museums and monuments to events of the last century. The Berlin of the Dead. But the Berlin of the Living is clustered around the Zoo of all places –[…]
Location We wanted to stay somewhere which was a little quieter and less hectic than the centre of town – with excellent public transport in Berlin you can be anywhere in the city in a very short period of time, so staying slightly further out where locals lived was a[…]
Location We got off the metro at Fredrickstrasse and found the right exit (towards Unter der Linden) and came out of the underground blinking in the grey light. I knew we were close and said let’s just start walking down the road until we see the hotel and just happened[…]
China Beijing which included Walking the Great Wall at Mutianyu Temple of Heaven, Hutongs, Summer Palace Xi’an Shanghai India New Delhi Agra Chand Baori Fatehpur Sikri Ranthambore Jaipur
The trip from Ranthambor to Jaipur goes by without incident – I’m getting used to overladen trucks on the road and laying on their sides after dubious overtaking efforts, and I am dropped off at my hotel, the ITC Rajputana. I only take the time to check in and dump my[…]
The last of my big four reasons for coming on the trip to China and India (after the Great Wall of China, the Terracotta Army and the Taj Mahal), was the opportunity to see tigers in the wild. I’d done a lot of research, including talking to a friend who’d gone[…]
Water is essential to life and especially precious in a land of searing heat. At both forts I’ve been to there have been deep wells ensuring security of water supply during sieges. I wanted to visit a step well on the way between Agra and Ranthambor and the one at[…]