G&T wish you a Happy New Year from India

It's been a while since we've updated our blog and many exciting things have happened since Nepal. So, we believe the 31st of December is a perfect day to send you all the best wishes for 2010 and also give you a brief update how we like India so far.

Speaking of which, how do we like India? Well, to be honest, even after one month here we are still struggling a bit. Our first stop Varanasi was India "full on": fascinating on the one hand with everything that's going around the holy river Ganges (the daily swimming and cleansing rituals as well as the frequent and for anyone accessible body cremations), shocking on the other hand with the huge amounts of waste, its inescapable smell, India's poverty and people using public space as toilet literally everywhere.

After Varanasi we already needed some break by escaping to a lovely mangrove national park south of Kolkata called the Sunderbans where we tried to spot the fearsome Bengal Tiger. Even more relaxing was our two week Christmas holiday on the Anderman Islands. Basicly, we've spent the time sleeping in our bamboo hut, eating fresh fish, reading plenty of books and observing the Islands' perfect underwater life. We even saw a great big turtle as well as an octopus while snorkeling that was pretty special.

So ... now we are back on the mainland, so to speak back to Indian reality and willing to give India another chance. Just today we had a brilliant travel planning day where we decided to spend some more time in Kerala in South India, but also travel to Rajastan which was not on our travel agenda so far. Originally we intended to travel through Iran into Turkey, but recent events make this a not too wise choice. We gladly found a great alternative today!! Keep coming back for the news...