India is mad. It's so far from anything I have ever experienced; it completely blows your mind. It's almost indescribably insane.

For example: I am sitting in an internet cafe in Varanasi. Outside, in an alleyway just wide enough for 2 waterbuffalo to pass, a procession of about 10 people walks by, chanting. They are carrying a make-shift bamboo stretcher with a dead body on it, wrapped in an orange shroud, to the Ganges. If you follow them, you can go and watch as they wash the body in the sacred waters ot the Ganga, then build a bonfire and burn it.

Next to the internet place is a shop the size of a kitchen cupboard where an old woman sits and sells spices. Leprotic beggars vy for your attention with drug dealers and shopkeepers. A kid sits next to a basket with a cobra in it. Sacred cows and mangy dogs nose through rubbish. In fact every Indian city so far seems to be a veritable menagerie. I've seen cows, dogs, goats, pigs, snakes, rats, chickens, chipmunks, weasels, and waterbuffalo - and at night the monkeys take over the city. The pigs fight the dogs, the dogs fight the monkeys, the monkeys fight each other, and the cows just stand around looking dopey. They'll hitch anything to a cart here - horses, oxen, camels - even people. There are sadhus, strange old holy men who wander around clad only in a loincloth, covered in ashes, smoking big wooden pipes. Take a rowing boat up the Ganga to watch the sun set and you can watch a Hindu ritual in the river bank as dead bodies - human and bovine - float by. We even saw river dolphins; although how they survive in that water is beyond me.

In Pushkar, a (relatively) laid-back, small town around a holy lake, there are quite a few westerners who have obviously been here a bit too long. They all wander around looking stoned, dressed in the regulation hippy get-up: tie-dyed shirts, baggy "clown trousers", and dreadlocks. Here comes a great one; a western guy dressed in white hindu robes, with a shaved head and paint on his face. I mean call me a cynical heathen, but this is not woodstock. Somebody should give these guys a slap and tell them what year it is. Cut off their drug supply or something.

So anyway. After the Annapurna circuit, I went to the jungle where I spent 3 days walking through the jungle looking for tigers, eating lunch off banana leaves, getting chased up trees by rhinos, and crashing through the jungle on an elephant. Mowgli, eat your heart out. The 26 hour bus ride to India was horrible, but I did get to see first-hand how to fit 21 people, plus a driver, in a (short wheel-base) Landrover.

Tomorrow I get on a plane bound for blighty - yikes!!

Well, it's been emotional. 28 months, 25 countries, lots of trains, planes, automobiles - and bloody buses. Have met some weird and wonderful people: mountain climbers from Alaska, professional coke smugglers, a Colombian model / TV presenter, a prison warder / soldier / holiday rep (no joke), Swedish au pairs, a crazy blonde who hitch-hiked around Colombia, deep-sea divers, Man-United-supporting buddhist monks, Vietnamese war veterans, Gurkha spies, UN aid workers, con-artists, psycho rickshaw drivers, Israeli tank commanders, travel guidebook writers, and a Kiwi buddhist / glazier / poet / reformed drug addict with homicidal tendencies. This guy really takes the biscuit - he came to Tibet after seeing the Dalai Lama in dream, but he had an alarming propensity to beat up Tibetans whenever he didn't get his way.

To my assorted travelling companions, thanks for putting up with me: Ruth, Erica, Andy, Keith, Magali, Chad, Deb, Tim, Monika, Crispy, Dean, Saskia, Keith (again), Patrick, Izabella, Luke, Wan-lee and James.

Back home on Saturday, see you soon?

Nepal:

a country in a constitutional crisis and a state of emergency;
a country with Maoist rebels sprinled all over the country;
a country where the bus conductors are 7 years old, and cannabis plants grow by the side of the road.

Since the Prince of Nepal turned up to dinner last June armed with a sub-machine gun and shot dead the entire Royal Family, and himself, things have been (understandably) a little tetchy. Throw in some Maoist rebels who want to turn Nepal into some kind of communist paradise (if they knew what happened in China after 1949 they'd probably rethink), and Nepal doesn't seem quite so appealing as a tourist destination.

Wandering around the rabbit's warren of streets that is the old quarter of Kathmandu, there is a noticeable absence of westerners. Only the Israelis remain undeterred; they are still flocking here in their hundreds. Compared to what's happening in their part of the world, Nepal must seem like the very image of peace and stability. Plus, if I'd just spent 2 years doing national service, using Palestinians' nipples for target practice, I think I'd need a holiday too.

After 8 days on the road subsisting entirely on pasket noodles, we spent the first 48 hours in Nepal gorging ourselves on teh gastronomic delights that Kathmandu has to offer: milkshakes, curries, pizzas, all the stuff you can't get in China or Tibet.

Then we took advantage of all the stuff that Nepal has to offer. It really is paradise for the outdoorsy type here: 10 day rafting trips, muntain biking, trekking, mountaineering; they even have the world's largest bungee jump (160m - ie about 50 storeys). The mountain biking around the Kathmandu valley was great (apart from having to stop every half an hour to pull leeches off my feet and wring the blood out of my socks). I have ridden in big cities before, but on our return we cycled all the way across Kathamndu during rush hour. Not recommended.

Annapurna

BAsically you walk uphil for aboput 10 days, then downhill for a week. The scenery gradually changes as you climb, from leech-infested forest, through steep-sided gorges

We left Lhasa on a cold dark morning. In the Landcruiser were myself, 2 British guys and a British girl, plus a guide AND a driver. The Chinese Government certainly have this deal sorted out. They make it illegal to use any tour agency other than the Government run FIT travel (zippy name huh?), so they can charge as much as they want. What a cunning scheme! And what's more, the travel agents all double as government inspectors with the power to fine unauthorised drivers!

So, having had our wallets comprehensively raped courtesy of the Chinese Government (oh, and accomodation, food, yaks, and permits for everest are not included), we put on our tired, fixed grins, and off we went, headed for the border with Nepal.

The first stop was Gyantse, an ancient fortress town. This time we could stop harping on about the Chinese messing up tibet, because this time it was the BRITISH who attacked this fortress. Yes, Sir Francis Younghusband led an expedition in 1904 to establish links with Lhasa. He used rather brutal techniques at times (the battles were a bloodbath because only one side had guns) but all the British wanted was to establish a buffer zone between British India and the two northern powers of Russia and China. The expedition even laid a telegraph line all the way from India, across the Himalayas, as they went. Apparently it was still there when the Chinese invaded!

The fortress was in fairly decent shape considering. 2 of us decided that we had had enough of paying extortionate site entrance fees (all the money goes to Beijing) and so began an elaborate cat and mouse game as we tried to sneak into the fortress, thus re-enacting the British invasion of a hundred years ago...

Another day's driving later (accompanied, bizarrely, by Michael Jackson, very definitely our driver's favourite artist) and we were in Shigatse. Dominating the town is the ruins of the palace that once stood there. Like a smaller version of the Potala, this grand building was destroyed by, you guessed it, the Chinese. See a photo of it in Return to Tibet. This town also has a massive walled monastery, almost a town within a town. Here is the seat of the Panchen Lama, whom the Chinese backed for many years, educating him in China, and supporting him as the rightful leader of Tibet. Shigatse is one monastery which is in surprisingly good nick. Funny that.

Our last evening in civilisation was spent in Tingri. I use the term "civilisation" quite loosely here; we are talking about a restaurant where they cook the food on a fire of dried yak's dung, where they have oxygen on the menu, and people wander in and out carrying skinned goat's carcasses.

For 4 days we trekked through the mountains, seeing not a single westerner and only a handful of people en route. Our companions were the guide and horse driver, the occasional villager, plus quite a few marmots, mouse hares and gazelles. When we finally caught sight of Everest, it really took our breath away. 30 km distant, it seems a lot closer due to the sheer size of the thing, and stays illuminated by the evening sun long after the valley is in darkness.

Camping at base camp is quite an experience. Aside from the biting cold at night, and the icy wind, there is the altitude. We were pretty well acclimatized having been at 4 - 5000 m for 2 weeks, but up there you get out of breath just getting dressed. Even drinking a glass of water leaves you gasping for breath!

We were quite glad then to lose altitude. The next day's driving took us from 5250m to just 2000m at the Nepali border. The winding road down the canyon would have been great on a mountain bike - the worlds' longest downhill apparently!

After China, nepal seems like the promised land. Shops.......................