My first trip to Thailand. 1986.

[sipi]

I stumbled across this diary entry on an old hard drive. It's basically an unedited diary from my first trip to Thailand starting on 4 January 1986. We took off to Malaysia for a bit in the middle to attend a wedding, but I'll leave that part in. It's lacking in detail, but it's all I've got. 

These were the days before the internet and smart phones, and photography was very expensive, So I don't have any pictures.

 

Please remember, I was young (ish) and naive. Enjoy...

 

JAN 4 1986
Depart Brisbane 11.20am Thai Airways flight TG988. Arrive Sydney 12.35pm. Depart Sydney 2pm. Movie “American Flyers”. Arrive Singapore 8pm local time. Arrive Bangkok 10pm local time. Airport Hotel 11.30pm. Picked up at airport in Mercedes by Judy (Vanunec Tungsatit) taken to Airport Hotel. Organized Temple Tour and City Tour. Bed 2.30 local time.

5
Up at 6.30am. Met Judy after breakfast. Aircon Merc from 9am to 10pm 350baht ($19.50). Check in at Krit Thai Mansion 380 baht, across the road from Siam Square. Went first to solid gold Buddha (5 tons), Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kapo, Wat Po, reclining Buddha, Marble Temple. Tea at Siam Center 20 baht. Picked up by Judy 5.30pm. Went to Floating Markets and fortune teller, red light district for 1 hour. Home 10pm. Hot.

6
Up at 7.30am. Had burger for breakfast at Siam Center, 72 baht for 2. Caught tuk-tuk 35 baht to TAT. Info on Chiang Mai, River Kwai. Eat at Chinese restaurant 210 baht for 2, excellent. Beer garden off Siam Center. Met 3 Aussies, (Terry, Stuart, Phil). Beer 90 baht for 2 large bottles (Kloster). Beef, vegetables, prawn, crab meat. (What did the queen buy 3 20cent balloons for...60c) Bed 12.45am.

7
Sick in head and guts. Roy gets <deleted>s and spews. Stay in hotel till 12pm. Waited for bus for 45 minutes. Walk and tuk-tuk to Southern Bus Station. Bus to rose gardens. Very touristy and expensive. 1 hour Thai show. Cock fighting, sword fighting, dancing, wrestling etc. Feeling sick from smog. Home 6.30pm. Tea at hotel. Bed 11pm.

8
Up at 8.20am. Bought sand shoes at Siam Center 169 baht. Packed for Chiang Mai. Put packs in security storage at Krit Thai Mansion. Walk to railway station past incense factory. Train depart for Chiang Mai 6.10pm. Tea rice on train. 2nd class lower sleeping compartment. Very comfortable. Bed 9pm. Throat cold.

9
Up early. Cold on train. Had breaky and just looked out train window. Arrived Chiang Mai 8am. Taken to Rama Guesthouse. Walked around Chiang Mai until 10am. Back to Rama Guest House 60 baht twin with hot shower. Very pleasant. Walked over to old part of town and to post office. Had bread and pineapple for lunch. Went to Lek Guesthouse for tea, buffalo steak & veges 55 baht. Booked 3 days 2 night trekking trip North of Chiang Mai 1300 baht. Bed 9pm. Cool. Bought throat pills, gargle and vitamins.

10
Up early to commence trekking. Guide Sam. Left passport in safe. Bus to Chiang Rai. Longboat to Karen via Buddha Cave up the Kok River. Went to Karen catholic missionary village. Took photos, played soccer with young kids on river bank while parents looked on. Great fun. Challenged to soccer match at school by older kids and got thrashed. Sam cooked tea in the bamboo hut. Egg, chips and soup, yum. Clear sky. Locals gathered around TV to watch videos. Freezing. Bed 10pm. Wayne and Barbara (Sydney) Paul (USA) Tracey and Dean (Wales). Stayed at Mr Do's house. Akhas only change clothes on new Year Day.

11
Up 7am to photo elephants crossing river. Egg on toast for breaky. Depart Karen 8.30am. Arr Yao village 11am. Waterfall 12pm. Lunch, go swimming, cold. Walk 1 ½ hours uphill to Akha village Ban Adu. Locals smoking dope and opium. Wild animals. I went through the floor of bamboo hut. Local women wearing costumes and crushing grain. Veges, rice and freshly killed chicken for tea. Sat around fire with Sam and talked. Bed 10.30pm. Children have short hair with one long part from crown to keep demons away. Town protected from spirits of dead by wooden man and woman <deleted> at town gates. Teeth red from berries. Sang and danced with kids. Massage 5 baht. Great time. Sam's offsider “Nid”. Stayed at Mr Adu's house. Cool.

12
Up 6am to photo village. 7.30am walked back to waterfall, to other village to see poppies and opium, walked back to waterfall. Waited for truck for 2 hours. Truck to Chiang Rai. Lunch. Truck to Chiang Sean and Golden triangle. Walked into Burma. Truck back to Chiang Mai. Froze. Hot shower. Bed 12am.

13
Bread, bananas and pineapple for breaky. Quiet day recovering from trek. Washed clothes in shower. Wrote letters. Stayed at Rama GH. Went to night bazaar. Tea at American cafe. Cold shifted from throat to chest.

14
Minibus to Doi Suttep. 1000Mtrs above Chiang Mai. Disappointing. Met Danny (Aust). Minibus back to CM. Looked at Wats and prison. Met a teacher and students at Wat Phra Singh. Had lunch under a house, spicy hot. Students took us to Wat Chedi Luang. Taken into excavation work under chedi by laborers. Chedi smashed by earthquake. Met monk and went to his room. Walked back to Rama Guest house. Steak, veges and donuts for tea. Bed.

15
Up early. Washing etc. Went 2 up with boss from Rama Guesthouse to silver factory, wood calving, umbrella factory, silk factory. Bought silk. 2 ply 4mtrs blue and 3mtrs pink @ 190baht/ mtr. Back to Rama. Tea at restaurant and went to night bazaar markets. Bed.

16
Quiet day. Sick. Night markets. <deleted>s.

17
3am up <deleted>ting. 7am breaky at Rama Guest house. Minibus to bus terminal. Left Chiang Mai 10.30am 1 ½ hours late. Coke supplied. Bus videos “The nude bomb” “Truck stop women”. Lunch supplied, chicken leg and bikkies. Arrive Bangkok North Bus station 7.30pm. Bus to city, got lost. 2 ladies helped us out. Caught correct bus to Krit Thai Mansion. Tea and bed 12am.

18
Hot shower. Went to Post office to send clothes home and pick up mail. Back to Krit Thai mansion. Fried rice and beef for lunch. Bus to PB Guesthouse Bangkok, 80 baht twin. Bus to railway station to book tickets, closed. Bus to park at National Gallery to relax and write letters. Kids flying kites near Grand Palace. Walked to PB Guesthouse. Caught head cold. Went to Sheraton Hotel (2000- 18000baht/ night) 26th floor to view Bangkok. Bed 11pm.

19
Up early. Bus to railway station to buy ticket to Ko Samui. Bus to Post office. Bus to PB Guesthouse, played with monkey. Breakfast and lunch nearby at “Hello restaurant” Bus to Bangkok Noi railway station. Met Shimo, he bought us drink and talked 1 hour. Train to Kanchanaburi. Train depart Bangkok 2pm, arrive Kanchanaburi 4.45pm. Met friendly Mr Porntip on train. Talked non-stop for 2 hours. Met at train station by rickshaw driver “Samson”. He and Roy got in back and I peddled to River Kwai Hotel. Full. Booked into Prasopsuk Hotel 90 baht. Tea at Isans restaurant 40 baht beef and veges in oyster sauce. Bed 9pm. Bad head cold. On pills. 

20
Up 3am with <deleted>s. Breaky at guest house 7am Walked to TAT for info about Nam Tok and Kancanaburi. Went to POW camp and war museum. Walk to Japanese grave yard, and Allies grave yard and memorial. Walked to Bridge on River Kwai (Kwai Yai River) and over bridge to Japanese memorial. Played kick-ball with 10 or 12 locals on the way back to guesthouse. Bad head cold. Tea across road from guesthouse. Bed 9.30pm. Pleasantly hot.

21
Up 6.30am. Samson took us by rickshaw to a bakery for breaky. Shouted him breaky 120baht for 3. Rickshaw to Chulkadon Pier (musical bells on rickshaw & wheelstands). Cross river on ferry. Hitchhiked by truck to Wat Tham Manghon Thong. No floating nun. Sugar cane truck back to weir. Walked along river. Lunch at floating restaurant. Ferry and 3up on motorbike to Allied war cemetery. Walked to Wat Than Khao Poon and Kaopoon caves. Joined up with young Thais & shown through caves by monk. Cake and water with Thais, very friendly. 2 girls wanted “vegemite sandwich (sex). Got a lift 18km back to Kanchanaburi with Surakit from Thai Electricity Authority in comby van. Back at hotel 4pm. Shower etc. Met Surakit at Sunjas restaurant for tea at 6pm. Went 2up on Suzuki 8occ for tour of Kanchaburi. Tea at Sunjas. Went by rickshaw to concert at school. Walk home. Head cold. Bed 11pm.

22
Up early. Head cold better. Breaky banana pancake at Sunjas. Lift to bus station. Caught bus 10am to Erawaw waterfalls. Very nice. Swam with locals. Walking. Bus back to Kanchanaburi. Walked to soccer field but no-one playing. Very worn down. Tea at Sunjas. Home 7pm. Shower, bed 10pm.

23
Breaky at Sunjas again. Walked to Kanchanaburi train station. Met up with Tony and Tracey from Sydney (met in Chiang Mai). Took train to Nam Tok. Depart Kanchanaburi 10.45am, arrive Nam Tok 1pm. Train to Nakon Pathom arrive 5pm. Booked into hotel near train station 120baht. Snacks in chedi grounds. Drinking sprite and talking till 11.15pm. Bed. Kept awake all night by trains.

24
Went to Nakon Pathom Chedi. Bought bananas and mandarins for breaky and lunch. Bus to Bangkok depart Nakon Pathom 1pm, arrive 2pm. Bus to Post office. Bus to Bangkok railway station 4.30pm. Train to Surat Thani 6.45pm. Excellent tea on train. 2nd class sleeper 369baht. 

25
Arrive 6.50am. Bus to port. Boat to Ko Samui depart 8am, arrive 10.45am. Taxi to Weekender Bungalows 50baht. Lunch, swimming. Met up with Jewish couple we met in Chiang Mai (Bob and Joyce).

26
Lazed around Ko Samui. Swam. Seafood for tea.

27
Started walking to Big Buddha. Picked up by water bottle truck & coconut truck. Walked to restaurant on Buddha Beach for lunch. Swimming. Taxi to town. Seafood tea at restaurant . Taxis finish at 6pm so walked to Ramoi beach. Picked up by Suzuki 80cc. Went to another seafood restaurant. Talked till 12. Bed 12.30am.

28
Read up on Malaysia. Swam. Walked to Grandma and Grandpa rock. Seafood. Full moon. Watched video “Police accademy2”. Bed.

29
Up at 5.45am. Caught taxi at 6.15am to Ko Samui port. Ferry 7.15am to Surat Thani. Bus depart Surat Thani 11.15am. Arrive Phuket 6.30am. Share taxi to Kata beach 25baht each for 4 people. Book into Kata Tropicana Bungalows 100baht/ night. Beef steak for tea.. Bus from Surat Thani to Phuket very pleasant, Lots of mountain and caves. Bed 10pm.

30
Swimming at Kuta beach. Caught and killed a cobra on the beach. Watched videos “Silkwood” & “Never say never again”. Talk to Tom from Sweden at Judies Pub at Kata Tropicana.

31
Up at 7.30am. Breaky at bungalows. Snorkeling with Roy and Tom at Karon and Kata beaches. Drink Mekong whiskey and watched videos “Romancing the stone” & “The gods must be crazy”

Feb 1
Up at sunrise. Breaky. Made 2 spear guns from bamboo and reinforcing steel rod from a construction site. In the water 9.30am. To late for crayfish. Lots of jelly fish. Out of water 10.45am. Lunch and a nap. Back in the water 4.30pm. Lots of crayfish but too small to catch. Excellent diving, no jellyfish. Good visibility. Out of water 6.14pm, cold. Had tea with Tom. Bed. Hot weather.

2
Up early to go to bus station by taxi. Depart Phuket 8.40am, arrive Haad Yai 4.30pm 90 baht. Booked into the Wang Hotel 90baht for 3. Checked bus and train tickets to Penang. No trains on a Monday. Bought share taxi for 200baht each. Fried rice for tea, few beers. Bed 12.30am.

3
Share taxi to Penang. Depart 8am, no border problems. In Malaysia 10.30am. Arrive Penang 3pm. Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch at Butterworth. Phoned Philips David. Bus to his parents place. Had beers and tea at philips place. Met his family. Charles; Simon and greek wife; Rubin and Trish; Rod and Leanne; Diane; Mum and Dad. Nice night. Bed at Eng Aun Hotel 11pm.Hot. (Swiss Hotel full)

4
Went to PO to post letters. Breaky at the Tye Ann hotel. Sight-seeing in Penang. Went to Tourist Office. Fried rice for lunch. Tea at Hong Kong Restaurant.

5
Banana porridge for breaky. Bus to Penang Botanical Gardens. Lots of monkeys. Looked around shopping complex. Quiet day. Went to Philips and to markets for tea. Excellent. Back to Philips home. Bed 11.30pm.

6
Bus to chinese temple Kek Lok Si. Bed 3am.

7
Philips wedding. Met Joe from SP, Abel from Ipoh. Excellent night. Went up Pearl Hill with Vincent and Joe. Drinks at pub with Diana, Rod & Louise, Charles, Rubin and Trish. Bed 2am.

8
Went up Penang Hill. Chinese New Year, went to esplanade for celebrations, disappointing. Tea at philips house with family. Bed 1am.

9
Bus to Sungei Petair. Picked up by Joe (Joe and Anginina from KL) and taken to his brothers place at Aloe Setar (Peter). Aloe Setar is Violets home town, 3 days of marriage celebrations. Bed 2am.Hot

10
Drive and boat with Dan, Joe & nephew,& Roy to Lankowie Island 36km North of Aloe Setar. 9 people drowned and 13 ok in boat sinking at island jetty.Out for tea with Dan. Bed 12am.

11
Left Aloe Setar by bus with Joe, Angelina and Roy. Joe and Angelina got off at Sungie Petani. Bus to Butterworth & onto Ipoh. Lift with cop to Topak. Taxi to Cameran Highlands. Tea. Booked into bungalows. Bed 12am. Cool.

12
Bus to Kampong Raja Village. Hitchiked to Blue Valley Tea Estate. Met Mr Krishnan & family. Very friendly. Looked around tea fields and factory. Played badminton and pool with factory staff. Tea and talk with Mr K. Bed 12am.

13
Up 6.30amLooked around tea fields and factory. Arung aboriginies hunting with poison darts. Games with staff. Cool.

14
Went to Buddhist temple with Mr Krishnan. Bus to Tapah. Express bus to Rawan. Local bus to Sringhai Chow Rubber Estate. Left Comeran Highlands 1pm. Arr SCRE 6.30pm. Badmitton. Few beers with Jody and family. Bed 1.30am.

15
Went to rubber plant with manager and assistant. Met Ganasin at Jody's for lunch. Ganasin took us around town to meet and chat with locals. Went to English class at school & played soccer. Watched soccer game KL vs Sringhai Chow. Badmitton. Beers with ganasin, Jody, Logga, Stanley and Vijay (brother in law). Good music on sterio. Raja wasn't home. Stayed at Rajas and Vijays house. Raja not home. Bed 2.30am.

16
Up 6am to go tapping rubber trees. Tour of palm oil trees. Indian for lunch at Anginina's. Slept from 3pm to 5pm. Tour rubber factory. Back to Jody's for tea. To Vijays and Ganasins for smoko and music. Bed 12am. Hot.

17
Stanley drove to estate. Drove to KL dep 11am. Went to AmX to buy $900US travellers cheques. Drove to Batu caves & onto Malaka. Looked for Stanleys uncle at army barracks but not allowed in. Stayed at Majestic Hotel $22 for 3. Went to Plaza Hotel at 11pm after driving around all night looking for a decent band. Band at Plaza called “Freedom”. Finished 1am. Very good heavy band. Spoke to singer and went to “downunder” disco. Left and bed 2am.

18
Explored Malaka, red square, chinese temples, christ church etc. Drove to KL and went to Red Rooster, closed. Then to the “captains table” for a drink and onto “rainbow”. “search” and “headwind” played till 3am. $25M entrance and $10/ beer. 2 of Malaysias best bands, excellent heavy metal. Bed 4am. Hot.

19
Up 9.15am. Went to top of skyscraper 33 floors with Roy and Stanley. Walked around KL. Indian for lunch. Back to Stanleys to collect bags. Bus back to rawan dep 3pm. Sprained ankle at KL bus station. Bus to Sungkai Choh Estate. Plaster cast from local Dr made from eggs etc. Drink beer with Raja, Jody and Roy. Bed 2am. Hot.

20
Bus from Rawal to KL. Express bus from KL to Kota Bahru. Taxi to Pahi. Met Raja and went to Change-Mans place for his daughters wedding reception. Went back to the palm oil staff club house for a few beers with Raja, Edward etc. Chinese with Mr Changmar. Bed 2am.

21
Slept in. Went to palm oil factory to weigh trucks. Chinese lunch at KK. Went to waterfalls for swim. To Krishnas for tea. Hot.

22
Factory in morning with Murphy & then to Kota Baru by bus to buy sorongs. Bought bus tickets. Social club with Edward for tea, bed 12am. Rain.

23
Bus from Kota Karai to Kota Baru to Penang. Hong Kong restaurant for tea. Booked into Yeng Keng Hotel $13M. 

24
Booked train ticket Penang to Bangkok. Bus to Mr and Mrs Davids. Left reat there. Went to town for haircut. Back to Davids. Talk etc. Bed 11pm.

25
Washing. Went to Penang airport to see Mr and Mrs david off. Shopping in town. Hot.

26
Train Penang to Bangkok. Depart 7.55am, arrive 7am. A few Mekong whiskeys.

27
Rest up from train trip. Went to post office. Early night. Full moon.

28
Rest. Write postcards. Get ready for flight to Nepal. Last day in Thailand.

[EchoPlus]

I was expecting pics...

[Golden Triangle]

You obviously didn't bother to read the intro then. Tsk tsk.

[sipi]

Back in the days of "Travelers Cheques".....

[bob smith]

anyone who reads all of that should be able to contact the consumer helpline for a refund to the tune of 2 hours of their life!!!

[sipi]

26 minutes ago, bob smith said:

anyone who reads all of that should be able to contact the consumer helpline for a refund to the tune of 2 hours of their life!!!

Scroll on....

[bob smith]

Just now, sipi said:

Scroll on....

I did!!

[sipi]

Just now, bob smith said:

I did!!

You're really hurting my feelings. When I posted this I was thinking "I'll do this just for Bob Smith". But then I remembered he can't read.

[John McLame]

Thanks for sharing

 

 

[Fat is a type of crazy]

 

Well done but it made me feel less unique and special. Beat you by a month. 

December 1985 Stayed at Narai Hotel in Bangkok with girlfriend

Overnight bus to Chiang Mai

Then to Chaing Rai and on a raft for 2 nights up to Burma border

Stay at hilltribe for a night. Strange sounds in the night. Heavy hill tribe lady massage.  Bit sick next day.

Fly Chiang Mai Bangkok to Surat Thani. Feeling sick on overnight boat to the island

Three days on Koh Samui. Had hash cookies and freaked me out a bit. Marijuana and me not a good combination. Ride around Koh Samui on motorbike. No insurance. The things we do. 

Bangkok

A week in Burma Rangoon Mandalay Pagan Met a guy in Mandalay who said we could stay in his brothers farm and go on to Pagan  ..so we did. 

Home in empty Qantas plane that arrived Christmas day. Gave us lots of drinks which was nice. 

 

[Furioso]

I stopped reading after "I..

[dddave]

1 hour ago, bob smith said:

anyone who reads all of that should be able to contact the consumer helpline for a refund to the tune of 2 hours of their life!!!

If reading it took you two hours, that explains a lot..

I personally find such casual slices of life from the past to be revealing and fun to read.

[Chetzee]

....... IN PASSING ,        I arrived in Khao San Rd in the early hours of the morning July 1982 , after an over nighter from Surat Thani , it was still dark , the PB guest house was locked and I was gagging for a <deleted> . I shuffled  up and down the street for a while before deciding the small gap between the PB and the Krung Thai bank would have to suffice for my ablution . I was sweating ,  the hairs on my arms were up and I could clench my twitching sphincter no longer  ... it was a shocker ! the relieve was instant !

At 6 am the front door was unlocked and I had my first taste of what was to become a home from home for a few years .... the sleazy snooker hall was empty , momenterily void of vice , the makers and takers , pushers and police  were all sleeping . In the guest house mr Lou welcomed me with  tea and  a Samit , a room in the dormitory and the prospect of something spicier for later in the day ...... I'd been there  ten minutes,   already I felt at home  ................ 

[OneMoreFarang]

If you like more of the same, enjoy this:

 

 

[sipi]

Is a threesome still called a "Vegemite sandwich"?

[sipi]

2 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

If you like more of the same, enjoy this:

 

 

The movie was much better. Except for the scenes of Dorothy buying her eels from the wet market. They should have used 50mm Kodak technicolour with studio back lighting.

[OneMoreFarang]

1 hour ago, sipi said:

The movie was much better. Except for the scenes of Dorothy buying her eels from the wet market. They should have used 50mm Kodak technicolour with studio back lighting.

The movie?

If there a movie based on that book?

[sipi]

5 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

The movie?

If there a movie based on that book?

Oops sorry OMF. I wasn't wearing my glasses and thought it was Dr Zheuss Green Eggs and Ham.

I'll have to look for it.

Edit. Found it for free on Google books. I'll start reading. Thanx

 

Not sure if the link will work...

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ArpUDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT120&lpg=PT120&dq=roger+Critchley+the+long+winding+road+to+nakhon+nowhere&source=bl&ots=5-lUyPRh23&sig=ACfU3U0XS7UfieNT_YI9EIuL2kGo1Hxrhg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjh-7q7ioiCAxWpZmwGHYXTDowQ6AF6BAgYEAI#v=onepage&q=roger Critchley the long winding road to nakhon nowhere&f=false

Edited October 21, 2023 by sipi

[OneMoreFarang]

6 minutes ago, sipi said:

Found it for free on Google books. I'll start reading. Thanx

Roger will be disappointed that you didn't buy the book.

But then, I also didn't buy it. He gave me a signed copy. 😉 

Edited October 21, 2023 by OneMoreFarang

[sipi]

Just now, OneMoreFarang said:

Roger will be disappointed that you didn't buy the book.

But then, I also didn't buy it. He gave me a signed copy. 😉 

I've ordered one just now. It's compelling reading, I can't put it down. Google books just gives you a taste. Thanx again.

[2baht]

And then what did you do???

[sipi]

3 hours ago, 2baht said:

And then what did you do???

March 1
Breaky at Metro Hotel. Taxi to Bangkok international airport. Depart Bangkok 10.45am Thai Airways TG311 to Kathmandu. Flew beside Himalayas. Landed Kathmandu 1pm local time, 3 hour flight. Booked into Kathmandu Guesthouse and talk to Encounter Overland (EO) reps. Went for a walk. Beef steak for lunch/ tea. Bed early 9pm.

2
Taxi to Ganesh Temple (monkey temple). Steak for tea. Bed early. Quiet day.

3
Breaky, lazed around. Pre-departure meeting 6pm.

4
Prepared for trekking. Gear hire and bought cold weather gear.

5
Trekking tour leader (Robin from Australia). Bus to Pokhara. Dep Kmandu 8am, 1 hour lunch, arrive 3.30pm. Cake and coffee at store. Tea at lakeside tourist camping grounds. Rum and cards. 3500' ASL. Cold. Sherpas and porters from Laura tribe. Bed 8.30pm.

6
Up 6am. Bus to Shining Hospital. Walk through Kali Gadahi Valley. Lunch in paddy fields at Suiket. Climb to Dhampus 6000'. On sinus pills. Bed 8pm.

7
Breaky 7am. Walk to 8000' along Annapurna range through birch, hemlock and pine. View Mardi Khola 4000 below. View og Machhapuchture (23490'). Bed 8pm.

8
Breaky 6am. Walk to Pun Hill for lunch and onto campsite 10000', snow at 9000'. Snow fifgt. Bed 8pm tired.

9
Up 7am. Attempted 15000' along Annapurna South. Snowed in at 12000', snow to chest.  Snowman and back to camp.

10
Walk down 7000' to 5000' through Siding. Arrive at camp beside Mardi Khola 3pm. Bath in river, built dam to catch fish. Water freezing. Bed 8.30pm.

11
Walk down Mardi Khola valley over suspension bridges to Mardi Pul.

12
Walk to school on the Seti Khola Valley. Camp back at Mardi Pul. Band-aids on every toe. Wedding band played at camp.

13
Up early to photograph mountains. Walk to Pokhara. (Total trek 130km). Hired bikes for 1 hour. Played volley ball with grade 9 school kids. Drinks. Hire rowing boat for 1 hour 24R.

14
Bus along Raj Pass to Kathmandu. Booked river rafting. Bistro for tea. Went to Marine Bar till 1am. Fosters beer, excellent music. Bed 4am

Trekking food. Breaky; Tea, porridge, muslie, honey, eggs, pancakes. Lunch; baked beans, chips, cheese sandwiches, fruit juice (hot), orange, tinned fruit, tea, biscuits, chicken, bread. Tea; tea, coffee, chocolate, rice, veges, chicken, fish, apple pie, cake, tinned fruit, soup, popcorn, bread

15
Breaky ay Bistro Vegemite. Hired bikes 1 day 10R. Went to Hindu temple to see bodies burnt and Buddhist temple. EO house for coffee. River rafting meeting.

16
Booked on Mt Everest flight but cancelled. Quiet day.

17
Commence white water rafting.

18
Re EO brochure..

19
Up Set rapids

20

21
White water rafting finished. Left raft trip at Mugling to meet EO Overland group at Chitwan National Park.

22
Up 6am for jungle walk. Washed clothes in river (Bufallo smell). Stick-dancing display. Meat out with EO.

23
Elephant ride from 7am to 8.30am. Left Chiywan park at 9.30am. Crossed Nepal/ India border at 3.30pm after 3 hours. Slept in school yard. Cool.

24
Drove to Veranasi via Pahrendra and Gorahphur 8 hours. Cathy birthday. Coloured dye for Lord Shivas birthday (Holi). Stayed in tourist camp. Bed 2am.

25
Up 5.30am. Boat trip along Ganges. Monkey Temple, Mother of India Temple etc. Cool.

26
Holi Festival. Drove towards Khajuraho. Camped 80 km short.

27
Towards Agra via exotic drawings at Khajuraho Temple. Dep 10.30am, arr Lauries Hotel Agra 9pm. Hotel room, bed 1.30am. Cool.

28
Up 5am for Taj Mahal at dawn. Haircut and massage at hotel. Go to Amber Fort 5-6pm and Taj Mahal 6.30pm. Free admission on Fridays. Full moon.

29
Up 6am for Jaipur via Fatehpur Sihkri 9am (deserted Mughal city). Hot.

30
Up 4am. <deleted> and spews. Sick all day.

31
Short drive to Amber Palace to Delhi. Arrive Delhi tourist camp 3pm. Tea at Nuruiles. Hot.

April 1
Went to Australian Embassy for “Letter of comfort”. Went to Iranian Embassy for visa, shut. Bought $1000 AM travellers cheques. Shower and bed 11.30pm.

2
Up 5.30am for 7am dep through Punjab to Kashmir. Bush camped just inside Kashmir. Lot of Sihk temples.

3
Up 5.30am. Drove to small town before Kashmir Valley. Beautiful scenery. Beers with Brian. Very cold. Bed 12am

4
Up 5.30am to cook breaky. Left for Shrinigar 8am. Beautiful drive through snow & mountains to Kashmir Valley. Arrive houseboat “Sunflower” for lunch. Went to Air India to book flight to Delhi. Chicken and rice for tea. Played cards and drank beer. Bed 10.30pm.

5
Guided tour of wood calving factory. Bought hand for 125R. Roy and I to Air India to conferm flight.Everyone sick in stomach.

6
Wash. Sunk canoe from houseboat. Went to wood calving factory in old part of Shrinigar.

7
Quiet day. Mohamids birthday fireworks. Cool.

8
Flew from Shrinigar to Delhi. Dep 3.15pm, arr 4.30pm. Bus to Connaugh Place and tuk-tuk to tourist camp. Tea and bed. Hot.

9
Apply for Iranian visa. Hot.

10
Washing.

11
Went to old delhi city with Roy. Delhi railway station. Steam trains.

12
Iranian embassy to pick up visa. No worries. Feeling sick. Hot.

13
Violently sick.

14
Up 5.30am. Tuk-tuk to Cornaugh Place at 11am. Taxi to International Airport. Had 2 heinican beers. Dep Delhi 4.40pm, arr Lahore Pakistan 17.45pm. Slept at International Hotel. Tea and bed.

15
Stayed at Hotel. Sick.

16
Drove from lahore to Ralphwindi and onto Islamabad. Camped just outside town. Anti-biotics.

17
Drove from Islamabad to Ralphawindi. Coffee shop 8am to 10am. Drove to Peshawah arr 2pm. Lunch. Tuk-tuk to old bazaar markets and back again. Stayed at Tourist Hotel.

18
Peshawah. Went to old markets. Meal out EO.

19
Dep Peshawah. Drove 4 days straight. Bush camping in the desert. Excellent scenery. Unusual shale folded/ fingerprint mountains.

20
Went to gun factory at Darra.

21.
Drove. Desert. Dusty and rough roads. Cold.

22
Drove from Lorelloi to Quetta.

23
Quetta. Stayed at Bloom Star Hotel. Prepare for Iran border crossing. Shirt dyed for free. Went 3up on Vespa (Brian, Khalid) to cinema projection box.

24
Drove from Quetta to desert camp.

25
Drove to 13km from Iran border. Desert camp.

26
Left camp 7am. Arrive Pakistan border 8am. Passed imigration 11.30am. Syayed in customs building. Full moon. Cold.

27
Dep custons compound 9.30am. Playing card confiscated. Drove all day through Zahaden to bush camp. Excellent roads. Right hand side.

28
Wake early. Drive all day. Cold.

29
Up 5am. Dep 6am for Persipolis via Shara. Arr 1pm and visit ruins. Dep 3.30pm. Arr bush camp 7pm.

30
Early start. Dep 6.30am 300km to Esphahan. Sick stomcah. Very cold, frost. Booked into esphahan Imai..

May 1
Jiardia. Went to Esphahan Square, mosque and bizzaar. Bought picnic rag for 3000 rials/ $5. Tea at Tourist Hotel, 4 courses 1000 each / 42.

2
Esphahan.

3
Left Esphahan for Turkish border. Taking lomitol.

4
Drive. Anti-biotics.

5
Drive to Iran/ Turkey border. Arr 3pm. Through border by 8pm. Camped at base of Mt Arrarat just below snow line. Drink Baileys and Drambui. Bed. 12.30am. Very cold.

6
Drove halfway to Gorimie. Camp beside creek just below snow line. Cold.

7
Drove to Goremai. Went to underground bar, drinking wine. Very good.

8
Goremai buildingd cut into rocks Church refuge and penis rocks. Underground bar for group meal. Rain and cold.

9
Drove Goremai to Siliphki beach. Snow in morning.

10
Washing. Tea at seaside restaurant, chicken kebabs. Warm and sunny.

11
Beach. Rain and cold. Start of Ramadam.

12
Drove to Syria border.

13
Drove to Damascus. Warm.

14
 Demascus. Explored old city, mosque, palace and bazaars with Brian and Cathy.

15
Dep Demascus for Jordan border. Arr 11am. Camped near Amman after jerash ruins. Hot springs. Cold in morning.

16
Drove to Dead Sea via Amman. $00mtrs below sea level. Swimming. Hot.

17
Drove to Amman. Apply for Egyptian visa $35. Drove towards Petra. Cold.

18
Petra. Warm. Drove to castle on top of hill. Explored secret tunnels. Slept in open air on roof, windy. Clea skies.

19
Drove to Aquaba. Beach.

20
Nice relaxing day at beach swimming. Warm.

21
Ditto.

22
Dep for cairo. Drove to Aquaba port. Customs etc. Boat left for Cairo at 5pm. First class lounge and tourist class cabins. Went to engine room. No alcohol allowed.

23
Visas captain on bridge. Arr Suez 10am. Customs and imm, change $150. Camped just inside Egypt.

24
Drove to Cairo. PO to collect mail.Stayed at Salone Campgrounds across road from sadats near Pyramids, Gaza area. Went to excellent light and sound show.

25
Truck to Memphis and sahara stepped pyramids and back to gaza pyramids. Climbed pyramid. Shopping at food markets. Drinking beer. Bed 2am.

26
Cairo. Full moon. Applied for new passport and letter of comfort for Sudan visa. Applied for Kenya visa but passport full. Group meal, drinking, playing games. Good night. Bed 2am.

27
Cairo. Breaky at Meridian Hotel. New passport, Sudan visa. Mosquitos.

28
Got kenya visa. Roy and I went back to pyramids to look inside and photo sphinx.

29
Camel ride pyramids with Roy, Sue and Mike. Great. Bus to Talaeha Square. Bought $1000 AmX. Cholera vacination at continental Hotel. PO, shopping.

30
Sheradin Hotel for breaky. Hot.

31
Dep Cairo for El Alimein. Went to War museum and cemetry. Camped beside the beach Nt coast of Egypt.

June 1
Left El Alimein for Alandria. Went to museum. Dep for Suez. Camped in school grounds.

2
Played soccer and frizbee in schoolyard with kids. Dep for Suez. Went through tunnel mid-afternoon. Camped in Sinai desert beside the beach. Windy, bonfire.

3
Dep for St Katherine Monistry arriving lunch time. Looked through monistory  and scull room. Had lunch and climbed Mt Sinai, 2 hours. Sunset and bed. Cold and windy. 8000ASL.

4
Woke up 2am. Up 4.30am to watch sunrise. Walk to truck, breaky. Left for Red Sea coast 8am. Lunch and shopping at El Tul. Drove towards Suez, camped at beach. Swimming.

5
Dep 1.30pm. Under Suez canal 4pm. Camped near mine field near Holghada.

6
St Pauls monastry for lunch. Camped beside beach on oil company land near Holghada. Oil rigs off shore.

7
Drove to Holghada. Colourful celebrations for last day of Ramadan. Stayed at Moon Valley tourist camp, swimming. Beer and wine.

8
Boat 2 hours out of Holghada Red Sea diving. Excellent vis and goos coral, fish. Beer. Windy and hot.

9
Went to Sheriden beach, swimming. Red Sea restaurant with group. Bed 12.30am.

10
Dep to Luxor. Stayed YMCA. Crowded and mosquitos. Hot.

11
Luxor. Karnak Temples. Booked shakara for Nile trip. Went to light and sound show.

12
Valley of the kings and queens. Luxor museum. Tout-anhk-amons tomb. Hot.

13
Drove to Isna. Felucca to Etfu. Camped beside the Nile. !8 Egyptian pounds each for 3 days.

14
Etfu temples. Felucca up the Nile, camped in the middle of the river. <deleted>s.

15
Felucca to Aswan. Taxi to campsite.

16
Hired felucca for 5 hours. Visit Elephant island, botanical garden, low dam. El Shati restaurant for lunch and tea.

17
dep for Abu Simble. Very hot. Dead camels.

18
Abu Simble to Aswan.

19
Washing etc. Very hot.

20
Aswan. Couldn't get tickets for ferry.

21
Aswan

22
Aswan. Got ferry tickets.

23
Customs at Aswan high dam. Ferry. 

24
Boat arrived Wadi Halfa Lombon 11am. Customs etc. Taxi truck to wadi Halfa. Booked into Nile Hotel. Slept outside, crowded. Drank chai and ate beans. Full moon. Hot.

25
Food markets. Got 3rd class train tickets. On train 11.30amDep 5pm. Dirty and dusty, 3 per seat.

26
Train. Stopped 3am for 2 hours for wash in Nile River. Carriages derailed. Stopped 2 hours, left them there. Engine died. Stop to wait for another. Very crowded, dusty. Horror. Lots to see along the Nile.

27
Arrive Khartoum 8.30am. Booked into Taka Hotel. Went to PO with Brian and Roy, closed. Rested. Shower. !st proper foor in 5 days. Air-con room. Motel caught fire 5am (junction box ground floor), evacuated.

28
Breaky at Taka House. PO. Rest up. <deleted>s.

29
Washing. Readied for tomorrows flight.

30
Up 3am. Taxi to airport for 6am flight. Dep Khartoum 8am. Arr Nairobi 12pm. To Safari park camp ground. Few beers.

July 1
Drove into Nairobi for others to apply for passports. Dep Nairobi 1pm Arr Tourist Lodge 4pm. Pleasant. Disco, rege music. Saw girraffes, deer, large birds.

2
Left at sunrise for Mambassa. Arr 1pm. Lunch. Parked outside Fort Jesus but too dear to go in. Went to bazaars. Drove to beach and camped at Twiga. Beers. Rain and wind. Saw girraffe and monkeys.

3
To Mombassa to change money, shop etc. Lazed around beach. Slight rain. Vool, muggy. Lots of monkeys.

4
Der early for malindi. Large detour through small villages. Interesting people. Arr malindi 4pm, swim in sea. Stayed Silversands camping ground.

5
Dep Malindi for savo national park. Bogged. Arr 4pm. Drove till 7.30pm. Saw lions, deer, lots of elephants. Camped. 

6
Dep National park for Nairobi.

7
Nairobi to get Letter of comfort for Zaire visa. Apply Rwanda visa. Shop at woolworths. Dinner; lots of meat, pork, beef, antelope.. Tops.

8
Shopping. Moved to Grosvenir Hotel. Whorehouse.

9
Washing etc. Buffalo Bills Bar, left 11.30am. Let in for half price at Star Light Night Club. Walked home 3am.

10
Dep Nairobi for Massai village.

11
Masai village, dancing. Lunch Lake Tahaha. To Lake Nahuru.

12
Lake Ahuru game reserve, national park. Giraffe, pink flamingos, monkeys, zebras, babboons, gazelles, wart-hogs, water buffalos. Heavy rain.

13
Dep Lake Nahuru for Nairobi. Lunch on mountain ranges. Buffallo Bills Bar till 11.30pm. Walked to Halocan Nite Club . Dep 4am, rege.

14
Nairobi, walked around. Dep 6pm. Drove till 1am, 60km from Ambuseili NP.

15
Arr ANPearly. To Lake Ambuseili (dry). Saw Zebra, waterbuck, gazelle, elephants, rhino, monkeys, ostriches, giraffs. Drove ahter lunch till dark to bottom of Mt Killimonjaro. Perfect view.

16
Deo Ambuseli 6am for Tanzania border. Arr 12pm, though 2pm. Namanga, border town. Lunch and drove Hotel Tanzmite camping ground, Arusha. Cold.

17
Arusha souvinees shopping. Zoo.

18
Dep Tanzanite for Kibo Hut, via shopping in Moshi. Wash clothes, prepare for climb.

19
registered at Kilimonjaro NP Marango Gate by 12pm (1860 mtrs). Porters, guides dep 12pm. Arr Mandora Hut 4pm, 2690 mtrs, 8 ½ km walk. Tea and bed. Tree line 11000 ft.

20
Dep for Horombo Hut 12 kms, 3750mtrs.

21
Dep for Kibo Hut 4740 mtrs, 5 hours. Soup and porrige for tea. Bed 5pm.

22
Up 12am. Cup of tea and bikkies. Dep for Gillmans (5700mtrs)1am. Slowly, resting. Arr 5.30am, -15C. Sunrise. Dep 8am for Horombo. Tea and bed 6.30pm.

23
Up 5.30am. Breaky. Dep for Marango Gate 6.30am. Arr 11.30am. To Kibo Hotel, wash clothes. Beers with porters. 4 course group meal. Cards and wine with Roy bed 11.30pm, tired. Full moon.

24
Dep for Moshi and Arusha. Shopping at Arusha. Camp in schoolgrounds.

25
Dep Arusha after market shopping towards Ngorongoro Crater, camp in quarry. Jardia, anti-biotics.

26
Sick all night and morning. Playing with kids in quarry. Dep for crater, dep into base to campsite. Guide talk about animals.

27
Up at dark to crater lake. Lion, jackal, hyena, hippo, rhino, elephant. Lunch 2pm and out again. Very cold.

28
Dep for olduvan Gorge excavations. Went to museum then onto Serengeti Game park. Animals. Light rain. Camped at campsite near lions.

29
Serengeti NP game viewing. Wilderbeast migration. Museum. Silver servive group meal. Roast wilderbeast. Bonfire, drinking red wine, konjaki beer. Bed 2am.

30
Dep for Mwanzai, bush camped.

31
Drove to Mwanza. Market food shopping. Camp show-grounds.

Aug1
Mwanza, washing, haircut etc. Bed 1am.

2
Dep for Rwanda border. Quarry camp. Solid <deleted>.

3
drove 12 hours to another quarry close to Rwanda border.

4
Rwanda border early, no problems. Kigali, shopping. Camp at drop-zone.

5
Dep for Kasine. Slept in hall.

6
Swim Lake Kivu. Through Zaire border ok. Onto Gomo camp grounds.

7
Dep for gorillas at Bahari. Nice scenery along lake Kivu. Camp beside lake. <deleted>s.

8
Gorillas (bahair) excellent. Quarry camped.

9
Dep for Gomo. Camped Lake Kivo.

10
Late start. Wash clother and bath in Lake Kivo. To Goma and onto Virangin NP to prepare for volcano climb.

11
climbed Mt Nyiragonga in Virangu NP.

12
Up 5.30am. Drove towards equator. Lots of hippos.

13
Crossed equator near Lubero and drove towards Beni.

14
Through Beni towards Mambasa.

15
Through Mambasa.

16.    Pygmies. <deleted>s again.
17
Pygmies. Saw okapi animal.

18
Drove, quarry camp. Taking lomitol medication.

19 
Towards Kisingali.

20
Arr Kisangani. Changed money. Played with monkeys. Tried to arrange barge trip but decided against it. Olympic Hotel camp area. Bop City disco. Bed 2.30am.

21
Up early. Towards kasala.

22
Towards kasala. Quarry camp.

23
Towards Lisala through Buna. Camp in abandoned cotton gynery.

24
Towards Boomba. Ferry crossing over Congo. Rain.

25
To Boomba, markets. Towards Lisala. Village camp 6km from Lisala. Hot. Mosquitos.

26
Lisala, towards Geroma.

27
Towards Geroma.

28
Through Geroma towards Banghi. Ferry crossing.

29
Prepare for Central African Republic border. Truck robbed 1am. Drove to Zongo (CAR border). Through customs, couldn't find ferry captain to cross river. Camped outside Zongo police station.

30
Ferry crossing to Bangi. CAR immigration. Post office, markets, onto Tourisr Welcome centre campground. Shower.

31
Catching up washing etc. rain.

Sept1
Public holiday Bangi. Resting.

2
Bangui to apply for Nigerian visa and shopping. Red wine at pub. Bed without tea.

3
Bangui.

4
Up 3am <deleted>s and spews. Into town to get Cameroun visa and post letters. Jardia spewing. Taking flagyl  tablets. Couldn't get Nigerian visa. 

5
Dep through Bossembele towards Younde. Bad storms all night.

6
Early drive towards Younde through Boula.

7
CAR/ Cameroun border crossing at Beloko, towards Younde.

8
Towards Yaounde.

9
Ditto, camped just short of Yaounde.

10
Arr Yaounde. Apply Nigerian visa. Explore town. Coffee and pasteries.Presperterian campsite. Headlice. <deleted> solid.

11
Pick up Nigerian visa and shopping. Towards Dualla. Quarry camp. Heavy rain.

12
Camped Victoria beach past Dualla. Black sand. Lovely weather. Post office.

13
Swimming. Made pizzas. Heavy rain.

14
Through Yaunde, camped school gorunds. Mud-matting.

15
ditto

16
Cameroun/ Nigerian border

17
Towards Kano. Quarry camp. Rain.

18
Up 4.30am. Drove 600km. Arr Kano 10pm. Central Hotel camp ground.

19
Washing. Chinese for tea. Bed 2am.

20
Kano. Markets, dye pits, camel market, palace, mosque and museum. Went to flying club. !am curfiew (crime).

21
Kano. Heavy rain. Pick up Niger visa 5pm.

22
Nigeria/ Niger border 5pm. Camp at police station.

23
Late dep towards Agadez. Bush camp at Maradi.

24
Agadez Tourist camp. Desert. Hot and dry.

25
Agadez markets. Bought Agadez cross necklace. Few beers. Apply for Algerian visa. Very hot. Passport stamped at police station.

26
markets. Pick up Algerian visa and dep Agadez through Aibit to camp on runway at uranium mine. Nose bleeds and head cold.

27
Dep Niger, through Niger border towards Algerian border. Pills for cold. Got lost between border posts in desert. Sand-matting. Dehydrated, <deleted>s.

28
Algerian side of border at Assamaha. No problems. Towards Tammanrasset.

29
Drove all day. Arrive Tammanrasset late pm. Too late to change $. Booked into Dassine campsite.

30
Tammanrasset. Change $150US compulsory. PO.

Oct 1
Write letters, wash etc. Hired 4wd to go to Hogah Mountains. Dep 1.30pm arrive Assahren (Horar Mountains) 5.30pm. Walked up mountain for sunset. 2780Mtrs. Bed. <deleted>s still.

2
Up 5.30am. Up mountain for sunrise. Back for breaky. Dep and arrive dassini Camp Tammanrasset 12pm. Post card writing.

3
Walk to town, eat ice-cream.

4
Ditto. Taking Bagram for <deleted>s and cold.

5
PO and markets. Went to Hotel Tahaitare for chai. Went to see Ciel et Ciel at cinema. Walk home. Bed 11pm.

6
Market 9am. Dep 12pm. Drove till 12am.

7
Through In Salah towards El Golea until 1am. Sandblasted..

8
Through Timinoun towards Beni Abbes until 12am. Wind and rain.

9
To Beni Abbes. Sand-dunes.

10
To Bechar. Windy.

11
Algeria/ Morroco border. Ok Algeria side but held on Morocco side (insurance)

12
Day at border post. Walked to fiqui to get passport stamped. Talk to border guards. 

13
Dep border post past Fiqui towards Marakech.

14
ditto

15 Marakesh square to see dancing etc. Coffee.

16
Marakesh square markets. Photo women etc.

17
To Fez.

18
Fez tour Emperial palace, burber station, medina, carpet factories.

19
Walk 6km to town, bus to medina. Explored. Turkish bath (not good). Restaurant Nfassal in old Medina. Excellent food/ show. Acrobats, belly dancing, Very good. Roy broke tamberine.

20
Dep for Tatoun.

21
Tatoun. Apply for Spanish visa. Dep for border crossing at Centa. Ferry to Gibraltar 1 ½ hours. Late arrival. Cold. Drinks and bed.

22
Through Gribralta to Granada. Went to Moorish castle for 2 ½ hours. Camped in forest near lake. Very cold.

23
Madrid. Alpine campsite 5pm. Tea and bed.

24
Madrid, apply for French visa. Beers. Pick up visa 4pm. Left for San Sebastian.

25
Spanish/ French border. Arrive Sas Sebastian 4pm. Through Bordeux towards paris. Wet, rain, cold. Bamped Sth of Bungos.

26
catholic Cathedral of St maria at Bungos. Onto Tours. Head and chest cold.

27
Shamps Cathedral in Tours. Bush camp.

27
Calais

28
Ferry crossing to Dover. Bus to London. Hunters House Earls Court 6pounds/ night. Bed 1am.

29
London

Nov 8
Up 5.30am. Tube to Heathrow. Dep for Athens 1 hour late Pan Am 9.30am. Arrive Frankfurt 12pm. Missed connection. Put up at Ramada Hotel. Went into town, not much fun. Bed 12.30am.

9
Breaky, dep Hotel 8am. Dep Luthansa flight to Athens. Dep 9.20am. Arr 12.30pm. Bus to Syntagma Square. Walk to Georges Guest House. Into square for beer and to Plaka. Bed 12am

10
Move to Hotel Tenbi 550Dr for 1 night. Went to apply for new passport at Tourist office, but shut. Accropolis for sunset. Jardia. Anti-biotic. Went to English pub till 3am.

11
 Australian embassy for passport. Confirmed island flights and England flights. Ploughman pub.

12
Hilltop restaurant for tea.

13
Aust Embassy. Reservations for Hotels. Got 25000Dr on MC $300A

14
Ploughmans pub and William of Orange Pubs

15
Walk to Amonica and Stanlet Hotel, train station. Bed early

16
Washing...

17
ditto

18
ditto

19
Look around Plaka. Ditto

20 
Ditto.

21
Move to Hotel Hempies.

22
Changed $100us

23
Bus to terminal. Dep Athens Olympic Airways 8am to Crete. Arr 8.50am. Hotel Petra. 2500Dr. Palace of Maria at Knossis. Tea at open air markets. Rain. Cool.

24
Dep for Rhodes (Lindos) 7.30pm, Arr 10.10pm. Hotel Spartalis 3883Dr. Bus to Agios Nikolaos. Open air markets. 

25
Rhodes

26
Dep 7.10am, Arr Athens 8.25am. Buss to Aust Embassy for passport extension. Ok. Dep Athens 1.40pm, Arr Mikinos 2.30pm. Hotel Leto.

27
Dep Mykonos 5.20pm. Arr Athens 6.10pm. Taxi to Kalifate. Cold, windy.

28
Japan Visa Application. 

29
GoTour Corinth, Epeolivas, Naples.

30
Plaka, Temple of Posidon.

Dec1
delphi. Held up in potatoe farmer blockade.

2
Athens. 

3
Brit-rail pass, got Jap Visa. Hotel Aphrodite 2000Dr

4
Dep 8.15am for London arr 12pm. Stopover Frankfurt 2 hours.

5
Breaky Earls Court. Hired car. Dep London 12pm. Drove to Bourenmouth arr mid-pm. Went to Westbourne to nice pub for tea. Cold and wet.

6
dep for Exeter. Look at Anglican abbey. Warm, sunny. Drove Sth to Torquay along coast. B7B, tea at cafe.

7
Torquay/ Exeter inland route to Caerphilly castle. Onto Brecan Crossed 3 mile bridge into wales. Nice, green and brookes.

8
North to devils Bridge, to Aberystyth and through lakes district to Dolgellan.

9
Towards Carnarfor through Llanfachreth and Barmouth over Mawddach River. Onto betres-y-coed and Caenaffor to Prince of wales palace for 2 hours. B&B, bed. 
 

[2baht]

Followed by...........................................?

[sipi]

Just now, 2baht said:

Followed by...........................................?

That's on another hard drive.

Hang on.......

[brianthainess]

16 hours ago, dddave said:

I personally find such casual slices of life from the past to be revealing and fun to read.

That is a whole loaf.

[sipi]

It's literally a month at 5 words a day.

The average reader can read 240 words per minute.

You can do the math, I can't be bothered.

[sipi]

4 hours ago, 2baht said:

Followed by...........................................?

WITH a thankful sigh Philippa sank back on her heels, surveying the stacked boxes and paper sacks, quickly stifling an unanticipated stab of pain as she looked at what was after all the accumulation of sixty odd years of living. How little she had really known about her aunt, and all that was left of her now was the faded photograph album Philippa had decided to keep. She hadn’t wanted to come back to Garston, but she had been Jane Cromwell’s only living relative.

Getting to her feet and dusting down her jeans she bent to pick up one of Simon’s motorbike magazines. Her ten-year-old son was motorbike mad at the moment. Even from being quite small he had shown a decidedly mechanical turn of mind. At the moment it was fixed with equal concentration on motorbikes and computers.

Thinking of Simon made her glance at her watch and frown. It was gone five and she had told him to be back at four. She planned for them to have an early meal and then leave to go back to London. Where on earth was he? They had only been in Garston for a week but it was long enough for Simon, with his outgoing extrovert nature, to make friends. Several of them had called for him this morning. Unlike herself Simon made friends easily. There must still be people living in the village who remembered her, but apart from the vicar no one had come to call.

Of course her aunt had always kept herself very much to herself. Living as she did in what was virtually a ‘grace and favour’ house on the Garston estate, her isolation from the rest of the village had tended to set her apart from the villagers, just as it had set Philippa apart during those years when she lived with her aunt. It couldn’t have been easy for her, Philippa now recognised, to accept the responsibility of a fourteen-year-old girl, still shocked by the sudden death of her parents, and inclined to be rebellious and withdrawn because of it. Her father, Jane Cromwell’s cousin, had been a diplomat, and he and her mother had been killed during a terrorist raid whilst Philippa was at school in England.

Their death had brought many changes to Philippa’s life, not the least of which was the discovery that there was no longer enough money for her to continue at the exclusive girls’ school her parents had sent her to. Her father’s salary had been generous but it had died with him, leaving only the proceeds of two small insurance policies. Her aunt had been a teacher and during the last ten years of her career had had only one pupil—Edward Garston, because of which she had been gifted a lifetime’s occupation of the small cottage which became home to Philippa, and which stood just within the boundary of the Garston family’s estate. Once they had owned vast acres of Yorkshire, including the village named after the family, but gradually over the years their land had been eroded away with their wealth until all that was left was the house itself, the parkland it stood in and the home farm. And then further tragedy had struck. Edward Garston had been killed in a car accident and his inheritance passed to a cousin, Scott.

Philippa could remember the day Scott and his mother arrived at Garston quite vividly. Scott’s father had been the second son, the black sheep of the family and there was gossip in the village that his grandfather had sworn he would rather see the house and the estate pass to a stranger than go to his son’s child. Scott had been twenty to her fourteen when he first came to live at Garston. Away at Oxford most of the time, Philippa could remember catching brief glimpses of him during the holidays, when invariably he arrived riding a large and noisy motorbike, his arrival always increasing his grandfather’s already irrascible temper. Jeffrey Garston was a proud, and Philippa had sometimes thought, very lonely old man, very bitter in his resentment of Edward’s death at eighteen and of the cousin who had taken his place. Edward had been reputed to be brilliant and it was no secret in the area that Jeffrey Gaston had looked to his grandson to somehow recoup the family losses and restore Garston Hall to what it had once been. The Garston family fortune had been founded on coal and railways during the Victorian era, but now they were reduced to living on a rapidly dwindling income.

After what she had heard about the family Philippa had been rather surprised that Jeffrey Garston allowed his daughter-in-law and grandson to come and live with him, but he had done so and moreover seemed to be training Scott to take over what was left of the estate, because Philippa often saw him in the holidays working at the farm, or supervising the shoots which still took place in the autumn, when large parties of businessmen would descend on the Hall, and the narrow road that led past the cottage to it would be busy with large, expensive cars.

Where was Scott now? Philippa had only had one letter from her aunt after she left and that had simply told her that Jeffrey Garston had died and that Scott had shut up the house and left the area. That alone had surprised her. Scott had been almost obsessed by his plans to make the estate a viable commercial enterprise once more, and to restore his home to what it had once been. She had replied to her aunt’s letter, telling her about Simon’s birth, but there had been no further correspondence between them. A niece who bore an illegitimate child had been so far outside Jane Cromwell’s own rigid moral code that there was no question that there would ever be forgiveness or acceptance, and certainly never a welcome in her home for either Philippa or Simon. How dramatic and terrifying it had all seemed eleven years ago!

Philippa suppressed a faint sigh. Who would have dreamed then that now women would choose to bear their children alone without the support of the child’s father? Simon’s lack of a father didn’t even cause so much as a faintly raised eyebrow these days. Her own single-parent status was so commonplace that more than half of Simon’s friends at his London school also lived with only one of their parents. Eleven years ago when she discovered she was pregnant she had been terror-struck.

She grimaced as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging on the wall. How very young and naive she had been. Seventeen and as green as grass. Well, she had learned, and now at twenty-eight, she knew without false modesty that she was an intelligent and even shrewd woman, who had learned about life the hard way.

What she failed to recognise in her own reflection was the vulnerability of her softly curved mouth; the shadows that darkened her grey eyes, the hint of pain that still lingered beneath the cool outer shell of reserve in which she cloaked her true feelings.

Her hair had been short when she left Garston. Her aunt had insisted that it was tidier that way. Now she wore it up in a nest chignon in keeping with her image as the efficient secretary to Sir Nigel Barnes, the Chairman of Merrit Plastics, but once released from its imprisonment it curled halfway down her back in honey-gold waves, si

lky soft and so directly in contrast to Simon’s straight coal-black hair that people often did a double take when they were introduced as mother and son. Like his hair, Simon had inherited his height and breadth of shoulder from his father. At ten he looked closer to thirteen and was maturing quickly, too quickly, Philippa acknowledged, subduing the faint feeling of dismay she always felt when she contrasted Simon’s upbringing with her own. Children were not allowed to remain naive for very long at the large London school Simon attended; sometimes she felt he was growing up too fast.

‘Mm,’ Lara, her flatmate, agreed, sipping the coffee Maggie had made them both. ‘But girls of that age are prone to exaggeration, you know. Are you sure the situation’s as dire as she says? What does she say, exactly?’ she added curiously.

‘Read it for yourself.’ Maggie got up, and Lara watched thoughtfully as her flatmate walked over to the small table. Maggie never ceased to fascinate her, even now, after the length of time they had known one another. There was something very compelling about Maggie: a power she herself wasn’t aware she possessed, a warmth that drew people to her. That she was beautiful as well seemed to be another unfair advantage fate had handed her. When they first met almost ten years ago, Lara had felt envious of the tall, slender redhead with her creamy skin and mysterious dark green eyes. Her envy had not lasted long. Although they were roughly the same age, Maggie had had a maturity about her, a sadness which Lara felt instinctively but had never been allowed to penetrate, Maggie being a very private person. She still possessed that slightly melancholy-tinged mystery, that aura of having withdrawn slightly from the rest of the world to a secret and inviolate place.

Maggie picked up the letter and handed it to her. Lara read it out loud, dark eyebrows lifted in faint amusement. ‘“Come home quickly. Something terrible has happened and we need you.” Oh, come on, Maggie,’ she exclaimed wryly. ‘You surely aren’t taking this seriously? If there was really something wrong, someone would have been in touch with you…a telephone call…’

‘No,’ Maggie told her fiercely, her expression changing from its normal one of sweetness to an unfamiliar hardness that made Lara’s eyes widen slightly. She and Maggie had known one another ever since Maggie had first arrived in London and, despite her red hair, Maggie was one of the most placid and gentle people she had ever known. Which was perhaps why she had opted out of the aggressive and demanding world of art and instead used her talents to provide herself with an excellent living illustrating books.

‘But surely someone would have got in touch with you,’ Lara protested. ‘Some older, more responsible member of your family.’ She groped in her memory for more concise details of Maggie’s family and couldn’t find any. In fact, until the letters in that round, schoolgirlish hand had started arriving eight months ago, Maggie hadn’t had any contact with her family at all.

She never talked about them other than to say that her parents were dead and that until their death she had lived with them in the Scottish borders where her father taught at a small private school. After their death she had gone to live with her grandfather, and Lara had rather gathered from her silence on the subject that the relationship had not been a happy one and that that was why, when she had come to London, Maggie had cut herself free of all her family ties.

And yet, from the time of the receipt of that first letter, forwarded to her by the publishers, and the others which had come after it, Maggie had changed. Not discernibly perhaps to those who didn’t really know her, but the difference in her was obvious to Lara and she was intrigued by it.

What was it that lay in her friend’s past that caused that unmistakable aura of restless tension to possess her when the letters arrived? What was it that made the swift hunger fly to her face when she opened the letters, only to be quickly controlled, as though she was desperately afraid of it being observed?

Since the arrival of the letters, Lara had realised what it was about Maggie that set her so unmistakably apart from others. It was the protective cloak of withdrawal she wore at all times to distance herself from others; she was a part of their lives at the same time as she was refusing to allow them to enter anything more than the periphery of hers. Almost as though she was afraid of allowing anyone to get too close to her.

A result of her parents’ death, perhaps, which must have come as a traumatic shock for a sensitive child in her early teens. But Lara suspected there was more to it than that, although she was puzzled to know exactly what.

In another woman she might have ascribed the withdrawal to an unhappy love affair, but Maggie had been seventeen when she’d arrived in London, and since then the men-friends she’d had all been kept strictly at arm’s length.

‘I’ll have to go up there,’ Maggie told her, ignoring her question, her forehead pleating into a frown of concentration. ‘I don’t know how long I’m likely to be gone, Lara. I’ll make arrangements about paying my share of the mortgage etc. while I’m gone. I’ll have to get in touch with my agent…’

As she listened to her, it came to Lara that something deeply buried inside her friend was almost glad of the excuse to go home. While she talked, underneath the anxiety there was a light in her eyes that Lara had never seen before, and with startled perception she realised that she had never really seen Maggie herself before. It was as though the real Maggie had suddenly stepped out from behind the shadow-figure she had used as concealment.

‘You know…you look like someone who’s just been told they’re no longer an outcast from paradise,’ she told her softly.

Instantly Maggie’s expression changed. Wariness crept into her face, her body tensing, as though she was waiting for a blow to fall, Lara recognised. Panic flared in her eyes, obliterating the wariness, and she said edgily, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Am I being?’ Lara asked her quietly. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Maggie, but I think I can number on the fingers of one hand the times you’ve mentioned your home and family, and yet when you do…I wonder what you’re doing living here in London when you would so obviously rather be with them.’

She saw Maggie go pale as though she was going to be sick, her eyes betraying her shock, but, rather to Lara’s surprise, she made no protectively defensive rebuttal of her comment, saying only in a huskily tense voice, ‘I have to go back, Lara. Susie wouldn’t have written like that if they didn’t need me.’

Much as she longed to ask who ‘they’ were, Lara held her tongue. She could see that Maggie was perilously close to the edge of her self-control—another rather odd circumstance in a woman whose smilingly calm manner was normally such a feature of her personality.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll know how long you’ll be gone?’

‘No,’ Maggie agreed shortly, impatiently pushing her hair off her face with one of the narrow, elegant hands that Lara, with her more stocky frame, had once envied so desperately.

‘You’ll have to let Gerald know you’re going,’ Lara reminded her.

Gerald Menzies was the latest in a long line of men who had dated Maggie. Ten years older than her, he was urbane and sophisticated—divorced, with two sons at public school and an ex-wife who was determined that, divorce or not, she was still going to live in the manner to which Gerald’s wealth had accustomed her. He owned a small but extremely fashionable gallery, which was where Maggie had met him. Lara had introduced them, following an approach from Gerald to show some of her work.

Their affair, if indeed their relationship could be described as that, which Lara privately doubted, had endured for nearly ten months. They dated once or twice a week, but as far as Lara could tell Maggie felt no more for Gerald than she had done for any of the other men she had dated over the years.

No, Maggie had never been short of men willing to admire her, but as far as Lara knew she had never been deeply emotionally involved with any of them.

Indeed, at twenty-seven, they were probably the only two of their year at art school who were still not involved in a partnership of one sort or another. For Lara it was because she had ambitions that she knew were going to be hard enough to fulfil, without the added burden of a husband and potentially a family.

But for Maggie it was different. Maggie didn’t share her ambitions. Maggie was made for love, for giving and sharing, but Maggie held everyone who might want to share her life at bay. Carefully, gently, almost without them being aware of it—but keep them at bay she did.

‘I’ll telephone him once I’m there,’ she responded rather vaguely to Lara’s comment.

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Lara told her firmly. ‘Why don’t you telephone home and find out exactly what the problem is before you go haring up there?’

She could see that her suggestion didn’t find favour with her friend, and for a moment she almost disliked herself for making it. She could see that Maggie was struggling to find an acceptable explanation for her refusal, and, since there was something about Maggie that made you want to be kind to her, she found herself offering, ‘Or perhaps they aren’t on the phone?’

‘Yes…yes. They are, but…’ Maggie had her back to her, but now she turned round. ‘Yes, you’re right. I ought to ring.’

The telephone was on a small table beside the settee. She snatched up the receiver almost as though it was hot to the touch, Lara thought, watching her punch in the numbers with shaking fingers. Numbers which she had quite obviously had no trouble at all in remembering, Lara recognised on a wave of compassion.

She touched her arm, not really surprised to discover the tension of the muscles beneath the fine skin.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she whispered, but Maggie shook her head and grabbed hold of her, her colour suddenly very hectic and hot.

‘No…please stay.’

And, because Maggie was holding her so tightly, she was standing right beside the receiver when the ringing stopped and a harsh male voice said, ‘Deveril House?’ with a brusque impatience which, although rather off-putting, was surely no reason for Maggie to start shaking violently. The blood drained from her face and she slammed the receiver back down, holding it there while she shivered and trembled and the delicate bones of her small face stood out in proud relief.

Despite all the questions clamouring in her brain, Lara managed to restrain herself from saying anything other than a dry, ‘A rather formidable gentleman.’

‘My stepcousin,’ Maggie told her shakily. ‘Marcus Landersby.’

And then she dropped down on to the settee with her head in her hands, her body racked by such deep shudders that Lara was genuinely frightened for her. Whatever else Maggie was, she was most definitely not emotionally unstable, rather the opposite, and yet here she was virtually falling to pieces in front of Lara’s eyes. And the explanation for this so out-of-character behaviour lay, Lara was quite sure, with the owner of that enigmatic and grim voice.

Her heart had plummeted immediately Katie had finished speaking, and, although she had successfully managed to hide it from her daughter, she had been overwhelmed by a sharp sense of fear.

And yet Katie had had boyfriends before, of course; several of them in fact; gangly, sometimes spotty young men, who blushed and stammered, or adopted an unwittingly touching and amusing male machismo which sat very uncomfortably on their as yet still boyish shoulders. But this time it was different. This time… This time she felt all the apprehension and alarm of a mother who felt that her child was threatened in some way.

She had sensed just from the way Katie spoke his name that this Silas was important to her. Too important… She gave a tiny shiver, frowning unseeingly around her small sitting-room.

She could never really understand those women who claimed that their teenage daughters were their best friends. She felt far too great a sense of responsibility and awareness of life’s cruelties and un-kindnesses ever to relax her maternal vigilance enough to make that claim.

She hoped she wasn’t a possessive mother. All through Katie’s growing years she had worked hard at making sure that Katie never became distanced from her peers or from other adults, or suffered the kind of aloneness and isolation which she had suffered as a child.

The trouble was that Katie had been so vague about this Silas Jardine, and she had not liked to question her too deeply. All she knew about him was that Katie had met him at the university and that she was sure that he and her mother were going to get on like a house on fire. It sounded very ominous to Hazel. She had been all too maternally aware that, behind her insouciance and bright chatter, Katie was hiding something.

Biting her bottom lip, Hazel checked round the sitting-room again.

A warm fire burned in the grate, and logs were heaped up in the basket beside the fire, logs which had been supplied by Tom Rawlins from the farm, about whom Katie was always teasing her by describing him as her adoring swain.

It was true that she and Tom occasionally went out for a meal or to see a show. He was a widower with two grown-up children; she was… Well, she was the mother of an almost grown-up daughter and it was only natural that they should have things in common. But that was as far as any relationship between them went.

Fortunately Tom was far too gentlemanly to make the kind of sexual demands she so dreaded and detested receiving.

It had shocked her three years ago, when Katie had coolly announced that it was high time that her mother stopped behaving as though she ought to be punished and despised simply because she had given birth to an illegitimate child, and started feeling proud of herself instead for all that she had done for that child.

‘Ma, every time a man looks at you, you shrink visibly. You’re a very attractive woman. Everyone says so, and I for one certainly wouldn’t object if you decided to provide me with a stepfather, providing of course that I liked him.’

‘Well, for your information, I have no intentions of doing any such thing,’ Hazel had retaliated sharply.

‘Why not? You should think about it,’ Katie had told her smartly, adding critically, ‘Just look at you. As long as I can remember it’s just been you, and me, and of course Gramps. I know it must have been awful for you, losing Dad like that in such an awful accident and then finding out about me. But I don’t see why just because of that you’ve got to spend the rest of your life hiding away from men. You can’t get pregnant just by smiling at them, you know,’ she had added with typical teenage scorn. ‘You can’t want to spend the rest of your life alone. With Gramps gone…’

‘It’s all right,’ Hazel had told her shakily but drily. ‘If you’re worried about having a geriatric parent on your hands cramping your style, I assure you that you need not be.’

That had made Katie laugh and the subject had been dropped, but Katie had resurrected it with uncomfortable frequency as the time drew nearer for her to leave home and go to university.

‘You’re so young, Ma,’ she had expostulated more than once. ‘Men fancy you. I’ve seen the way they look at you, but you… Well, you behave like—like a shrinking virgin.’

When Hazel had flushed and protested, Katie had grimaced and added, ‘Look at yourself now and you’ll see what I mean. Anyone would think you were totally sexually inexperienced, like…like a nun or something.’

‘Katie,’ she had protested crossly, for once silencing her ebullient offspring, but later, alone in her bedroom, staring out of the window at the pretty Cheshire countryside which gave her so much inspiration for her work as an illustrator of children’s books, she had been forced to concede that Katie had a point. She did tend to shrink away from unknown men. She was shy and rather withdrawn, unlike Katie, who, thank goodness, seemed to have much, much more self-confidence.

And as for her sexual experience… Remembering this last conversation with her daughter now, Hazel sighed to herself, automatically plumping up one of the pretty needlepoint cushions she had worked the previous winter, and settling it back on the old-fashioned brocade-covered chair, which had been her father’s.

Even now after five years it still seemed odd to her to look at the chair and see it empty.

The stroke which had semi-paralysed her father four years after they had moved north from London had meant that in the last years of his life he had needed her in almost constant attendance. It had seemed a small enough way of repaying everything he had done for her and Katie.

Left alone with a four-day-old daughter at the age of forty-two, he couldn’t have found it easy to bring her up alone. His wife, her mother, had died following complications with the birth. As he had once explained uncomfortably to her, neither he nor her mother had ever expected to have a child. They had married late in life, and her arrival had come as something of a shock.

Nevertheless he had loved her and done his best for her. His practice as a solicitor had demanded a great deal of his time, but he had been scrupulous about spending weekends with her, and a conscientious if somewhat over-protective housekeeper had been hired to take charge of the old Victorian house where she had grown up, and of her.

She had had a very protected and sheltered growing-up; a very lonely and isolated one in many ways, attending a very small girls’ school from which she was picked up every day by Mrs Meadows, so that she was not given much opportunity to mingle with the other girls and make the friendships which might have drawn her out of her shell.

And then when she was sixteen she had met Jimmy.

He went to a nearby boys’ school. He almost ran her down on his bicycle, and their friendship developed from there.

Jimmy was as ebullient and outward-going as she was shy and introverted, which was no doubt where Katie got her lovely laughing personality from.

Hazel adored and worshipped him, blindly following his lead in everything he suggested.

He wasn’t a cruel or unkind boy; far from it, but he had a resilience which she lacked, and he was far, far too young to have the wisdom to look into the future and see the risks they were taking.

Looking back now, it seemed difficult for her to understand how at sixteen she could ever have believed she had fallen in love. With hindsight, she suspected that in Jimmy she had believed she had found the answer to her loneliness and that he was in many ways the friend, the brother, almost in fact the mother, she had never had.

Jimmy knew everything and everyone… Jimmy opened her eyes to so many things about life. Jimmy encouraged her to take advantage of her father’s preoccupation with his work, to meet him illicitly in the evening…to spend long hours with him in the bedroom of the home he shared with his parents and brothers and sister.

The Garners were a large and very casual family. Ann Garner was an actress, Tony Garner a director; they were seldom at home, their five children left to the casual and careless discipline of a transient population of au pairs and relatives.

Ann Garner smiled at her in a preoccupied and busy fashion whenever she saw her in the house, but Hazel doubted if she even knew her name in those days and she was certainly not the kind of mother to make strenuous and exhaustive enquiries into her children’s friendships. She was there, and she was accepted, and that was all there was to it.

But there was no point in trying to shift the blame, the responsibility on to Ann Garner’s shoulders.

Hazel might have been naïve, she might have been stupid, but she did know what she was doing, did know the risks she was taking.

The first time Jimmy touched her, kissed her, she had been shocked—had withdrawn from him. She wasn’t used to any kind of physical intimacy from others. Her father simply wasn’t that kind of man, and Mrs Meadows had never encouraged what she termed ‘soppiness’.

So she withdrew from him and Jimmy let her, watching her with curious, amused eyes. He was only twelve months older than her, but, in his knowledge of life, twenty years older.

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it when I kiss you?’ he asked her cheerfully.

She shook her head, flushing.

[2baht]

Just now, sipi said:

WITH a thankful sigh Philippa sank back on her heels, surveying the stacked boxes and paper sacks, quickly stifling an unanticipated stab of pain as she looked at what was after all the accumulation of sixty odd years of living. How little she had really known about her aunt, and all that was left of her now was the faded photograph album Philippa had decided to keep. She hadn’t wanted to come back to Garston, but she had been Jane Cromwell’s only living relative.

Getting to her feet and dusting down her jeans she bent to pick up one of Simon’s motorbike magazines. Her ten-year-old son was motorbike mad at the moment. Even from being quite small he had shown a decidedly mechanical turn of mind. At the moment it was fixed with equal concentration on motorbikes and computers.

Thinking of Simon made her glance at her watch and frown. It was gone five and she had told him to be back at four. She planned for them to have an early meal and then leave to go back to London. Where on earth was he? They had only been in Garston for a week but it was long enough for Simon, with his outgoing extrovert nature, to make friends. Several of them had called for him this morning. Unlike herself Simon made friends easily. There must still be people living in the village who remembered her, but apart from the vicar no one had come to call.

Of course her aunt had always kept herself very much to herself. Living as she did in what was virtually a ‘grace and favour’ house on the Garston estate, her isolation from the rest of the village had tended to set her apart from the villagers, just as it had set Philippa apart during those years when she lived with her aunt. It couldn’t have been easy for her, Philippa now recognised, to accept the responsibility of a fourteen-year-old girl, still shocked by the sudden death of her parents, and inclined to be rebellious and withdrawn because of it. Her father, Jane Cromwell’s cousin, had been a diplomat, and he and her mother had been killed during a terrorist raid whilst Philippa was at school in England.

Their death had brought many changes to Philippa’s life, not the least of which was the discovery that there was no longer enough money for her to continue at the exclusive girls’ school her parents had sent her to. Her father’s salary had been generous but it had died with him, leaving only the proceeds of two small insurance policies. Her aunt had been a teacher and during the last ten years of her career had had only one pupil—Edward Garston, because of which she had been gifted a lifetime’s occupation of the small cottage which became home to Philippa, and which stood just within the boundary of the Garston family’s estate. Once they had owned vast acres of Yorkshire, including the village named after the family, but gradually over the years their land had been eroded away with their wealth until all that was left was the house itself, the parkland it stood in and the home farm. And then further tragedy had struck. Edward Garston had been killed in a car accident and his inheritance passed to a cousin, Scott.

Philippa could remember the day Scott and his mother arrived at Garston quite vividly. Scott’s father had been the second son, the black sheep of the family and there was gossip in the village that his grandfather had sworn he would rather see the house and the estate pass to a stranger than go to his son’s child. Scott had been twenty to her fourteen when he first came to live at Garston. Away at Oxford most of the time, Philippa could remember catching brief glimpses of him during the holidays, when invariably he arrived riding a large and noisy motorbike, his arrival always increasing his grandfather’s already irrascible temper. Jeffrey Garston was a proud, and Philippa had sometimes thought, very lonely old man, very bitter in his resentment of Edward’s death at eighteen and of the cousin who had taken his place. Edward had been reputed to be brilliant and it was no secret in the area that Jeffrey Gaston had looked to his grandson to somehow recoup the family losses and restore Garston Hall to what it had once been. The Garston family fortune had been founded on coal and railways during the Victorian era, but now they were reduced to living on a rapidly dwindling income.

After what she had heard about the family Philippa had been rather surprised that Jeffrey Garston allowed his daughter-in-law and grandson to come and live with him, but he had done so and moreover seemed to be training Scott to take over what was left of the estate, because Philippa often saw him in the holidays working at the farm, or supervising the shoots which still took place in the autumn, when large parties of businessmen would descend on the Hall, and the narrow road that led past the cottage to it would be busy with large, expensive cars.

Where was Scott now? Philippa had only had one letter from her aunt after she left and that had simply told her that Jeffrey Garston had died and that Scott had shut up the house and left the area. That alone had surprised her. Scott had been almost obsessed by his plans to make the estate a viable commercial enterprise once more, and to restore his home to what it had once been. She had replied to her aunt’s letter, telling her about Simon’s birth, but there had been no further correspondence between them. A niece who bore an illegitimate child had been so far outside Jane Cromwell’s own rigid moral code that there was no question that there would ever be forgiveness or acceptance, and certainly never a welcome in her home for either Philippa or Simon. How dramatic and terrifying it had all seemed eleven years ago!

Philippa suppressed a faint sigh. Who would have dreamed then that now women would choose to bear their children alone without the support of the child’s father? Simon’s lack of a father didn’t even cause so much as a faintly raised eyebrow these days. Her own single-parent status was so commonplace that more than half of Simon’s friends at his London school also lived with only one of their parents. Eleven years ago when she discovered she was pregnant she had been terror-struck.

She grimaced as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging on the wall. How very young and naive she had been. Seventeen and as green as grass. Well, she had learned, and now at twenty-eight, she knew without false modesty that she was an intelligent and even shrewd woman, who had learned about life the hard way.

What she failed to recognise in her own reflection was the vulnerability of her softly curved mouth; the shadows that darkened her grey eyes, the hint of pain that still lingered beneath the cool outer shell of reserve in which she cloaked her true feelings.

Her hair had been short when she left Garston. Her aunt had insisted that it was tidier that way. Now she wore it up in a nest chignon in keeping with her image as the efficient secretary to Sir Nigel Barnes, the Chairman of Merrit Plastics, but once released from its imprisonment it curled halfway down her back in honey-gold waves, si

lky soft and so directly in contrast to Simon’s straight coal-black hair that people often did a double take when they were introduced as mother and son. Like his hair, Simon had inherited his height and breadth of shoulder from his father. At ten he looked closer to thirteen and was maturing quickly, too quickly, Philippa acknowledged, subduing the faint feeling of dismay she always felt when she contrasted Simon’s upbringing with her own. Children were not allowed to remain naive for very long at the large London school Simon attended; sometimes she felt he was growing up too fast.

‘Mm,’ Lara, her flatmate, agreed, sipping the coffee Maggie had made them both. ‘But girls of that age are prone to exaggeration, you know. Are you sure the situation’s as dire as she says? What does she say, exactly?’ she added curiously.

‘Read it for yourself.’ Maggie got up, and Lara watched thoughtfully as her flatmate walked over to the small table. Maggie never ceased to fascinate her, even now, after the length of time they had known one another. There was something very compelling about Maggie: a power she herself wasn’t aware she possessed, a warmth that drew people to her. That she was beautiful as well seemed to be another unfair advantage fate had handed her. When they first met almost ten years ago, Lara had felt envious of the tall, slender redhead with her creamy skin and mysterious dark green eyes. Her envy had not lasted long. Although they were roughly the same age, Maggie had had a maturity about her, a sadness which Lara felt instinctively but had never been allowed to penetrate, Maggie being a very private person. She still possessed that slightly melancholy-tinged mystery, that aura of having withdrawn slightly from the rest of the world to a secret and inviolate place.

Maggie picked up the letter and handed it to her. Lara read it out loud, dark eyebrows lifted in faint amusement. ‘“Come home quickly. Something terrible has happened and we need you.” Oh, come on, Maggie,’ she exclaimed wryly. ‘You surely aren’t taking this seriously? If there was really something wrong, someone would have been in touch with you…a telephone call…’

‘No,’ Maggie told her fiercely, her expression changing from its normal one of sweetness to an unfamiliar hardness that made Lara’s eyes widen slightly. She and Maggie had known one another ever since Maggie had first arrived in London and, despite her red hair, Maggie was one of the most placid and gentle people she had ever known. Which was perhaps why she had opted out of the aggressive and demanding world of art and instead used her talents to provide herself with an excellent living illustrating books.

‘But surely someone would have got in touch with you,’ Lara protested. ‘Some older, more responsible member of your family.’ She groped in her memory for more concise details of Maggie’s family and couldn’t find any. In fact, until the letters in that round, schoolgirlish hand had started arriving eight months ago, Maggie hadn’t had any contact with her family at all.

She never talked about them other than to say that her parents were dead and that until their death she had lived with them in the Scottish borders where her father taught at a small private school. After their death she had gone to live with her grandfather, and Lara had rather gathered from her silence on the subject that the relationship had not been a happy one and that that was why, when she had come to London, Maggie had cut herself free of all her family ties.

And yet, from the time of the receipt of that first letter, forwarded to her by the publishers, and the others which had come after it, Maggie had changed. Not discernibly perhaps to those who didn’t really know her, but the difference in her was obvious to Lara and she was intrigued by it.

What was it that lay in her friend’s past that caused that unmistakable aura of restless tension to possess her when the letters arrived? What was it that made the swift hunger fly to her face when she opened the letters, only to be quickly controlled, as though she was desperately afraid of it being observed?

Since the arrival of the letters, Lara had realised what it was about Maggie that set her so unmistakably apart from others. It was the protective cloak of withdrawal she wore at all times to distance herself from others; she was a part of their lives at the same time as she was refusing to allow them to enter anything more than the periphery of hers. Almost as though she was afraid of allowing anyone to get too close to her.

A result of her parents’ death, perhaps, which must have come as a traumatic shock for a sensitive child in her early teens. But Lara suspected there was more to it than that, although she was puzzled to know exactly what.

In another woman she might have ascribed the withdrawal to an unhappy love affair, but Maggie had been seventeen when she’d arrived in London, and since then the men-friends she’d had all been kept strictly at arm’s length.

‘I’ll have to go up there,’ Maggie told her, ignoring her question, her forehead pleating into a frown of concentration. ‘I don’t know how long I’m likely to be gone, Lara. I’ll make arrangements about paying my share of the mortgage etc. while I’m gone. I’ll have to get in touch with my agent…’

As she listened to her, it came to Lara that something deeply buried inside her friend was almost glad of the excuse to go home. While she talked, underneath the anxiety there was a light in her eyes that Lara had never seen before, and with startled perception she realised that she had never really seen Maggie herself before. It was as though the real Maggie had suddenly stepped out from behind the shadow-figure she had used as concealment.

‘You know…you look like someone who’s just been told they’re no longer an outcast from paradise,’ she told her softly.

Instantly Maggie’s expression changed. Wariness crept into her face, her body tensing, as though she was waiting for a blow to fall, Lara recognised. Panic flared in her eyes, obliterating the wariness, and she said edgily, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Am I being?’ Lara asked her quietly. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Maggie, but I think I can number on the fingers of one hand the times you’ve mentioned your home and family, and yet when you do…I wonder what you’re doing living here in London when you would so obviously rather be with them.’

She saw Maggie go pale as though she was going to be sick, her eyes betraying her shock, but, rather to Lara’s surprise, she made no protectively defensive rebuttal of her comment, saying only in a huskily tense voice, ‘I have to go back, Lara. Susie wouldn’t have written like that if they didn’t need me.’

Much as she longed to ask who ‘they’ were, Lara held her tongue. She could see that Maggie was perilously close to the edge of her self-control—another rather odd circumstance in a woman whose smilingly calm manner was normally such a feature of her personality.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll know how long you’ll be gone?’

‘No,’ Maggie agreed shortly, impatiently pushing her hair off her face with one of the narrow, elegant hands that Lara, with her more stocky frame, had once envied so desperately.

‘You’ll have to let Gerald know you’re going,’ Lara reminded her.

Gerald Menzies was the latest in a long line of men who had dated Maggie. Ten years older than her, he was urbane and sophisticated—divorced, with two sons at public school and an ex-wife who was determined that, divorce or not, she was still going to live in the manner to which Gerald’s wealth had accustomed her. He owned a small but extremely fashionable gallery, which was where Maggie had met him. Lara had introduced them, following an approach from Gerald to show some of her work.

Their affair, if indeed their relationship could be described as that, which Lara privately doubted, had endured for nearly ten months. They dated once or twice a week, but as far as Lara could tell Maggie felt no more for Gerald than she had done for any of the other men she had dated over the years.

No, Maggie had never been short of men willing to admire her, but as far as Lara knew she had never been deeply emotionally involved with any of them.

Indeed, at twenty-seven, they were probably the only two of their year at art school who were still not involved in a partnership of one sort or another. For Lara it was because she had ambitions that she knew were going to be hard enough to fulfil, without the added burden of a husband and potentially a family.

But for Maggie it was different. Maggie didn’t share her ambitions. Maggie was made for love, for giving and sharing, but Maggie held everyone who might want to share her life at bay. Carefully, gently, almost without them being aware of it—but keep them at bay she did.

‘I’ll telephone him once I’m there,’ she responded rather vaguely to Lara’s comment.

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Lara told her firmly. ‘Why don’t you telephone home and find out exactly what the problem is before you go haring up there?’

She could see that her suggestion didn’t find favour with her friend, and for a moment she almost disliked herself for making it. She could see that Maggie was struggling to find an acceptable explanation for her refusal, and, since there was something about Maggie that made you want to be kind to her, she found herself offering, ‘Or perhaps they aren’t on the phone?’

‘Yes…yes. They are, but…’ Maggie had her back to her, but now she turned round. ‘Yes, you’re right. I ought to ring.’

The telephone was on a small table beside the settee. She snatched up the receiver almost as though it was hot to the touch, Lara thought, watching her punch in the numbers with shaking fingers. Numbers which she had quite obviously had no trouble at all in remembering, Lara recognised on a wave of compassion.

She touched her arm, not really surprised to discover the tension of the muscles beneath the fine skin.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she whispered, but Maggie shook her head and grabbed hold of her, her colour suddenly very hectic and hot.

‘No…please stay.’

And, because Maggie was holding her so tightly, she was standing right beside the receiver when the ringing stopped and a harsh male voice said, ‘Deveril House?’ with a brusque impatience which, although rather off-putting, was surely no reason for Maggie to start shaking violently. The blood drained from her face and she slammed the receiver back down, holding it there while she shivered and trembled and the delicate bones of her small face stood out in proud relief.

Despite all the questions clamouring in her brain, Lara managed to restrain herself from saying anything other than a dry, ‘A rather formidable gentleman.’

‘My stepcousin,’ Maggie told her shakily. ‘Marcus Landersby.’

And then she dropped down on to the settee with her head in her hands, her body racked by such deep shudders that Lara was genuinely frightened for her. Whatever else Maggie was, she was most definitely not emotionally unstable, rather the opposite, and yet here she was virtually falling to pieces in front of Lara’s eyes. And the explanation for this so out-of-character behaviour lay, Lara was quite sure, with the owner of that enigmatic and grim voice.

Her heart had plummeted immediately Katie had finished speaking, and, although she had successfully managed to hide it from her daughter, she had been overwhelmed by a sharp sense of fear.

And yet Katie had had boyfriends before, of course; several of them in fact; gangly, sometimes spotty young men, who blushed and stammered, or adopted an unwittingly touching and amusing male machismo which sat very uncomfortably on their as yet still boyish shoulders. But this time it was different. This time… This time she felt all the apprehension and alarm of a mother who felt that her child was threatened in some way.

She had sensed just from the way Katie spoke his name that this Silas was important to her. Too important… She gave a tiny shiver, frowning unseeingly around her small sitting-room.

She could never really understand those women who claimed that their teenage daughters were their best friends. She felt far too great a sense of responsibility and awareness of life’s cruelties and un-kindnesses ever to relax her maternal vigilance enough to make that claim.

She hoped she wasn’t a possessive mother. All through Katie’s growing years she had worked hard at making sure that Katie never became distanced from her peers or from other adults, or suffered the kind of aloneness and isolation which she had suffered as a child.

The trouble was that Katie had been so vague about this Silas Jardine, and she had not liked to question her too deeply. All she knew about him was that Katie had met him at the university and that she was sure that he and her mother were going to get on like a house on fire. It sounded very ominous to Hazel. She had been all too maternally aware that, behind her insouciance and bright chatter, Katie was hiding something.

Biting her bottom lip, Hazel checked round the sitting-room again.

A warm fire burned in the grate, and logs were heaped up in the basket beside the fire, logs which had been supplied by Tom Rawlins from the farm, about whom Katie was always teasing her by describing him as her adoring swain.

It was true that she and Tom occasionally went out for a meal or to see a show. He was a widower with two grown-up children; she was… Well, she was the mother of an almost grown-up daughter and it was only natural that they should have things in common. But that was as far as any relationship between them went.

Fortunately Tom was far too gentlemanly to make the kind of sexual demands she so dreaded and detested receiving.

It had shocked her three years ago, when Katie had coolly announced that it was high time that her mother stopped behaving as though she ought to be punished and despised simply because she had given birth to an illegitimate child, and started feeling proud of herself instead for all that she had done for that child.

‘Ma, every time a man looks at you, you shrink visibly. You’re a very attractive woman. Everyone says so, and I for one certainly wouldn’t object if you decided to provide me with a stepfather, providing of course that I liked him.’

‘Well, for your information, I have no intentions of doing any such thing,’ Hazel had retaliated sharply.

‘Why not? You should think about it,’ Katie had told her smartly, adding critically, ‘Just look at you. As long as I can remember it’s just been you, and me, and of course Gramps. I know it must have been awful for you, losing Dad like that in such an awful accident and then finding out about me. But I don’t see why just because of that you’ve got to spend the rest of your life hiding away from men. You can’t get pregnant just by smiling at them, you know,’ she had added with typical teenage scorn. ‘You can’t want to spend the rest of your life alone. With Gramps gone…’

‘It’s all right,’ Hazel had told her shakily but drily. ‘If you’re worried about having a geriatric parent on your hands cramping your style, I assure you that you need not be.’

That had made Katie laugh and the subject had been dropped, but Katie had resurrected it with uncomfortable frequency as the time drew nearer for her to leave home and go to university.

‘You’re so young, Ma,’ she had expostulated more than once. ‘Men fancy you. I’ve seen the way they look at you, but you… Well, you behave like—like a shrinking virgin.’

When Hazel had flushed and protested, Katie had grimaced and added, ‘Look at yourself now and you’ll see what I mean. Anyone would think you were totally sexually inexperienced, like…like a nun or something.’

‘Katie,’ she had protested crossly, for once silencing her ebullient offspring, but later, alone in her bedroom, staring out of the window at the pretty Cheshire countryside which gave her so much inspiration for her work as an illustrator of children’s books, she had been forced to concede that Katie had a point. She did tend to shrink away from unknown men. She was shy and rather withdrawn, unlike Katie, who, thank goodness, seemed to have much, much more self-confidence.

And as for her sexual experience… Remembering this last conversation with her daughter now, Hazel sighed to herself, automatically plumping up one of the pretty needlepoint cushions she had worked the previous winter, and settling it back on the old-fashioned brocade-covered chair, which had been her father’s.

Even now after five years it still seemed odd to her to look at the chair and see it empty.

The stroke which had semi-paralysed her father four years after they had moved north from London had meant that in the last years of his life he had needed her in almost constant attendance. It had seemed a small enough way of repaying everything he had done for her and Katie.

Left alone with a four-day-old daughter at the age of forty-two, he couldn’t have found it easy to bring her up alone. His wife, her mother, had died following complications with the birth. As he had once explained uncomfortably to her, neither he nor her mother had ever expected to have a child. They had married late in life, and her arrival had come as something of a shock.

Nevertheless he had loved her and done his best for her. His practice as a solicitor had demanded a great deal of his time, but he had been scrupulous about spending weekends with her, and a conscientious if somewhat over-protective housekeeper had been hired to take charge of the old Victorian house where she had grown up, and of her.

She had had a very protected and sheltered growing-up; a very lonely and isolated one in many ways, attending a very small girls’ school from which she was picked up every day by Mrs Meadows, so that she was not given much opportunity to mingle with the other girls and make the friendships which might have drawn her out of her shell.

And then when she was sixteen she had met Jimmy.

He went to a nearby boys’ school. He almost ran her down on his bicycle, and their friendship developed from there.

Jimmy was as ebullient and outward-going as she was shy and introverted, which was no doubt where Katie got her lovely laughing personality from.

Hazel adored and worshipped him, blindly following his lead in everything he suggested.

He wasn’t a cruel or unkind boy; far from it, but he had a resilience which she lacked, and he was far, far too young to have the wisdom to look into the future and see the risks they were taking.

Looking back now, it seemed difficult for her to understand how at sixteen she could ever have believed she had fallen in love. With hindsight, she suspected that in Jimmy she had believed she had found the answer to her loneliness and that he was in many ways the friend, the brother, almost in fact the mother, she had never had.

Jimmy knew everything and everyone… Jimmy opened her eyes to so many things about life. Jimmy encouraged her to take advantage of her father’s preoccupation with his work, to meet him illicitly in the evening…to spend long hours with him in the bedroom of the home he shared with his parents and brothers and sister.

The Garners were a large and very casual family. Ann Garner was an actress, Tony Garner a director; they were seldom at home, their five children left to the casual and careless discipline of a transient population of au pairs and relatives.

Ann Garner smiled at her in a preoccupied and busy fashion whenever she saw her in the house, but Hazel doubted if she even knew her name in those days and she was certainly not the kind of mother to make strenuous and exhaustive enquiries into her children’s friendships. She was there, and she was accepted, and that was all there was to it.

But there was no point in trying to shift the blame, the responsibility on to Ann Garner’s shoulders.

Hazel might have been naïve, she might have been stupid, but she did know what she was doing, did know the risks she was taking.

The first time Jimmy touched her, kissed her, she had been shocked—had withdrawn from him. She wasn’t used to any kind of physical intimacy from others. Her father simply wasn’t that kind of man, and Mrs Meadows had never encouraged what she termed ‘soppiness’.

So she withdrew from him and Jimmy let her, watching her with curious, amused eyes. He was only twelve months older than her, but, in his knowledge of life, twenty years older.

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it when I kiss you?’ he asked her cheerfully.

She shook her head, flushing.

But............................!

[nauseus]

5 hours ago, sipi said:

March 1
Breaky at Metro Hotel. Taxi to Bangkok international airport. Depart Bangkok 10.45am Thai Airways TG311 to Kathmandu. Flew beside Himalayas. Landed Kathmandu 1pm local time, 3 hour flight. Booked into Kathmandu Guesthouse and talk to Encounter Overland (EO) reps. Went for a walk. Beef steak for lunch/ tea. Bed early 9pm.

2
Taxi to Ganesh Temple (monkey temple). Steak for tea. Bed early. Quiet day.

3
Breaky, lazed around. Pre-departure meeting 6pm.

4
Prepared for trekking. Gear hire and bought cold weather gear.

5
Trekking tour leader (Robin from Australia). Bus to Pokhara. Dep Kmandu 8am, 1 hour lunch, arrive 3.30pm. Cake and coffee at store. Tea at lakeside tourist camping grounds. Rum and cards. 3500' ASL. Cold. Sherpas and porters from Laura tribe. Bed 8.30pm.

6
Up 6am. Bus to Shining Hospital. Walk through Kali Gadahi Valley. Lunch in paddy fields at Suiket. Climb to Dhampus 6000'. On sinus pills. Bed 8pm.

7
Breaky 7am. Walk to 8000' along Annapurna range through birch, hemlock and pine. View Mardi Khola 4000 below. View og Machhapuchture (23490'). Bed 8pm.

8
Breaky 6am. Walk to Pun Hill for lunch and onto campsite 10000', snow at 9000'. Snow fifgt. Bed 8pm tired.

9
Up 7am. Attempted 15000' along Annapurna South. Snowed in at 12000', snow to chest.  Snowman and back to camp.

10
Walk down 7000' to 5000' through Siding. Arrive at camp beside Mardi Khola 3pm. Bath in river, built dam to catch fish. Water freezing. Bed 8.30pm.

11
Walk down Mardi Khola valley over suspension bridges to Mardi Pul.

12
Walk to school on the Seti Khola Valley. Camp back at Mardi Pul. Band-aids on every toe. Wedding band played at camp.

13
Up early to photograph mountains. Walk to Pokhara. (Total trek 130km). Hired bikes for 1 hour. Played volley ball with grade 9 school kids. Drinks. Hire rowing boat for 1 hour 24R.

14
Bus along Raj Pass to Kathmandu. Booked river rafting. Bistro for tea. Went to Marine Bar till 1am. Fosters beer, excellent music. Bed 4am

Trekking food. Breaky; Tea, porridge, muslie, honey, eggs, pancakes. Lunch; baked beans, chips, cheese sandwiches, fruit juice (hot), orange, tinned fruit, tea, biscuits, chicken, bread. Tea; tea, coffee, chocolate, rice, veges, chicken, fish, apple pie, cake, tinned fruit, soup, popcorn, bread

15
Breaky ay Bistro Vegemite. Hired bikes 1 day 10R. Went to Hindu temple to see bodies burnt and Buddhist temple. EO house for coffee. River rafting meeting.

16
Booked on Mt Everest flight but cancelled. Quiet day.

17
Commence white water rafting.

18
Re EO brochure..

19
Up Set rapids

20

21
White water rafting finished. Left raft trip at Mugling to meet EO Overland group at Chitwan National Park.

22
Up 6am for jungle walk. Washed clothes in river (Bufallo smell). Stick-dancing display. Meat out with EO.

23
Elephant ride from 7am to 8.30am. Left Chiywan park at 9.30am. Crossed Nepal/ India border at 3.30pm after 3 hours. Slept in school yard. Cool.

24
Drove to Veranasi via Pahrendra and Gorahphur 8 hours. Cathy birthday. Coloured dye for Lord Shivas birthday (Holi). Stayed in tourist camp. Bed 2am.

25
Up 5.30am. Boat trip along Ganges. Monkey Temple, Mother of India Temple etc. Cool.

26
Holi Festival. Drove towards Khajuraho. Camped 80 km short.

27
Towards Agra via exotic drawings at Khajuraho Temple. Dep 10.30am, arr Lauries Hotel Agra 9pm. Hotel room, bed 1.30am. Cool.

28
Up 5am for Taj Mahal at dawn. Haircut and massage at hotel. Go to Amber Fort 5-6pm and Taj Mahal 6.30pm. Free admission on Fridays. Full moon.

29
Up 6am for Jaipur via Fatehpur Sihkri 9am (deserted Mughal city). Hot.

30
Up 4am. <deleted> and spews. Sick all day.

31
Short drive to Amber Palace to Delhi. Arrive Delhi tourist camp 3pm. Tea at Nuruiles. Hot.

April 1
Went to Australian Embassy for “Letter of comfort”. Went to Iranian Embassy for visa, shut. Bought $1000 AM travellers cheques. Shower and bed 11.30pm.

2
Up 5.30am for 7am dep through Punjab to Kashmir. Bush camped just inside Kashmir. Lot of Sihk temples.

3
Up 5.30am. Drove to small town before Kashmir Valley. Beautiful scenery. Beers with Brian. Very cold. Bed 12am

4
Up 5.30am to cook breaky. Left for Shrinigar 8am. Beautiful drive through snow & mountains to Kashmir Valley. Arrive houseboat “Sunflower” for lunch. Went to Air India to book flight to Delhi. Chicken and rice for tea. Played cards and drank beer. Bed 10.30pm.

5
Guided tour of wood calving factory. Bought hand for 125R. Roy and I to Air India to conferm flight.Everyone sick in stomach.

6
Wash. Sunk canoe from houseboat. Went to wood calving factory in old part of Shrinigar.

7
Quiet day. Mohamids birthday fireworks. Cool.

8
Flew from Shrinigar to Delhi. Dep 3.15pm, arr 4.30pm. Bus to Connaugh Place and tuk-tuk to tourist camp. Tea and bed. Hot.

9
Apply for Iranian visa. Hot.

10
Washing.

11
Went to old delhi city with Roy. Delhi railway station. Steam trains.

12
Iranian embassy to pick up visa. No worries. Feeling sick. Hot.

13
Violently sick.

14
Up 5.30am. Tuk-tuk to Cornaugh Place at 11am. Taxi to International Airport. Had 2 heinican beers. Dep Delhi 4.40pm, arr Lahore Pakistan 17.45pm. Slept at International Hotel. Tea and bed.

15
Stayed at Hotel. Sick.

16
Drove from lahore to Ralphwindi and onto Islamabad. Camped just outside town. Anti-biotics.

17
Drove from Islamabad to Ralphawindi. Coffee shop 8am to 10am. Drove to Peshawah arr 2pm. Lunch. Tuk-tuk to old bazaar markets and back again. Stayed at Tourist Hotel.

18
Peshawah. Went to old markets. Meal out EO.

19
Dep Peshawah. Drove 4 days straight. Bush camping in the desert. Excellent scenery. Unusual shale folded/ fingerprint mountains.

20
Went to gun factory at Darra.

21.
Drove. Desert. Dusty and rough roads. Cold.

22
Drove from Lorelloi to Quetta.

23
Quetta. Stayed at Bloom Star Hotel. Prepare for Iran border crossing. Shirt dyed for free. Went 3up on Vespa (Brian, Khalid) to cinema projection box.

24
Drove from Quetta to desert camp.

25
Drove to 13km from Iran border. Desert camp.

26
Left camp 7am. Arrive Pakistan border 8am. Passed imigration 11.30am. Syayed in customs building. Full moon. Cold.

27
Dep custons compound 9.30am. Playing card confiscated. Drove all day through Zahaden to bush camp. Excellent roads. Right hand side.

28
Wake early. Drive all day. Cold.

29
Up 5am. Dep 6am for Persipolis via Shara. Arr 1pm and visit ruins. Dep 3.30pm. Arr bush camp 7pm.

30
Early start. Dep 6.30am 300km to Esphahan. Sick stomcah. Very cold, frost. Booked into esphahan Imai..

May 1
Jiardia. Went to Esphahan Square, mosque and bizzaar. Bought picnic rag for 3000 rials/ $5. Tea at Tourist Hotel, 4 courses 1000 each / 42.

2
Esphahan.

3
Left Esphahan for Turkish border. Taking lomitol.

4
Drive. Anti-biotics.

5
Drive to Iran/ Turkey border. Arr 3pm. Through border by 8pm. Camped at base of Mt Arrarat just below snow line. Drink Baileys and Drambui. Bed. 12.30am. Very cold.

6
Drove halfway to Gorimie. Camp beside creek just below snow line. Cold.

7
Drove to Goremai. Went to underground bar, drinking wine. Very good.

8
Goremai buildingd cut into rocks Church refuge and penis rocks. Underground bar for group meal. Rain and cold.

9
Drove Goremai to Siliphki beach. Snow in morning.

10
Washing. Tea at seaside restaurant, chicken kebabs. Warm and sunny.

11
Beach. Rain and cold. Start of Ramadam.

12
Drove to Syria border.

13
Drove to Damascus. Warm.

14
 Demascus. Explored old city, mosque, palace and bazaars with Brian and Cathy.

15
Dep Demascus for Jordan border. Arr 11am. Camped near Amman after jerash ruins. Hot springs. Cold in morning.

16
Drove to Dead Sea via Amman. $00mtrs below sea level. Swimming. Hot.

17
Drove to Amman. Apply for Egyptian visa $35. Drove towards Petra. Cold.

18
Petra. Warm. Drove to castle on top of hill. Explored secret tunnels. Slept in open air on roof, windy. Clea skies.

19
Drove to Aquaba. Beach.

20
Nice relaxing day at beach swimming. Warm.

21
Ditto.

22
Dep for cairo. Drove to Aquaba port. Customs etc. Boat left for Cairo at 5pm. First class lounge and tourist class cabins. Went to engine room. No alcohol allowed.

23
Visas captain on bridge. Arr Suez 10am. Customs and imm, change $150. Camped just inside Egypt.

24
Drove to Cairo. PO to collect mail.Stayed at Salone Campgrounds across road from sadats near Pyramids, Gaza area. Went to excellent light and sound show.

25
Truck to Memphis and sahara stepped pyramids and back to gaza pyramids. Climbed pyramid. Shopping at food markets. Drinking beer. Bed 2am.

26
Cairo. Full moon. Applied for new passport and letter of comfort for Sudan visa. Applied for Kenya visa but passport full. Group meal, drinking, playing games. Good night. Bed 2am.

27
Cairo. Breaky at Meridian Hotel. New passport, Sudan visa. Mosquitos.

28
Got kenya visa. Roy and I went back to pyramids to look inside and photo sphinx.

29
Camel ride pyramids with Roy, Sue and Mike. Great. Bus to Talaeha Square. Bought $1000 AmX. Cholera vacination at continental Hotel. PO, shopping.

30
Sheradin Hotel for breaky. Hot.

31
Dep Cairo for El Alimein. Went to War museum and cemetry. Camped beside the beach Nt coast of Egypt.

June 1
Left El Alimein for Alandria. Went to museum. Dep for Suez. Camped in school grounds.

2
Played soccer and frizbee in schoolyard with kids. Dep for Suez. Went through tunnel mid-afternoon. Camped in Sinai desert beside the beach. Windy, bonfire.

3
Dep for St Katherine Monistry arriving lunch time. Looked through monistory  and scull room. Had lunch and climbed Mt Sinai, 2 hours. Sunset and bed. Cold and windy. 8000ASL.

4
Woke up 2am. Up 4.30am to watch sunrise. Walk to truck, breaky. Left for Red Sea coast 8am. Lunch and shopping at El Tul. Drove towards Suez, camped at beach. Swimming.

5
Dep 1.30pm. Under Suez canal 4pm. Camped near mine field near Holghada.

6
St Pauls monastry for lunch. Camped beside beach on oil company land near Holghada. Oil rigs off shore.

7
Drove to Holghada. Colourful celebrations for last day of Ramadan. Stayed at Moon Valley tourist camp, swimming. Beer and wine.

8
Boat 2 hours out of Holghada Red Sea diving. Excellent vis and goos coral, fish. Beer. Windy and hot.

9
Went to Sheriden beach, swimming. Red Sea restaurant with group. Bed 12.30am.

10
Dep to Luxor. Stayed YMCA. Crowded and mosquitos. Hot.

11
Luxor. Karnak Temples. Booked shakara for Nile trip. Went to light and sound show.

12
Valley of the kings and queens. Luxor museum. Tout-anhk-amons tomb. Hot.

13
Drove to Isna. Felucca to Etfu. Camped beside the Nile. !8 Egyptian pounds each for 3 days.

14
Etfu temples. Felucca up the Nile, camped in the middle of the river. <deleted>s.

15
Felucca to Aswan. Taxi to campsite.

16
Hired felucca for 5 hours. Visit Elephant island, botanical garden, low dam. El Shati restaurant for lunch and tea.

17
dep for Abu Simble. Very hot. Dead camels.

18
Abu Simble to Aswan.

19
Washing etc. Very hot.

20
Aswan. Couldn't get tickets for ferry.

21
Aswan

22
Aswan. Got ferry tickets.

23
Customs at Aswan high dam. Ferry. 

24
Boat arrived Wadi Halfa Lombon 11am. Customs etc. Taxi truck to wadi Halfa. Booked into Nile Hotel. Slept outside, crowded. Drank chai and ate beans. Full moon. Hot.

25
Food markets. Got 3rd class train tickets. On train 11.30amDep 5pm. Dirty and dusty, 3 per seat.

26
Train. Stopped 3am for 2 hours for wash in Nile River. Carriages derailed. Stopped 2 hours, left them there. Engine died. Stop to wait for another. Very crowded, dusty. Horror. Lots to see along the Nile.

27
Arrive Khartoum 8.30am. Booked into Taka Hotel. Went to PO with Brian and Roy, closed. Rested. Shower. !st proper foor in 5 days. Air-con room. Motel caught fire 5am (junction box ground floor), evacuated.

28
Breaky at Taka House. PO. Rest up. <deleted>s.

29
Washing. Readied for tomorrows flight.

30
Up 3am. Taxi to airport for 6am flight. Dep Khartoum 8am. Arr Nairobi 12pm. To Safari park camp ground. Few beers.

July 1
Drove into Nairobi for others to apply for passports. Dep Nairobi 1pm Arr Tourist Lodge 4pm. Pleasant. Disco, rege music. Saw girraffes, deer, large birds.

2
Left at sunrise for Mambassa. Arr 1pm. Lunch. Parked outside Fort Jesus but too dear to go in. Went to bazaars. Drove to beach and camped at Twiga. Beers. Rain and wind. Saw girraffe and monkeys.

3
To Mombassa to change money, shop etc. Lazed around beach. Slight rain. Vool, muggy. Lots of monkeys.

4
Der early for malindi. Large detour through small villages. Interesting people. Arr malindi 4pm, swim in sea. Stayed Silversands camping ground.

5
Dep Malindi for savo national park. Bogged. Arr 4pm. Drove till 7.30pm. Saw lions, deer, lots of elephants. Camped. 

6
Dep National park for Nairobi.

7
Nairobi to get Letter of comfort for Zaire visa. Apply Rwanda visa. Shop at woolworths. Dinner; lots of meat, pork, beef, antelope.. Tops.

8
Shopping. Moved to Grosvenir Hotel. Whorehouse.

9
Washing etc. Buffalo Bills Bar, left 11.30am. Let in for half price at Star Light Night Club. Walked home 3am.

10
Dep Nairobi for Massai village.

11
Masai village, dancing. Lunch Lake Tahaha. To Lake Nahuru.

12
Lake Ahuru game reserve, national park. Giraffe, pink flamingos, monkeys, zebras, babboons, gazelles, wart-hogs, water buffalos. Heavy rain.

13
Dep Lake Nahuru for Nairobi. Lunch on mountain ranges. Buffallo Bills Bar till 11.30pm. Walked to Halocan Nite Club . Dep 4am, rege.

14
Nairobi, walked around. Dep 6pm. Drove till 1am, 60km from Ambuseili NP.

15
Arr ANPearly. To Lake Ambuseili (dry). Saw Zebra, waterbuck, gazelle, elephants, rhino, monkeys, ostriches, giraffs. Drove ahter lunch till dark to bottom of Mt Killimonjaro. Perfect view.

16
Deo Ambuseli 6am for Tanzania border. Arr 12pm, though 2pm. Namanga, border town. Lunch and drove Hotel Tanzmite camping ground, Arusha. Cold.

17
Arusha souvinees shopping. Zoo.

18
Dep Tanzanite for Kibo Hut, via shopping in Moshi. Wash clothes, prepare for climb.

19
registered at Kilimonjaro NP Marango Gate by 12pm (1860 mtrs). Porters, guides dep 12pm. Arr Mandora Hut 4pm, 2690 mtrs, 8 ½ km walk. Tea and bed. Tree line 11000 ft.

20
Dep for Horombo Hut 12 kms, 3750mtrs.

21
Dep for Kibo Hut 4740 mtrs, 5 hours. Soup and porrige for tea. Bed 5pm.

22
Up 12am. Cup of tea and bikkies. Dep for Gillmans (5700mtrs)1am. Slowly, resting. Arr 5.30am, -15C. Sunrise. Dep 8am for Horombo. Tea and bed 6.30pm.

23
Up 5.30am. Breaky. Dep for Marango Gate 6.30am. Arr 11.30am. To Kibo Hotel, wash clothes. Beers with porters. 4 course group meal. Cards and wine with Roy bed 11.30pm, tired. Full moon.

24
Dep for Moshi and Arusha. Shopping at Arusha. Camp in schoolgrounds.

25
Dep Arusha after market shopping towards Ngorongoro Crater, camp in quarry. Jardia, anti-biotics.

26
Sick all night and morning. Playing with kids in quarry. Dep for crater, dep into base to campsite. Guide talk about animals.

27
Up at dark to crater lake. Lion, jackal, hyena, hippo, rhino, elephant. Lunch 2pm and out again. Very cold.

28
Dep for olduvan Gorge excavations. Went to museum then onto Serengeti Game park. Animals. Light rain. Camped at campsite near lions.

29
Serengeti NP game viewing. Wilderbeast migration. Museum. Silver servive group meal. Roast wilderbeast. Bonfire, drinking red wine, konjaki beer. Bed 2am.

30
Dep for Mwanzai, bush camped.

31
Drove to Mwanza. Market food shopping. Camp show-grounds.

Aug1
Mwanza, washing, haircut etc. Bed 1am.

2
Dep for Rwanda border. Quarry camp. Solid <deleted>.

3
drove 12 hours to another quarry close to Rwanda border.

4
Rwanda border early, no problems. Kigali, shopping. Camp at drop-zone.

5
Dep for Kasine. Slept in hall.

6
Swim Lake Kivu. Through Zaire border ok. Onto Gomo camp grounds.

7
Dep for gorillas at Bahari. Nice scenery along lake Kivu. Camp beside lake. <deleted>s.

8
Gorillas (bahair) excellent. Quarry camped.

9
Dep for Gomo. Camped Lake Kivo.

10
Late start. Wash clother and bath in Lake Kivo. To Goma and onto Virangin NP to prepare for volcano climb.

11
climbed Mt Nyiragonga in Virangu NP.

12
Up 5.30am. Drove towards equator. Lots of hippos.

13
Crossed equator near Lubero and drove towards Beni.

14
Through Beni towards Mambasa.

15
Through Mambasa.

16.    Pygmies. <deleted>s again.
17
Pygmies. Saw okapi animal.

18
Drove, quarry camp. Taking lomitol medication.

19 
Towards Kisingali.

20
Arr Kisangani. Changed money. Played with monkeys. Tried to arrange barge trip but decided against it. Olympic Hotel camp area. Bop City disco. Bed 2.30am.

21
Up early. Towards kasala.

22
Towards kasala. Quarry camp.

23
Towards Lisala through Buna. Camp in abandoned cotton gynery.

24
Towards Boomba. Ferry crossing over Congo. Rain.

25
To Boomba, markets. Towards Lisala. Village camp 6km from Lisala. Hot. Mosquitos.

26
Lisala, towards Geroma.

27
Towards Geroma.

28
Through Geroma towards Banghi. Ferry crossing.

29
Prepare for Central African Republic border. Truck robbed 1am. Drove to Zongo (CAR border). Through customs, couldn't find ferry captain to cross river. Camped outside Zongo police station.

30
Ferry crossing to Bangi. CAR immigration. Post office, markets, onto Tourisr Welcome centre campground. Shower.

31
Catching up washing etc. rain.

Sept1
Public holiday Bangi. Resting.

2
Bangui to apply for Nigerian visa and shopping. Red wine at pub. Bed without tea.

3
Bangui.

4
Up 3am <deleted>s and spews. Into town to get Cameroun visa and post letters. Jardia spewing. Taking flagyl  tablets. Couldn't get Nigerian visa. 

5
Dep through Bossembele towards Younde. Bad storms all night.

6
Early drive towards Younde through Boula.

7
CAR/ Cameroun border crossing at Beloko, towards Younde.

8
Towards Yaounde.

9
Ditto, camped just short of Yaounde.

10
Arr Yaounde. Apply Nigerian visa. Explore town. Coffee and pasteries.Presperterian campsite. Headlice. <deleted> solid.

11
Pick up Nigerian visa and shopping. Towards Dualla. Quarry camp. Heavy rain.

12
Camped Victoria beach past Dualla. Black sand. Lovely weather. Post office.

13
Swimming. Made pizzas. Heavy rain.

14
Through Yaunde, camped school gorunds. Mud-matting.

15
ditto

16
Cameroun/ Nigerian border

17
Towards Kano. Quarry camp. Rain.

18
Up 4.30am. Drove 600km. Arr Kano 10pm. Central Hotel camp ground.

19
Washing. Chinese for tea. Bed 2am.

20
Kano. Markets, dye pits, camel market, palace, mosque and museum. Went to flying club. !am curfiew (crime).

21
Kano. Heavy rain. Pick up Niger visa 5pm.

22
Nigeria/ Niger border 5pm. Camp at police station.

23
Late dep towards Agadez. Bush camp at Maradi.

24
Agadez Tourist camp. Desert. Hot and dry.

25
Agadez markets. Bought Agadez cross necklace. Few beers. Apply for Algerian visa. Very hot. Passport stamped at police station.

26
markets. Pick up Algerian visa and dep Agadez through Aibit to camp on runway at uranium mine. Nose bleeds and head cold.

27
Dep Niger, through Niger border towards Algerian border. Pills for cold. Got lost between border posts in desert. Sand-matting. Dehydrated, <deleted>s.

28
Algerian side of border at Assamaha. No problems. Towards Tammanrasset.

29
Drove all day. Arrive Tammanrasset late pm. Too late to change $. Booked into Dassine campsite.

30
Tammanrasset. Change $150US compulsory. PO.

Oct 1
Write letters, wash etc. Hired 4wd to go to Hogah Mountains. Dep 1.30pm arrive Assahren (Horar Mountains) 5.30pm. Walked up mountain for sunset. 2780Mtrs. Bed. <deleted>s still.

2
Up 5.30am. Up mountain for sunrise. Back for breaky. Dep and arrive dassini Camp Tammanrasset 12pm. Post card writing.

3
Walk to town, eat ice-cream.

4
Ditto. Taking Bagram for <deleted>s and cold.

5
PO and markets. Went to Hotel Tahaitare for chai. Went to see Ciel et Ciel at cinema. Walk home. Bed 11pm.

6
Market 9am. Dep 12pm. Drove till 12am.

7
Through In Salah towards El Golea until 1am. Sandblasted..

8
Through Timinoun towards Beni Abbes until 12am. Wind and rain.

9
To Beni Abbes. Sand-dunes.

10
To Bechar. Windy.

11
Algeria/ Morroco border. Ok Algeria side but held on Morocco side (insurance)

12
Day at border post. Walked to fiqui to get passport stamped. Talk to border guards. 

13
Dep border post past Fiqui towards Marakech.

14
ditto

15 Marakesh square to see dancing etc. Coffee.

16
Marakesh square markets. Photo women etc.

17
To Fez.

18
Fez tour Emperial palace, burber station, medina, carpet factories.

19
Walk 6km to town, bus to medina. Explored. Turkish bath (not good). Restaurant Nfassal in old Medina. Excellent food/ show. Acrobats, belly dancing, Very good. Roy broke tamberine.

20
Dep for Tatoun.

21
Tatoun. Apply for Spanish visa. Dep for border crossing at Centa. Ferry to Gibraltar 1 ½ hours. Late arrival. Cold. Drinks and bed.

22
Through Gribralta to Granada. Went to Moorish castle for 2 ½ hours. Camped in forest near lake. Very cold.

23
Madrid. Alpine campsite 5pm. Tea and bed.

24
Madrid, apply for French visa. Beers. Pick up visa 4pm. Left for San Sebastian.

25
Spanish/ French border. Arrive Sas Sebastian 4pm. Through Bordeux towards paris. Wet, rain, cold. Bamped Sth of Bungos.

26
catholic Cathedral of St maria at Bungos. Onto Tours. Head and chest cold.

27
Shamps Cathedral in Tours. Bush camp.

27
Calais

28
Ferry crossing to Dover. Bus to London. Hunters House Earls Court 6pounds/ night. Bed 1am.

29
London

Nov 8
Up 5.30am. Tube to Heathrow. Dep for Athens 1 hour late Pan Am 9.30am. Arrive Frankfurt 12pm. Missed connection. Put up at Ramada Hotel. Went into town, not much fun. Bed 12.30am.

9
Breaky, dep Hotel 8am. Dep Luthansa flight to Athens. Dep 9.20am. Arr 12.30pm. Bus to Syntagma Square. Walk to Georges Guest House. Into square for beer and to Plaka. Bed 12am

10
Move to Hotel Tenbi 550Dr for 1 night. Went to apply for new passport at Tourist office, but shut. Accropolis for sunset. Jardia. Anti-biotic. Went to English pub till 3am.

11
 Australian embassy for passport. Confirmed island flights and England flights. Ploughman pub.

12
Hilltop restaurant for tea.

13
Aust Embassy. Reservations for Hotels. Got 25000Dr on MC $300A

14
Ploughmans pub and William of Orange Pubs

15
Walk to Amonica and Stanlet Hotel, train station. Bed early

16
Washing...

17
ditto

18
ditto

19
Look around Plaka. Ditto

20 
Ditto.

21
Move to Hotel Hempies.

22
Changed $100us

23
Bus to terminal. Dep Athens Olympic Airways 8am to Crete. Arr 8.50am. Hotel Petra. 2500Dr. Palace of Maria at Knossis. Tea at open air markets. Rain. Cool.

24
Dep for Rhodes (Lindos) 7.30pm, Arr 10.10pm. Hotel Spartalis 3883Dr. Bus to Agios Nikolaos. Open air markets. 

25
Rhodes

26
Dep 7.10am, Arr Athens 8.25am. Buss to Aust Embassy for passport extension. Ok. Dep Athens 1.40pm, Arr Mikinos 2.30pm. Hotel Leto.

27
Dep Mykonos 5.20pm. Arr Athens 6.10pm. Taxi to Kalifate. Cold, windy.

28
Japan Visa Application. 

29
GoTour Corinth, Epeolivas, Naples.

30
Plaka, Temple of Posidon.

Dec1
delphi. Held up in potatoe farmer blockade.

2
Athens. 

3
Brit-rail pass, got Jap Visa. Hotel Aphrodite 2000Dr

4
Dep 8.15am for London arr 12pm. Stopover Frankfurt 2 hours.

5
Breaky Earls Court. Hired car. Dep London 12pm. Drove to Bourenmouth arr mid-pm. Went to Westbourne to nice pub for tea. Cold and wet.

6
dep for Exeter. Look at Anglican abbey. Warm, sunny. Drove Sth to Torquay along coast. B7B, tea at cafe.

7
Torquay/ Exeter inland route to Caerphilly castle. Onto Brecan Crossed 3 mile bridge into wales. Nice, green and brookes.

8
North to devils Bridge, to Aberystyth and through lakes district to Dolgellan.

9
Towards Carnarfor through Llanfachreth and Barmouth over Mawddach River. Onto betres-y-coed and Caenaffor to Prince of wales palace for 2 hours. B&B, bed. 
 

Was there a shag or BJ in there anywhere?

[sipi]

9 hours ago, 2baht said:

But............................!

I can tell you want me to say where my favourite squid fishing spot is, well I deliberately deleted that part. It's not happening.