Catch up! Catch up!

There is never enough time to write and always so much more to do than is physically possible in the time I have in any one place! At least this shall give me an appetite to return. I really feel like all I'm doing is dipping my toes in the water here. Hopefully Nepal will be better, as it's a much longer stop and I'll actually be working there, all going to plan.

So, Africa....gonna skip Knysna and Jeffreys Bay here and dive straight into the safari! Really good fun, we did a self drive one, praying that the baboons wouldn't come and rip out wing mirrors off. They didn't and we had a fantastic day, had a mother elephant and her baby 4 feet away from the car (a little too close I felt), warthogs running out in front of the vehicle and a million huge tortoises plodding along without much concern for anything other than vergeside grass. Also saw buffalo, zebras, ostriches and a mongoose (of all things)! John poked fun at me for getting excited about dung beetles ('But they're flightless! The only one of their kind!') He still seemd to think sticking my head out the window to look at poo was a bit weird. Guess I can agree.

We drove back from Jeffreys Bay to Cape Town via Route 62 (gorgeous drive if you ever go, beautiful, the roads are very good in South Africa, it made up for missing out the Chapman's Peak). On the way home we came across Chandelier's Ostrich Rides and Races. - Lou goes :D -. 10 minutes later (after having a tame zebra stick its head through the car window and slather all over John) I'm sat on an ostrich. They're very powerful, hard to ride, you kinda slip off no matter what you do! I felt a bit bad for the birds...don't think I'd want to encourage that kind of treatment of animals...but it was definitely an experience I'll never forget.

It was worse at Kalk Bay. There was a fishing boat going out to sea, loads of guys holding one end of the net on the shore. They had a catch within 20 minutes; I went over, excited to see an authentic African fishing haul. They were big fish, as long as my arm, very powerful, I was laughing in surprise at their strength. And then suddenly this horrible realisation crept over me that they were suffocating. The fisherman threw them further up the beach as they tried to kick themselves back into the sea. A group of people gathered round, still laughing in delight as I had been a few seconds before. One woman picked up the still flipping fish by the tale, laughing as her husband took a picture. It had blood foaming from its gills. They all made this weird yelping noise, sounded like a distress signal to me, this tiny squeak almost drowned out by the laughter. I didn't know fish could make noise.

What don't I know about animals? I'm sure they feel pain; what organism would survive if it didn't have aversion to life threatening situations? Maybe they don't feel it like we do but there's no way of knowing that. But we assume we do; we laugh as we watch fish bleed on the beach.

From Africa to India. Stopped over in Qatar for 12 hours (in between flights). They have some fantastic architecture there in Doha, but it's obviously still very undeveloped...there are huge swathes of building sites. Would like to go back in 10 years or so and see it then.

I'm currently in India. Dehli is, quite possibly, the most insane place in the world. For example...road signs and markings indicate that we should be seeing two lanes of orderly traffic going in one direction. Erm...death defying 6 lane chaos is what we dive into, complete with cows, beggars, desperate pedestrians diving in front of us, and lines of necklace-wearing goats being whipped down the street. Drivers seem to believe that honking their horn is essential to their survival. They are probably right.

The pollution here is obvious. You can't see from one end of a street to the other because of the smog. Every few minutes you hear hideous productive coughing and the inevitable phlegm splat on the pavement as the victim spits. I can't really say I blame them; Dehli is the only place where I've inhaled through my mouth and actually been able to chew on the contents.

Beyond this cacophony of sensory information, the vibrancy of India shines through. You go from intense disgust to absolute delight in seconds; walking past an open air latrine into the incense of the bazaar; from a hobbling beggar to a beautifully embroidered sari; from the aggressive invasion of a lying tout to the calm and peace of a temple.

IN. SANE.

I'm now in the foothills of the Himalayas, near Dharmsala (this is basically as close to Tibet as you can get without actually being there). Much more chilled out.