Turkish Sweets...

Turkish Sweets

We didn't know this but Istanbul is full of bakeries and cafes that serve yummy sweets, from cakes, chocolates, cookies to traditional Turkish sweets like lokum, churchkhela and of course dondurma!

Turkish Haircut

So after travelling through some of Thailand, all of India and Nepal, it was time to get a hair cut again, here in Istanbul.

Tips for traveling safe in India

We've finished our 1.5 months India trip. We've done a lot but it went really fast now that we are looking back. We are happy to report that everything went fine - no food poisoning, no theft, no accident!

But we were very careful everywhere we went in India as we've heard a lot about various types of scams including overpricing, theft, touts, commission agent, transport scams....... our motto in India was safety first!

So here are some things we did in order to avoid problems.

Goa photos

.....finally we were on the beach (again). Goa is very different from all other states we've visited in India.

For one thing, the traffic was not as crazy as other big cities, so we were able to rent a motorbike and drove around. Fun!

A lot more foreigners here than any other places we've visited in India, a lot of Russians.

The water was not as clear as some other beach we've been to but good enough! It was just so nice to get away from all the honking of the cars / rickshaws and relax by the beach.

Final train trip in India: Mumbai to Goa

We've taken our last train trip in India - yet another long, loooong trip, but we're happy that it's the last one we've planned to take.
This one was from metropolitan Mumbai to relaxed Goa.

Did I mention it's our last one?

Mumbai Photos

People sleeping on the platform of CST station

Explored the city of Mumbai: visited Dharavi Slum - supposedly one of the city's largest slums. Then drove a few km south to Altamount Road - one of the most expensive streets in the world. Took some pictures of Antilia - a 27 story personal residential complex of  Mukesh Ambani (the chairman of Reliance industries limited). Apparently, it is the most expensive home in the world, employing over 600 staff to maintain the residence.....crazy!

Tried Japanese restaurant called 'Kofuku' in Mumbai. Very colorful fusion 'sushi'... (photo below)

Did a little Lonely planet-guided walk tour around Gateway of India...and a visit to Mani Bhavan - Mahatma Gandhi's museum. Interesting.

Photos from Jaipur, the Pink City of India

Photos from Jaipur, the capital city of Rajasthan - delayed in uploading as my laptop broke while in Jaipur!!! :-(


We wondered around the Old city, aka Pink city! (known as 'Pink city' because of the color of the stone, not because it's particularly gay friendly)

Taj Mahal, Agra Fort & Fatehpur Sikri

We finally got to see Taj Mahal!!!  It was very beautiful. Agra Fort was impressive. Fatehpur Sikri was .....disappointing.

Fun with Vodafone India

This is the only logo in this post..

One of the things we've decided to do in countries where we'll spend a bit of time, is to get local sims for our phones.
In Thailand, it was a breeze..
However, in Kolkata, India, the story was a bit different...

Varanasi - A walk along the ghats

We didn't get up for sunrise, so we did our tour of the Varanasi ghats in the full, blazing heat of the day.

We may not have seen the magical-ness of 'sunrise over the Ganges', yet..

So what did we see?

Pokhara to Varanasi - Border crossing from Nepal to India

The time had come to leave the peaceful city of Pokhara, and return to noisy, busy India.
We had decided against flying, both for cost reasons (US$200+ /person) and (mainly) to get the experience of going over-land.
We were heading to Varanasi!

Pokhara photos

Beautiful Phewa Lake in Pokhara, Nepal