The OzBus Diaries

So what's next for the OzBus Diaries and its author?

2011-07-01T14:43:00.000+01:00

Hey, see I am still alive, honest, just not been giving this blog the attention it deserves, as usual.

I am trying to get better at keeping this up to date and as usual I will start my post with the promise to start writing here more regularly and will probably blog again in a couple of months and apologise for not doing it sooner but you all know this part of my charm!

So what is my excuse this time? Well I have been busy getting on with life and working out what direction to head in. After two and a bit years back in the UK I have decided it is not the place for me. So at start of this year I pulled myself together and went job hunting overseas, my goal was to get a sponsored role in Sydney and move back to Oz permanently.

I began by researching PR firms in Sydney, trying to find the right fit for me and my experience then got in touch with the top ones and began the process. It was slow going to start with then a couple of months ago a phone interview went well, was followed up with a Skype interview, a couple of tests and before I knew it, a job offer!

So now I am a week away from leaving the UK for good for a new life in Sydney. This will not be the crazy travelling adventure that the rest of this blog has been dedicated to over the years but it will be certainly be an adventure, anyone who wants advice on emigrating feel free to get in touch and I can share what I have learnt and keep your eyes out for future posts on how life in Sydney is going.

From then to now....

2011-03-16T11:57:00.001Z

I returned from my travels in Feb 2009, over two years ago and rather than just carry on from today without filling in the blanks I thought I would give any of you that are interested a quick summary of the last two years so here goes:

Moved 4 times in the first seven months before eventually setting up home in Clapham Junction
Got a rescue dog from Battersea, she is a border collie and will be 13 this May (she was 11 when we got her)
Went back to work in the tech PR industry
Ran the London Marathon
Turned 30
Did a lot of "London tourism" making sure I had seen all the city had to offer (including the Great British Duck Race)
Went to Germany twice (once for a stag do, once for the Christmas Markets)
Went to Dubai on holiday
Went to Ireland a lot!
Won an electric bike and now brave the traffic most days on the way to work (buses and taxis are not my friends)
Went on the Orient Express (to Kent) and got engaged along the way
Got lens replacement and laser eye surgery meaning I can see unaided for the first time since I was four
Began planning my wedding, in Sydney, at the end of 2011
Set up an Australian wine Twitter @boutiquecellar
Lots of other things that I can't remember right now and are probably not that interesting anyway...

And I think that covers the highlights of the last two years and brings me up to date so watch this space for new and hopefully exciting musings on life the universe and everything and I wouldn't be surprised if travel and wine continue to be strong themes going forward.

American Invasion

2011-03-16T11:36:00.000Z

Just before our American Invasion kicked off we returned to Oz once more and went back to Adelaide to spend Christmas and New Year with friends before heading to the states.

We had a great Christmas, enjoyed the sunshine, spent time chilling out and generally recharged the batteries ready for what would be the final leg of the trip.

We left Oz in early January and boarded the flight to LA, which is one of the weirdest flights I have ever been on, it was 17 hours long, we took off at 6:50am and landed at 6:30am the same day having crossed the international date line on route, the jet lag was bad to say the least!

We stayed in a motel near Hollywood and took in the sites of LA. We did an open top bus tour, walked down Hollywood boulevard, want to see the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, visited Universal Studios and went to Disney (which was a big disappointment). It was nice to be on "holiday" for a change rather than just backpacking. It was also a little bit of a culture shock after so long in Oz and the food in America left a lot to be desired after the fresh seafood and great restaurants we had left behind in Oz (although I was a fan of the doughnut breakfast!).

After we had sampled the delights of LA it was off to Sin City and after a short flight and cab ride we were checking into Circus Circus on the Las Vegas Strip. We spent a few days eating fried delicacies from various all you can eat buffets, meeting entertaining characters like Prez, our favourite blackjack dealer in Vegas. He taught us the difference between a bitch and a whore, apparently a whore sleeps with everyone, a bitch sleeps with everyone but you :-)

We also took in a show at Ceasers Palace where we saw Bette Middler live which was very entertaining. We saw very tired looking lions on display in the middle of a casino, saw dolphins who were apparently being kept for conservation reasons learning tricks and performing for onlookers and a very cute leopard cub called Java.

We tried to do a day trip out to the Grand Canyon but this got cancelled last minute (after a 6am start) as the other people on the trip had got their dates wrong and would not be in Vegas till the next week. After a few hours back in bed we hit the tables again and lost the remainder of our spare dollars before packing up ready for the next stop, San Francisco!

We arrived in San Fran and checked into a hotel near Fisherman's Wharf. Fresh seafood and good food were once again on the menu and we ate our fill while we were there. We visited Alcatraz and toured the city on Segways (you know, the weird two wheel standy up things that were a big fad years ago) which is a great way to see the city and not have to walk up all the hills. We also made sure we visited the sea lions and ran into an old friend from home while we were there, it really is a small world after all (a ride that was not even open when we went to Disney in LA!)

From San Fran it was on to Seattle to stay with my better half's family for a while. We enjoyed home comforts once more, visited the Space Needle, went on a food and, you guessed it, wine tour and learnt about the history of Seattle.

After Seattle we flew to New York and jumped straight onto a connecting flight to Bermuda (along with one of our bags, the other followed about three days later!) where some old uni friends had moved to a few years previously. This strange little island in the middle of the ocean has some interesting little querks and is well worth a short visit. We toured the 22 sq mile island on a hired scooter, visited historic sites, marvelled and the limestone roofs designed to capture and filter the rainwater (the only source of fresh water on the island), enjoyed the night life and had minor heart attacks at the prices of everything ($7 for a pint of fosters!). We stayed a couple of days longer than expected as a gale force win closed the airport but we then took our penultimate flight to New York for our last stop on the world tour.

In New York we visited the out of town factory shops, wondered through Time Square, went up the Empire State Building, visited Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, caught up with a friend we had met in New Zealand and visited some spectacular restaurants, including one where I had a burger that was stuffed with ribs! So with full stomachs, a new wardrobe and a tear in our eye we boarded the final flight home.

After 18 months on the road, 23 countries and some of the most amazing experiences it was time to go home, I hope those of you who have stuck with me throughout this story have enjoyed reading about it, I know I have enjoyed writing about it. I am sorry it has taken so long to finish but finished it is, the next post will be a quick summary of from when we got home to present day and then....who knows, I have not quite decided on what the future of the OzBus Diaries will hold but I am sure there are still adventures to be had and I plan on having them at some point in the not too distant future....

Kiwi Krusades

2011-03-15T16:51:00.000Z

Next stop on the trip was New Zealand, it had been my job to plan this part of the trip so shockingly enough not much was planned before our arrival! We had immigration issues on the way over with Qantas asking us to do some things that sounded very illegal but we eventually made it across the sea to New Zealand and boarded the Magic Bus (this is a name of a tour company not just a strange turn of phrase).

We spent three weeks touring the country and saw and did a lot of cool things and met some great people along the way, highlights included:

Zorbing in Rotorua
Black Water Rafting in Waitomo
Wine tasting (for a change)
Beer tasting (where we discovered our new American was a huge light weight)
Traditional Maori cooking and entertainment
Touring Milford Sound by boat
Seeing rabbits being sheared for their fur
Jet boating over rapids
Sailing on Lake Taupo in a boat that used to belong to Errol Flynn
Heli rafting (white water rafting where you get a helicopter to the start of the rapids)
Touring the Lord of the Rings Scenery (more my thing that my better half's)
Swimming with wild dolphins
Seeing a real live Kiwi (not a New Zealander, the bird)
Visting the Ice Bar in Queenstown

Some not so great moment that still made for interesting stories included:

Not skydiving cause I was to fat :-(
Having out pillows stolen by the YHA
Not being able to climb the Hans Joseph Glacier due to bad weather
The company on the wine tour (the guy had a shaved head and a British Bulldog tattoo all the way down his right arm and a very high pitched brummie accent
Me not planning very well and us having to pay for a flight to get us back to Auckland to get our flight back to Oz in time

New Zealand is a great place to visit and I would recommend it to anyone, if you want to hear more about any of the above drop me a line and I will happily indulge you...

Sydney Take 2

2011-03-15T16:29:00.000Z

So after 13 weeks on the road we got back to Sydney and managed to get a private room at hostel called the Wooduck Woolloomooloo in Sydney free of charge as long as we took on the job of pancake chefs. The hostel offered a free pancake breakfast to its guests and someone had to cook for the 200 backpackers every day. That someone was destined to be us!

We settled into life in the hostel, I got a second job putting up gazebos to bring some extra cash in and just as I got going with this also landed the job of night manager at the hostel so after doing a couple of back to back day and night shifts I gave up the gazebo gig. We sold the camper van for a profit (even after all the repairs), and while we were there the hostel changed ownership and most of the staff left leaving my better half and I to manage the hostel which came with a free room and a pay packet!

We toured the Hunter Valley wine region, climbed the harbour bridge, took part in hostel pub crawls, acted as surrogate parents for a lot of 18 year old back packers and planned for our upcoming trip to New Zealand.

You would honestly be amazed by some of the questions we fielded, like how do I wash my clothes, what do I do if I get cold at night and what do you mean I have to move out if I don't pay? It was a very interesting experience with the breaking up of over anxious, sexually charged backpacker frolics, overindulging backpackers soiling themselves in reception and the glass door at reception becoming invisible to the drunken eye and the comedy walking into doors that followed!

Our time flew by and soon we were packing up and getting ready to head on to New Zealand as our 12 month visas for Australia were about to run out, the adventure was still not over but it was entering the home stretch...

Weeks 6-13 of Sircling Australia

2011-03-15T16:03:00.000Z

It is finally time for to get the travelling part of this blog finished so I can get back to random musing on life the universe and everything.

As my trip around Oz finished a few years back now I am going to wrap this with a summary of the rest of my trip round the costs of Oz then do a quick post on hostel life in Sydney followed by a summary of our trip round NZ and one more on the journey home via the states. Then one final post on returning home to now before I get back to regular blogging about stuff!

So let's get started, when I last posted (September 2008) we had just pulled into Broome, we spent the night checking out the staircase to the moon, a rather cool effect caused by the full moon rising over the sand flats, enjoyed the festival that surrounds this and chilled out in our camp site for a few days. Before hitting the road again and heading down the West Coast we also visited the the Willie Creek Pearl Farm (www.williecreekpearls.com) and enjoyed some freshly shucked oysters straight out the sea.

Now the West Coast is an under visited treasure in my opinion. What it lacks in luxury it makes up for in natural splendour, we spent a couple of weeks making our way down the coast, camping in national parks and of course, snorkelling! The best thing about the West Coast is the Ningaloo Reef. It is easily a match for it's much more famous East Coast cousin but has the advantage of being as little as 50m off shore in some places so no need for 2 day boat trips just to see it.

We went out on glass bottomed boats, drift snorkelled, dodged jellyfish and shared our dinner with a very curious wallaby and her Joey. We saw wild dolphins come right up to the shore at Monkey Mia, visited Sharks Bay and loved every minute of the back to basics tour down the coast. If I could change one thing it would be to find a way to have a fresh water shower along the way. By the time we pulled into Perth after two weeks of snorkelling, camping and washing in slat water my skin felt like it was cracking! The fresh water showers at the hostel were a welcome change!

So now we had made it to Perth and decided it was time for bit of culture in the way of wine tour. We booked an wine cruise up the Swan River followed by a tour round local wineries. The guide took an instant shine to me as I am from the Midlands and he was originally from Derby. We had a great day and our guide made sure we were kept well supplied with wine (especially at one of the wineries that had double booked us and asked him to serve for them - full glass tasting is a dangerous game). We returned to the hostel at the end of day a tad worse for wear with several cases of wine for the rest of the trip.

I was not a huge fan of Perth but did like Fremantle, which is just outside Perth, and we visited the Fremantle prison while there as well. We also went a trip over to Rotnest Island where we tried our hand at cycling and soon decided we were a little bit too out of shape for this and had a strange moment of fear while snorkelling where we were sure something was out there!

From here we headed down to Rockingham where we took a visit to Penguin Island, you can guess what we saw there! We opted for the Penguin only tour, not wanting to pay extra to see the Dolphins as well, turned out to be a good move as when we got off the boat on Penguin Island there was a dolphin playing in the water right by the jetty!

Next came Albany and the Esperance, both nice enough places but not much to report here apart from the fact that Esperance was to be the start of the scariest part of the trip so far.

When we headed off from Esperance we decided to take a short cut that would save us a lot of driving and get us to our next major stop, Adelaide, a lot quicker, cutting out a big chunk of the long flat and uneventful Nularbor Plain, which is huge limestone plain. The short cut involved a few 100 km off roading but the track was well marked out and we felt it would be worth it.

Well we got off to a good start and were making good time, then we hit the first "puddle", which was about half as deep as the car, after narrowly avoiding sinking the car and pulling free we noticed that there were tracks cut in by previous off roaders that missed out these flooded sections of track and having spotted these we were back on track and dodged the waterlogged sections.

It was while driving round one of these waterlogged sections that we came to a cross roads and after much debate turned left, we carried on for about 100km then the track seemed to just end. Having miss placed confidence in the track we assumed it had just been overgrown by the bush blocking our path so put the pedal to the metal and went straight through the bush to be greeted by wide open space and no track. Determined to keep going we drove in a straight line hoping to find the track again but after while realised we were in a strange clearing rather than on a track.

We stopped to think about our next move, noticed a large group of Kangaroos circling us and got a suspicious sinking feeling. This turned out to be the car actually sinking as the clearing was in fact a large marsh or bog and whenever we stopped we began to sink. So it was in the middle of nowhere in Western Australia, with no phone signal, nobody expecting us anywhere for a good week and a large 4x4 sinking in the marsh that I truly believed that this may be the end of it all, it had been a good run but it seemed this was it.

A minute later I mentally slapped myself round the face and heroically decided to send my better half out of the car, into the marsh with the 6ft tall Kangaroos, wearing flip flops for ultimate snake protection, to find the bush we had driven through so we could get back to the track. She found the bush, was not crushed by a Roo and was not bitten by a snake and a few hours later we were back on the right track with only 200km more to go till we reached the road again!

The last 200km were eventful as well, we found a group of people with a large camp fire in the middle of nowhere and considered stopping to stay the night with them until the thought "that's how people die in horror movies" entered our minds. We found a tree covered in shoes and underwear that we still don't really know much about and a Kangaroo jumped over the bonnet while we doing a 110k/h and just missed the windscreen but at some ridiculous time in the morning we made it to a road house, checked into a motel and crashed, thankful to have made it and thankful the worst was behind us....

The next morning, despite concerns from my partner that she was sure the strange mark on the back wheel was something we should look at and that the car looked lopsided I just topped up the air in the tyres, realised we had a flat, changed it and carried on...a few hours later the car started making a horrid noise so in typical man fashion I decided if I took over the driving it would be fine. I chucked it into 4 wheel drive and carried on, the noise got worse...

We pulled into a local town and rocked up to the mechanics, he was on holiday the local Footy team had one the cup and were on tour, he would be back in 3 weeks! So we carried on to the next town. We were about 30km away when the car made a cracking noise, we pulled over to take a look and instantly noticed that both back wheels were at a 45 degree angle to the rest of the car, we would later find out that we had snapped the rear diff and the rear axle while off roading and the rust that had been holding it all in place since it snapped had finally given out.

A local took pity on us an pulled over and arranged for us and the car to be shipped to Minnipa, a very small town with a petrol station, 3 grain silos, a motel and a mechanic. We stayed here for 3 days while the mechanic, who was great, sourced a whole new rear end for us and had it shipped to Minnipa. We became a tourist attraction for the locals, with invites for tea coming regularly as we sat around the mechanics workshop but eventually we were back on the road and raring to go.

Next stop was Adelaide were we stayed with friends from the OzBus, recharged our batteries, went on more wine tours and enjoyed staying in a house with running water and a bathroom that was not shared with 20 backpackers.

The next step on the lap of Oz was a visit to a little town called Ouyen in Victoria to visit some more OzBus friends, before carrying on to Melbourne to meet up with an old school friend of mine. We visited Ramsay Street and went to the Melbourne fair to see the fireworks (which were cancelled due to wind!)

We then got to boat over to Tasmania where it seems all the bends from the rest of Oz are hiding as long straight roads were replaced by winding tracks. We went a brewery and prison tour in and visited Tazmazia (a place with lots of mazes..it was awesome). We stayed on a haunted site where I was convinced in the middle of the night that there was someone/thing trying to steal my beer and would not let me other half move till I was sure the beer was safe, it was an interesting night to say the least!

We finished of the 13 week lap of Oz with a leisurely drive back to Sydney, did some whale watching, and got ready for our return to Sydney where we were hoping to land some work in a hostel for a couple of months to finish off our time in Oz, sell the car and plan the long journey home...

So there it is, it took me a long time but there is a whirlwind version of the 2nd half Sircling Stralia, Sydney take 2, Kiwi Krusades and American Invasion coming soon (and I actually mean it this time, honest!)

Very slow leaf turning process...

2010-05-26T09:01:00.000+01:00

It seems I was a tad ambitious at the end of March when I promised the imminent completion of my travelling saga, I have not given up on finishing my story and then getting back to regular blogging but life has been busy recently so if you have enough patience and want to know how the trip ended just keep popping back every now and again and one day it will all be here for your reading pleasure...

Turning over a new leaf

2010-03-31T16:48:00.000+01:00

So as those of you who still visit this site will know it has become more of a memorial to my travels than anything else but still seems to function as a reference for many of you who are looking to find out more about the infamous OzBus and the experiences of that first group of nutters who embarked on the trip.

Well that is all about to change. Over the next couple of weeks the final chapters of my travels will appear (finally) and a new and improved blog will begin to emerge.

I am no longer the care free traveller who toured the globe and wrote most of the content you can find here or the angst ridden individual who began the project with his daily musings on life, the universe and everything but that is no reason to stop sharing my unique and often random perception of life with the few people who chance across this site.

Once the travel notes are up to date I will begin to blog on the everyday experiences of life as a working Londoner, this content will range from musings on the world of PR and social media (my day job) through to the things that happen to me every day that I feel like sharing with the world. I am sure there will still be a few travel tales as well but the trips will be a week or so long rather than 18 months!

Expect to see a blow by blow account of the agony that will be the London Marathon including detailed descriptions of the damage I will inevitably do to myself and other amusing stories. I have a trip to Dubai coming up in June and will be sure to bore you all with the vast amount of relaxing and sunbathing I plan to do.

Hopefully some of you will find my tales amusing and I will bring a smile to a few faces over the coming months, then it will all be worth it!

London Marathon 2010

2009-10-21T14:05:00.001+01:00

I am still a rubbish blogger as I have not got round to updating all the bits I need to but in the mean time...I have signed up to run the London Marathon in 2010 for the MS Society so if you feel inclined to donate to a good cause please use the widget on the site.

Thanks.

I am the worst blogger ever - sorry!

2009-08-27T13:10:00.002+01:00

To the very limited number of you who still visit this blog I extend me most sincere apologies, I have let this project get away from me and have been very lax but I can promise you all a re-vamp of the blog and the completion of my travellers tale in the not too distant future.

In a weeks time I will be moving for the 4th time in 7 months and with the move will come the creation of a work space for me to carry on my writing so hopefully, unless something else comes up to take up my free time new entries will be on the way soon!

Thanks for your patience and see you all soon!

COMING SOON!!!

2009-05-07T14:23:00.002+01:00

Weeks 6-13 of Sircling Australia

I did finish the trip but not the blog posts which was very irresponsible of me and I plan to write this wrong in the very near future!

Sydney - Take 2

After circumnavigating Oz I returned to Sydney where I somehow ended up managing a backpacker hostel in Woolloomooloo. A short story summing up the trials, tribulations and downright hilarious moments from my two month stint as a hostel worker is on its way over the coming weeks.

Kiwi Krusades

After I had used up every last bit of my working visa and had to leave the wonderful world of Oz I hit the travelling trail again aboard the Magic Bus in New Zealand, tales of my 3 week whistle-stop tour of NZ coming soon.

American Invasion

After a brief return to Oz for Christmas I began the journey home but if for one second you think I just hopped on a plane to the UK you are sorely mistaken and have obviously not been reading this blog for long, I hit LA, Vega, San Fran, Seattle, Bermuda (not technically in the US but go with it this time ok?) and finally NYC. The story of the final leg of what turned out to be an 18 month adventure will be coming to a computer screen near you this summer.

And that as they say is that, not to spoil the ending for anyone but I am now back in the UK, back at my old job in PR with the agency I was with before I left and getting use to life in one place...

...of course this in no ways means my travels are over, I still have a lot of Europe to visit and now it is close enough to visit got a long weekend so watch this space and who know what you will see!

Sircling Stralia = Week 5

2008-09-14T04:05:00.001+01:00

States Visited – 3
Kilometres Travelled – 3,237 (plus 120km without the car – all will be explained below!)

As you can already see from the amount of km travelled this was a heavy driving week but it was also the week where if it could go wrong it did!

It did not start off that way though, we began by driving over 1,000km from Mt Isa to Daly Waters, an obscure Northern Territory town that is basically just a pub, but a great one! We had been here before when we came though the centre of Oz on the OzBus so were keen to come back for the Beef and Barra on the BBQ and relive the memories of the last visit, after this we headed on to our next stop which was to be Timber Creek. This had been mentioned in one of our guide books and we decided it would be a good place to stay the night. When we got there we decided this was not the case, it was another middle of nowhere place and we decided to keep going.

About 60km up the road from here, essentially in the middle of nowhere the car decides it has had enough of this and stops, dead, the whole instrument panel shuts down and just as we pull off the road to see what is going on the engine cuts our to. The sun is beginning to set and the the very kind people who stopped to check we were ok as soon as we stopped were told we would be fine, “I have a jump starter, I am sure I can get it going” I had foolishly said! After another half an hour we manage to hitch a ride with some fellow backpackers in a VW Combi and make it the 60km back to the Turkey Creek Roadhouse. Being in the middle of nowhere also means your mobile does not work but using the roadhouses payphone I called up 24/7 Roadservices to come to my rescue! I pay my membership fees so they should come to my assistance right, the name 24/7 certainly implies this and the fact they are “Australia Wide” means I will be fine…ha ha ha ha!

I was told I was too far from anywhere for them to do anything tonight and that as I was 60km away from the nearest civilisation that the tow back would cost me an arm and a leg and several other body parts! Left with no assistance we had to stay the night at the fully booked out roadhouse in a staff cabin (charged at full rates of course!) and then see the mechanic in the morning when he opened up shop.

To say the mechanic in Timber Creek is not the life and soul of the party is an understatement in the extreme, after explaining what had happened and saying that I thought the battery might be buggered (bearing in mind I have the mechanical knowledge of a gerbil on vallium) he simply sells me a battery for an exorbitant fee and sets me on my way! Another 60km hitchhike with a very nice family who were the only ones out of about 8 cars to stop got us and our new battery back to the car.

With the new battery in we were back in business and made it to the Kunurra, a further couple of hundred kilometres along the road. We got here with no problems, checked in to the YHA, which was lovely and breathed a huge sigh of relief, we were out of the woods…can you say famous last words?

That evening we went on a sunset BBQ cruise on the river, saw the impressive local dam, met some very interesting people and had a great evening, The next morning we packed up and headed out to begin our run to Broome, a leisurely two day drive with a few stop offs here and there, at least that was the plan! This time we were only 6km out of town by the time the car gave up and 24/7 Roadservices came through, the tow truck got to us within the hour and we were soon back in Kunurra which thankfully has much more competent mechanics. Turns out the alternator was shot and it would take a couple of days to fly one in so we were not going anywhere just yet!

We had to move to another backpackers for one night as ours was full but it was a little run down so we moved back for our third night and met up with a Canadian girl who needed a ride to Broome so we obliged, for a share of petrol of course!

By the time we left this little town we were ready to reach Broome as quickly as possible and once again covered the 1000+km in a day to pull in to Broome on the last day of week 5, we dropped out hitchhiker at a hostel in town and headed for Cable Beach Caravan Park. The highly eventful week ended with a mini reunion as one of our fellow OzBuser’s is working in Broome at the moment so we passed away the evening with cocktails, tapas and pleasant conversation…

Sircling Stralia - Week 4

2008-09-14T04:02:00.000+01:00

Kilometres travelled – 1702
States visited – 1

Week 4 begins with out return from the SV Whitehaven to solid ground and after pulling our bags out of storage is it was time to hit the road again and head North once more. After discussing it with several people we had decided to give Townsville a miss and head straight to Magnetic Island, a lovely little spot just off the coast. We booked into a hostel called Bungalow Bay and left the car on the mainland.

When we got to the hostel it was a lovely little place, the owners have combined a wildlife sanctuary with a hostel and done it very well. From the wallabies that run around outside the cabins, the possums who come to the bar in the hope of scrounging food to the wildlife park with Koalas, crocs and parrots it was great. We even got a photo with a Koala. The picture I had done showed a very alert slightly shocked looking Koala in my arms. Turns out he was looking shocked as he had just pissed himself on my shirt but hey sometimes you have to go to extremes to get a good photo! Also turns out the Koala was called Dexter and is on Facebook, he is now one of my friends, no really, look up Dexter Koala and you will find him.

Baby Echidnas, snakes, parrots eating seeds out of your mouth, bush walks and gorgeous weather finished off our time on the island and we headed back to the mainland in high spirits and headed towards Cairns, our last stop on the East coast.

Cairns was more of a practical stop than holiday stop for us, there is heaps to do here but we needed to repack the car, get it cleaned, serviced etc. get all our washing done, etc, etc so we spent a couple of days doing this, hitting the shops and so on and prepared for the long hard drive inland to get to Mt Isa in time for the annual rodeo, in its 50th year in 2008 it is in the biggest rodeo in the Southern Hemisphere.

The trip began well, we found a rout from Cairns that by using a 300km long dirt road we could get there without doubling back on ourselves. So we headed off with the plan being to stop at the top of this track for the night and then drive it the next day, sometimes it is a good idea to stick to the plan!

We took one look at the roadhouse/caravan park we had planned to stay in and figured we were better to keep going, this would mean driving about 200km in the dark but we decided to give it a go! Turns out the dark was not the problem, it was around sunset that tragedy would strike! We saw the first four and dodged them easily but the fifth kangaroo to jump out on us was not so lucky and despite my claims that he might be ok, honest, I think he is hopping in a better place now. After this we checked the car over and figured our roo bar had done its job and that we were good to carry on. We made it to the end of the dirt road without any more animals meeting there end despite a few close calls and pulled in to a little town called Hughenden. Here we found a motel for the night and discovered how lucky we had been. The dirt road was pretty much straight the whole way but turns out our roo bar was bent in to the point where left and right turns were not really and option! If there had been a couple more bends our tyre would undoubtedly blown out in the middle of nowhere. A couple of chains and a tree later we had pulled the roo bar out and were back on route!

We pulled in to Isa and were instantly relieved that we had planned ahead and booked our campsite 6 weeks in advance, the whole town was full! We kicked off with a tour of the local lead mine, had a mooch round the shops then went to the opening parade of the rodeo. It was great, local tractors and trucks done up to make the floats and a really great atmosphere, reminded me a lot of a local St Patrick’s Day parade I saw on a quick trip to Ireland earlier this year and I loved it. The rodeo was great, bare back horse riding, bull riding, wild horse races, barrel racing, beer, fast food and heaps of cowboys and we have a great few days here to finish off week 4.

Sircling Stralia - Week 3

2008-08-19T06:58:00.000+01:00

Kilometres Travelled - 939
States Visited – 1

Week 3 began on the beach; quite literally, we woke up to the sounds of the ocean on the other side of the dunes we were camped behind on Fraser Island. We packed up our gear and fired up the 4x4, we were off to see the island!

We cruised along the beach, saw the Mohino Wreck rusting on the shore line, visited Indian Head, one of the three volcanic cores that are responsible for catching the sand that forms the island, saw wild dingoes and had a couple of hairy moments when we thought the car was stuck or broken but we made it through the day. We visited the stunning Lake McKenzie, reminiscent of the lake from The Beach but with much more tourists! It was a lovely sight but was slightly ruined by all the groups of people sat around getting stinking drunk and playing Frisbee and for once this group had nothing to do with me!

We camped on the beach again, about 1km from one of the resorts on the island and headed to the bar for a few beers, this was all well and good till we realised that walking back to the van in the pitch black with the threat of wild dingoes jumping us forefront in our minds was not as much fun as you would think! We made it back without incident and after one more night under the stars headed to the ferry back to the mainland and we were soon on our way to Rockhampton, the cattle capital of Australia.

In Rockhampton we went out for a day with Capricorn Dave, I can highly recommend the Beef and Reef Tour he does to anyone heading this way. As it was quiet season it turned out that me and my girlfriend were the only people on the tour so we got a personalised day out! We toured round in Capricorn Dave’s van, saw wild snakes, echidnas (which apparently is very rare), heaps of wild roos, had a huntsman spider put on our faces for photos, played with scorpions and much more! This also included doing the Ant Dance, which was featured on Jackass. You have to stand on an ant’s nest and see how long you can takes the ants’ biting your bare feet then dance around like a loony to get rid of them! Steve’o lasted 7 seconds, I lasted at least 13 but ony because my girlfriend took so long to take a picture! We finished off the day with dinner at the Ascot Stone Grill where your raw steak is served on hot stone and you cook it yourself as you go.

After Rockhampton it was time for a quick inland detour. We headed through winding hilly roads to Eungella National Park where friends had told us we were pretty much guaranteed to see the Duckbilled Platypus in the wild and we were not disappointed! We got there just before dusk and headed down to the river where we saw several of this undeniable odd egg laying mammal swimming around before bed time. We stayed at a caravan park with an amazing view of the park and left here very pleased that we had gone the extra distance.

The final stop of the week was Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands, a gorgeous place but, as we were about to find out a frustrating one as well! As it was not high tourist season we had planned to show up and grab a last minute deal to sail the Whitsundays for a couple of days on one of the many boat trips. We got in to town, found a hostel and headed to the travel desk. The very nice man behind the counter told us about the various boats and one took our fancy. We booked on and headed off to run some errands and then have a few beers and hit the hay before our planned departure the next morning.

After we had run our errands we returned to the room to drop some stuff off before hitting the bar and then the trouble began! There was a note asking us to come to reception about our trip. This lead to us finding out the boat we had booked on was cancelled and we would have to wait in Airlie Beach a few days or pick another one. We eventually after much debate chose one that was not quite as suited to what we wanted as the first but still looked good. Plus it was quite a bit cheaper. At this point we were still happy enough so we went ahead and were told that the tour desk could not refund us but that the Oz Adventure Sailing, 5 mins walk down the road would give us back the difference when we checked in.

We headed down there and when we went to confirm they offered us the refund, but it did not quite add up, somehow the price had gone up by $40. Normally we might have let this go but these guys had already got our hackles up so after 4 trips back and forth between tour desk and sailing company, several phone calls and about 3 hours we got our $40 back and were booked on the trip leaving the next day. If you are heading to the Whitsundays I recommend booking your boat in advance and if possible not using Oz Adventure Sailing!

The dramas of the day before aside we boarded the boat and had a great two nights on board the SV Whitehaven. The people were fun, the weather was gorgeous, the snorkelling was amazing! We saw a whale just after she had given birth nudging her newborn to make him breath. Turtles, Reef Sharks, Rays and tropical fish filled out vision as we snorkelled and Whitehaven Beach was a rare treat with its white sand and clear waters. The sand is so fine you can even use it clean your gold and silver by rubbing it on your jewellery.

As week three came to a close we went to sleep on the SV Whitehaven with the sky so clear you could see the Milky Way and shooting stars streaked the sky! With the gentle rocking of the boat easing us off to the land of dreams we fell asleep with a slight feeling of sadness as tomorrow it would be back to solid ground and time to get behind the steering wheel again. The Whitsundays had been amazing and is definitely somewhere I will be visiting again someday…

Sircling Stralia – Week 2

2008-08-14T00:40:00.000+01:00

Kilometres Travelled – 731
States Visited – 1

From Surfers Paradise it was on to Brisbane where we had planned to catch up with an OzBus friend who has settled here but as she was out of the country tending to a family emergency we were left to our own devices. We stayed at a little hostel called Chill Backpackers and apart from a lack of sound proofing and mildly disturbing unisex bathrooms it was a nice place.

We visited the Picasso exhibition, walked along the river and enjoyed our stay in this thriving city, we caught up on our shopping, visited the botanic gardens, checked emails, ate, drank and were generally merry. When we had finished our time here we headed out to Beerwah, home of Steve Iriwn’s Australia Zoo, a place I was looking forward to and that my girlfriend was overly excited about from the day we left Sydney!

The day began with rain, never a good thing, and as we were camping, this meant a wagon packed with damp gear but we tried to keep the spirits high. By the time we had grabbed some breakfast the rain had given in and the sun shone for the rest of the day. To say that Australia Zoo was a disappointment is about the nicest I can be about it. The shows were not well done, the commercialism of the place makes you feel dirty and the shameless uses of Steve Irwin’s name and his kids to make money is, in my opinion sickening. I expected more from this famous Zoo and left with a definite feeling of having missed something that was once great but has now fallen by the wayside.

After Beerwah we visited Noosa, stopping off at the Giant Pineapple on the way, and went for a long walk round Noosa Heads which has some amazing vistas. After this we headed to Rainbow Beach where we hoped to head over to Fraser Island for a couple of nights and really put our 4x4 through its paces. When we reached Rainbow Beach on the Tuesday and were met with rain and lots of it. After checking the weather we discovered that the rain was here to stay with no sign of lifting before Friday.

As we have our own wheels and a flexible itinerary we decided to delay our trip to Fraser for a few days and headed to Bundaberg to see the rum brewery there, then back down to Hervey Bay to wait for the weather to break. On the Thursday we were in Hervey Bay and decided to walk up to the shark museum run by a local shark hunter as it looked very interesting. The museum was great but we decided to walk there and underestimated how far it was. As the rain was still constant by the time we got there we were drenched to the skin but managed to keep our spirits up. We finished off our rainy day in Hervey with a trip to the cinema to see The Dark Night and went to bed hoping that the rain would indeed have stopped for our planned trip to Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world and where 4x4 is the only way to travel as there are no roads.

The sun did shine on us on the Friday and we visited Fraser finishing off week two camping under the stars behind the sand dunes in a place that strangely reminds me of Back to the Future 2, where we’re going we don’t need roads…(but they would have helped as the bumpy off road tracks and poor packing caused a few breakages and rattled our bones more than a little)

Quick Apology...

2008-08-03T03:39:00.002+01:00

Sorry to anyone who has been checking for updates on the Sircling Stralia trip. While I once cursed the long driving days on the OzBus it turns out without them it is harder to keep up with my blog writing.

I have added more photos to the album on the right and promise to update you all on the trip as soon as it slows down a little...

Sircling Stralia – Week 1

2008-07-22T14:49:00.000+01:00

Kilometres Travelled – 1204
States Visited – 2

Getting off the starters blocks is often the hardest thing to do and the beginning of our lap of Australia was to be no exception. A combination of a heavy last night, Foxtel being the most annoying company in the world, a flat inspection and it taking a lot longer to pack the wagon than anticipated meant our planned mid morning departure was more of an early afternoon one but we were at least underway!

We decided to miss out a planned trip to Palm Beach to save a little time and headed straight to Newcastle. Here we found ourselves pulling in to the middle of a giant World Youth Day event with hundreds of people marching down the coast, there were even a few nuns and monks hanging around when we got there. It was an interesting diversion and helped to ease away some of the stress of the day.

Next we headed on to Bonny Hills, our planned stop for the first night. Unfortunately by the time we got there the reception of the campsite was closed, the toilets and showers were locked up and we were out of luck! We decided to head on to Port Macquarie and see if we could find anywhere else to lay our heads for the night.

Unfortunately by the time we got there we had just about enough time to grab a bite to eat, there was no cheap accommodation to be had and we were too tired to keep going. So we took full advantage of our Wagon on the very first night! We found a nice little parking space by the beach drew the curtains and went to sleep, not the best first day but we were well and truly on our way.

The next morning we drew back the curtains to be greeted by warm sunshine and drove out to the lighthouse at Tracking Point to see if the whales that migrate up the coast at this time of year would come and say hi. We were in luck, a particularly energetic humpback jumped out the ocean as we came to the top of the hill! A whale watcher who was already there told us he had been doing so for a while and by the time we left he was on about his 30th jump of the morning. Apparently there were a few other whales about but they were staying under as a group of male ones were trying their best moves on the girls without much success.

We then checked out the Sea Acres Rainforest Centre and the wildlife park before carrying on up the coast. Using our camps 4 we had found a rest area with toilets where we could stay for free that night so off we went. After a couple of hours on the road we came close to our stop for the night only to find that road works had caused the rest area to close down. We luckily spotted a sign for a caravan park and headed that way. The reception was again closed but we found a mobile number and managed to get a very nice lady to check us in to a site right on the Bellingen River, we dined on pasta and sauce and relaxed in this lovely little campsite.

Monday saw us visiting the big banana, riding a toboggan down a hill, eating frozen chocolate bananas and heading on to Lennox Head to camp near Lake Ainsworth for a couple of nights. The campsite was ok and we were close to Byron Bay so we headed in there for the day. The weather gave ont about half way through the day and the glorious sunshine soon became rain, we nipped in to the cinema, had a few drinks and headed back to Lennox Head decidedly unimpressed with Byron. We planned to go hangliding the next day then head on. The weather was against us the next morning so that idea was off and we decided to press on to Nimbin instead. We arrived mid morning, visited the campsite the guide book recommended, were shocked that anyone ever recommended the place and found another site round the corner.

We visited the village centre, learnt about the history of Nimbin, visited the museum, discovered this was also the local weed dealing shop (it is a thriving industry for all ages in Nimbin) and then headed back to the camp site to cook bangers and mash and chill out. I have heard mixed opinions of Nimbin but for me it was not a place to stay long. It had a grubby run down feel to it and the type of people who seem to spend weeks here were not the kind I was really looking to meet on this trip so after one night we packed up again and headed out to Surfers Paradise.

Surfers Paradise, where we had planned to just pass through, turned out to be an overnight stay and we had a great night, visited a selection of Irish bars and stayed at a back backer resort called Vegas that had its own resident transvestite who kept calling me sweetheart. While Lennox Head seemed to be what Bryon use to be Surfers seemed to be what Byron is hoping some day to evolve in to and I am glad we stayed longer than planned. So as week two begins we woke up in Paradise, packed the van and headed out to Brisbane, week two begins with a lot of lessons learnt and a fair share of optimism about the trip that lies ahead of us…

Saying farewell to Sydney for now…the East Coast beckons!

2008-07-10T04:48:00.001+01:00

So it is nearly time to leave the harbour city behind for a while. The seven months I have spent here have been great and there is every possibility I will find myself back here time and time again as my life continues to meander along but for now it is time to move on again.

Tomorrow will be my last day at work followed by leaving drinks over at Opera Bar to enjoy the view one last time and say a fond farewell to the friends we have made during our stay. Saturday morning will begin with an early start to pack the last few bits, handover the keys to the flat and head up the coast after breakfast.

The first day will include a trip to Palm Beach, where Home and Away is filmed, a late lunch in Newcastle and then a night camping by the ocean in Bonny Hills. Other highlights of our East Coast run will include:

Port Macquarie where we will visit the Sea Acres Rainforest centre, pop in to the wildlife park and visit Tracking Point Lighthouse
Coffs Harbour, the home of the giant banana
Lennox Head where we will visit Lake Ainsworth, do some 4x4 driving on the sand and maybe indulge in some water sports if the weather holds out
Byron Bay where we can see the Julian Aquatic Reserve and check out the Cod Hole caves
Nimbin, Australia’s most famous hippy commune and apparently a very good place to “relax” for a while ;-)
Brisbane where we can check out what the town has to offer and recharge our batteries with a couple of nights in a hostel
Noosa, the home of Australia Zoo
Fraser Island where we will really be putting our 4x4 through its paces on the worlds largest sand island
Hervey Bay where we hope to catch a glimpse of the whales
Bundaberg, famous for it rum, need I say more?
Rockhampton which I hear is real cattle country and I expect we will sign up to play rancher for a day
The Whitsundays where we shall try our hand a bit of sailing
Cairns will be out last East coast stop finishing off a whirlwind tour as we pull in on the first Sunday in August

After the coast is it time to head West to Mt Isa and Australia’s biggest rodeo before we work our way over to Broome on the West Coast.

I will do my best to post weekly updates from the road and if anyone reading this has any suggestions of extra places to visit along the way please let me know. Adventure is calling and I for one don’t want any missed calls this time round.

Once again it is time for the “last time…”

2008-07-08T01:03:00.002+01:00

Well here we are again, the last few days before travelling becomes my life again and to say I am excited is an understatement in the extreme. The van is kitted out to the max and ready to go. It even had its first fully loaded test drive today which it passed with flying colours. Our flat is becoming increasingly empty as the days go buy as more and more stuff is collected by eBay bargain hunters, posted home, thrown away or given to charity shops (I haven’t actually done the latter yet but will before I leave – promise).

For anyone who has not had to slim there life down to fit into the inside of a rucksack and whatever space you have in your car this can be both a harrowing and liberating experience. When you start to pack up you realise how many luxury items you collect that really do very little other than clutter up your home. Did you really need a wine rack? bean bags? a fibre optic Christmas tree? a cordless phone? They are certainly not much use in a camper wagon. But while it is liberating the harrowing element is that you are deconstructing your life. When you settle somewhere for a while it becomes home and to pack it all up again and leave it all behind can be a sad day. While I was sorting out my keys the other day I realised that once I leave Sydney I will not have a set of house keys anymore! These days there is nowhere that I truly consider to be my home and it is a sad feeling. I am sure in the future I will find home, I thought I had in Sydney but that was not meant to be, not yet. Who knows what the future holds but I plan to enjoy finding out!

Now with a few days left I find myself back where I was before I left London on the OzBus, I keep realising I am doing things for the last time. Yesterday was my last staff meeting at work, today is my last in-house day out at Belrose and Sunday was my last dinner at my favourite restaurant in North Sydney. I have rented my last DVD from McMahons Point Blockbuster, fought for the communal washing machine on Monday evening for the last time and have more than likely done dozens of other things for the last time without even realising it. So I will leave you with this thought, if the next time you do something could be the last make sure you enjoy it as much as you can, do it as well as you are able and remember it for as long as possible.

Pimp My Ride (Pikey Style) – with special thanks to Bunnings, Big W, Supercheap Auto, Spotlight and Howard’s Storage World

2008-07-02T06:52:00.005+01:00

With the date for Sircling Stralia fast approaching I have begun to modify our 4x4 (now named Aero – as in Mitsubishi Paj(A)ero) for the trip and watching a mini pimp my ride marathon on MTV at the weekend has certainly given me a few good ideas!

We started off with a standard 4x4 seven seater wagon which did not quite go fully flat in the back meaning we were going to be sleeping on a bit of a slope and anyone wandering past could have seen exactly what we were up to due to the lack of window covering. Not ideal to say the least and storage was a bit of a concern as well!

The first job we undertook was curtains, to sleep in a wagon these are essential for keeping the sun out in the day, nosy parkers out at night and keeping the heat in, so our fist stop was Spotlight. We found ourselves some lovely and highly tasteful Tiger print thermal curtains on special and some curtain wire and after a few hours of solid work had them up and ready to go.

Next came the issue of power. Most of our travel gadgets (air bed pump, mini vacuum cleaner, car fridge, power inverter that lets us run the laptop etc) run off the ciggie lighter socket. This is fine when you are driving but when you stop can be a bit of a pain. I looked in to a dual battery system but this was far beyond my mediocre mechanical skills but then discovered the wonder that is a Jumpstarter at Supercheap Auto. This self contained car battery can be used to jump start your car when you let the battery run down and can also power 12v appliances independently.

So we now have power and curtains. Next on the list was the angled sleeping and storage. We have quite a bit of gear for the trip including a pop up Gazebo that gives us a nice big 3x3m room on the back of the van when we stop but takes up a lot of space longwise even when folded down. The solution to this was to remove two side arm rest sections from the middle seats and remove the back seats completely. This means the Gazebo now easily slides down the side of the wagon and allows you to have the middle seats up or down without having to take it out all the time, result! This of course now removed the back seats meaning there was now nothing for the top half of our air mattress to rest on, not ideal.

So the next step would put my DIY skills to the test in a big way. A trip to Bunnings to grab a couple of sheets of MDF and a saw and an evening in the garage lead to the creation of a fixed platform in the rear of the wagon for the bed to rest on and gave us a great storage space underneath it. The addition of another sheet of MDF designed to slide out meant we could store stuff further back than before and still be able to reach them by pulling this sheet forward. An added bonus was the fact that this then formed a handy table at the back of the wagon that is ideal for cooking and washing up on.

Big W then provided some nifty storage boxes that slot in to place on the lower shelf to hold our food and cooking gear, Howard’s Storage World gave us an in car bin and some handy car storage bits and after a reasonably low cash outlay we have turned a simple 4x4 into a place that we can call home. Other add-ons include:

-20L Water Jerry Can With Pump Tap
-Washing Up Bowl
-Folding Camp Table and 4 Stools
-2 Camping Chairs
-Fuel Jerry Can
-12v Powered Air Bed Pump
-USB doobery to turn my laptop in to a TV
-Etc, etc, etc.

Now with less than 2 weeks to go all we really need to worry about is getting our stuff packed, moving out of our flat and waiting for the few mail order items we ordered to arrive, there is nothing in the world that comes close to the freedom of travelling and I for one can not wait to have the feeling again!

Pictures of the finished product are coming soon!

Sircling Stralia – The Beginning

2008-06-25T02:53:00.001+01:00

As I mentioned in a previous post we are heading off on a lap of Australia for our next great adventure and as the departure date draws ever nearer I felt it was time for another update.

With just under three weeks till the off preparations are in full swing, we have bought a Long Wheel Base Mitsubishi Pajero 4x4. It is a monster of a truck and is big enough to fit a double mattress in the back and carry all the gear we will need. It still needs some add ons to make it ready for the trip (curtains etc) but we are working on it this weekend to get it ready.

We have a 3x3m pop up Gazebo for when we are camping so we can have more space and we are currently lightening the load by selling off all our unwanted gear on eBay. The route is being planned for the 1st month on the road ending up in Mt Isa in Queensland for Australia’s biggest Rodeo in early August. After that it will be a long drive across the top end, re-visiting the Daly Waters Pub on route to pick up a blue stubby holder for a friend, who has lost his since his last visit, before we start on the West Coast.

It is an exciting time and I had forgotten how much fun the anticipation before departure is. I now have, excluding today, 12 working days left in the office then it is back to the freedom that can only truly be found while on the road. I will post pictures here soon of the development of the 4x4 from simple automobile to mobile home and once on the road I will do my best to keep the blog up to date.

To anyone thinking about the OzBus downunder tour (www.oz-busdownunder.com) watch this space as we will be covering much of the same ground as this trip will be in March next year so you might pick up some useful tips!

OzBus – The Lonely Planet Version (well nearly!)

2008-06-05T00:29:00.003+01:00

While I was on the road travelling from London to Sydney a little travel guide company called Lonely Planet took an interest in my blog and commissioned me to write an article on the trip for their flightless travel anthology, which is due to be published in August this year.

I worked hard on the article and with the help of the great editing team at Lonely Planet produced a 3,000 word piece on the trip, unfortunately due to the fact that we took a few flights during the trip and some last minute changes to the anthology my article ended up on the cutting room floor.

To say I am disappointed would be an understatement but that is no reason for the article never to see the light of day. So here it is, in all its glory, the article that nearly got me published by Lonely Planet, enjoy!

_____________________

The OzBus Diaries

I am in Kathmandu. Two months ago I was a PR manager in London, about to get on a bus at Embankment that would take me all the way to Australia. And in five weeks’ time I am supposed to be pulling into Sydney on the maiden voyage of the OzBus, a new overland service that belts through Europe before joining the old hippie trail from Istanbul to Sydney.

In Kathmandu everything changes. The passengers of OzBus 1 take control of the trip in an unexpected way: they quite simply decide not to get back on. Two-thirds of us feel it is time to make our own way for a while and this is when our trip turns into the adventure of a lifetime.

***

The story begins in September 2007 when a total of 41 people (38 passengers, one tour leader, one driver and one journalist) left London on the first ever OzBus, full of hope and expectation. The build-up to the trip had been a long one and we were willing guinea pigs who were prepared to accept imperfections in exchange for pioneer status. This was just as well since our bus, hired by the firm at the last minute due to a mix up with the paperwork, seemed more like the coach that used to take me to Blackpool every summer as a child than something capable of crossing the globe.

We quickly gelled as a group. Our ages ranged from 19 to 69. Some passengers were travelling with friends, there were two Irish brothers, several couples and a bunch of singles. We had even managed to arrange a few pre-trip get-togethers in London, which enabled some of us to get to know each other before departure.

We sped through Europe at breakneck speed, braving the rain to tour Prague, taking in the picturesque sites of Vienna and climbing through the winding staircases of Dracula’s Castle in Transylvania. We nearly lost our resident journalist in Budapest when she failed to track down the coach, but she eventually found her way back to us. The back window on the bus was smashed while we were reversing, when a cunningly concealed tree branch took us by surprise; and we got lost more times than I ever thought possible. When the bus broke down we discovered the tool kit on board consisted of a broken screwdriver and some rusty bolts; if there had not been a couple of ex-army guys and a multi-tool on board, our journey of a lifetime would have been over very quickly.

By the time we left Europe we were all still happy enough; grumbles about the bus were on the rise and faith in the organisation of the trip was now a little shaky, but after only a week and a half on board we were all willing to cut the OzBus some slack.

In Istanbul we were joined by Andrew, one of the organisers of the trip. He was here to reassure us that the long driving days were over and that the bus was in fine form and would get us to our destination with no problems at all. He also recommended a bar we should visit in Istanbul, the Shah Bar. If you are ever in Istanbul, I can recommend the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, Santa Sofia and the underground cisterns but if, after seeing all of these, you fancy a drink, I would not recommend the Shah Bar!

After an hour or so in the bar we all seemed to be going through the drink at an amazing rate; it was almost as if every time we put a drink down it was gone. This, of course, turned out to be true. Every time we turned around, the superhumanly fast bar staff were relieving us of our drinks, topping them up and selling them back to us. When we cottoned on (and, I am sad to say, it did take us a while) the staff were faced with a very unhappy group of punters. The bar manager denied all knowledge. Pete, the Irish OzBuser who had taken on the role of our spokesperson, would not back down and it looked like trouble was brewing, but eventually calm was restored with the management’s offer of free booze.

By the time we left Istanbul we were a little on the defensive so when Andrew presented us with a disclaimer to sign we were justifiably suspicious. One of our fellow travellers with a legal background reviewed this seemingly innocent piece of paper and spotted the implications of signing it (basically absolving the company of any and all responsibility in regard to negligent behaviour). After some discussion we simply refused to sign and Andrew had little option but to back down. At this point we realised that the passengers held the power on this trip, not the organisers.

The problems we faced and the astounding sights and experiences we shared united the group more strongly. In Turkey we went up in hot air balloons over Cappadocia in Göreme National Park: the remarkable sedimentary rock formations were illuminated beneath us as the sun rose. We visited the underground city of Derinkuyu: it was not really designed for the tall or wide but we all managed to squeeze through the various tunnels and caverns. In Turkey, too, I had my first ‘doxy dream’, an incredibly vivid dream brought on by the antimalarial tablets I had been taking. So the good, the bad and the strange all ran hand in hand; it was just a case of trying to keep the balance between the three.

After Turkey came one of our most intriguing destinations, the Islamic Republic of Iran. When I told people about the trip I had booked, this was the point on our route that had been met with the most scepticism, and most of us certainly knew very little about the country before we got there. Girls and women had to wear headscarves at all times; and both sexes had to cover their arms and legs. Alcohol was illegal and public drunkenness would earn you 10 lashes in Public Sq.

In Iran, the rest of the world became much more interested in our little trip. In Tehran the bus finally gave up. Since London it had broken down twice and taken more than its fair share of knocks (including losing a bumper and an exhaust in Turkey, springing a fuel leak in Iran and losing its wing mirror on the way into Tehran). Now it was finally retired. The locally sourced replacement was far from state-of-the-art but it was in one piece and therefore a vast improvement. Losing our original bus did not help the morale of the passengers and there were even late-night talks of mutiny. These were little more than disgruntled conversations but, through emails home and blog entries, the stories seeped back to the UK media and Chinese whispers caused them to be portrayed as more dramatic than they were, with newspaper headlines around the English-speaking world announcing our ‘mutiny’.

All this drama and intrigue unfolded in Esfahan, which (for other reasons) was undoubtedly my favourite stop in Iran. This stunning city is famous for its bazaar and the large many-arched bridge across the river, under which locals are known to indulge in ‘forbidden touching’ while they think no one is looking. I even managed to pick up a hip flask in the bazaar: quite an achievement in a dry country, I thought.

From Iran it was on to Pakistan. The first 12 hours after crossing the border were spent driving to the nearest town, Quetta. We had to leave behind the bus hired locally in Iran and were split onto two smaller buses for this part of the trip. The drive took us through barren desert and when the sun went down there was little to see out of the windows beyond our own reflections. About 40 minutes out from Quetta our driver had a lapse of concentration and the bus ended up half on the road and half in a ditch, at about a 30° angle. Although the crash was over-dramatised in the media with phrases such as ‘lives hung in the balance’, at the time it was still quite a traumatic experience. We managed to tie it on to the other bus, empty it out and then, with the help of a local truck, get it back on the road.

After this exciting beginning, Pakistan continued to intrigue and entertain us. It doesn’t have much of a tourist industry and, with one girl in our group who was nearly 6ft tall and blonde and another with strikingly red hair, our group itself became a major tourist attraction. However, the fact that tourists are thin on the ground here means that the Pakistanis try to look after visitors as well as possible. The police ensured we were safe and friendly locals kept crowds of onlookers at bay. We finished our time in Pakistan in Lahore, where we saw a ceremony for closing of the border that I can only describe as a ‘dance off’ between the Pakistani and Indian border guards, with soldiers from both sides performing complex routines. We also discovered the ever-catchy song ‘Pakistan, Pakistan’, whose title reflects its only lyric: once it is in your head there is no getting rid of it.

We left our Pakistani guide and buses behind and waded through a mass of paperwork into India. Here we ended up on the worst buses of the whole trip; poor quality roads combined with dodgy suspension led to a rollercoaster ride. When not holding on for dear life on the bus, we saw the Golden Temple in Amritsar, toured New Delhi, where we lost our first OzBusers (one decided he needed a break and another went to keep him company in Goa for a week; they rejoined the group before the mass exodus in Nepal), visited the Corbett Tiger Reserve (unfortunately no tigers were spotted), toured the legendary Taj Mahal and cruised down the Ganges seeing the sunrise, funeral fires, sunken bodies and fire juggling.

On our drive through India OzBus hit us with a major change to itinerary. The company had been informed by its local tour operator that the Friendship Hwy, the only way we could continue overland through Tibet, was impassable. This meant a promised visit to Mount Everest Base Camp was out, as was reaching much-anticipated Laos. We would be coming back into India after our trip to Nepal in order to get to Thailand. After receiving this news and having to walk about 2km to cross the border into Nepal, we were not the happiest crew. A hefty drive from the border to Kathmandu did not help to raise spirits and we arrived in the early hours of the morning. OzBus had organised a dawn hike for that day (about three hours after we arrived) so, by the time we returned from this, tempers were fraying.

***

When the time comes for the bus to leave Kathmandu it is not a happy one. The few who have decided to continue with the trip are sad to be leaving friends behind, and even those of us who have opted out will not be staying together: 16 of us (including me) will stay in Kathmandu for five days and go white-water rafting, trekking and bungee jumping from 160m (which is one of the scariest things I have ever done); three will head to Koh Samui in Thailand for a beach holiday; and eight will prove OzBus wrong and cross the Friendship Hwy to reach Mount Everest Base Camp (perhaps more of us would have attempted this if it hadn’t been for the £1000 price tag). So, with less than a third of its original contingent, the OzBus heads back through India and on to Bangkok while the rest of us take a break and recharge our batteries.

When I first booked on the OzBus, friends and family said I was crazy because, with such a strict timetable, you can’t just hop off and wait for the next bus to come along. But none of us realised then that, because buses are far from the fastest things out there, with a little planning you can easily catch up with the trip further down the track.

With some of us heading to Bangkok after Kathmandu, others already waiting in Koh Samui and the Everest explorers just making it back before we leave Thailand, we are all back on board but with a new sense of freedom, knowing we can get off when we need to and that we will be welcomed back with open arms when we rejoin the group. It costs a bit extra but it’s doable. A new era on the bus has begun: now we are on it because we want to be, not because we have to be in order to get to the other end. An organised tour had given inexperienced backpackers the confidence to be truly independent travellers and now we are ready for anything.

Of course, once you realise you can be independent, the temptation to do just that becomes much stronger. You begin to ask more questions and work out what you want to do and how this fits round the trip. Shortly after entering Malaysia we are told we will only spend three hours in Kuala Lumpur and then once in Indonesia we will be spending most of the time on the road with few stops. At this news, about 10 of us get off again, enough to form our own little group.

We stay in Kuala Lumpur for a night, grab a sleeper train to Singapore then hop on to Jakarta then Bali. While we are taking in Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers and the Singapore Night Safari and picking up some surfing tips on the beach, the bus is having its own adventure. The road through Indonesia has been washed out in recent floods and by the time they navigate around this they have dropped behind schedule and eventually catch up with us in Bali a week after we arrived there. Those on the bus have seen some things I am sorry to have missed, like the Bora Bora temple and a live volcano, but I love my time in Bali: we lie on the beach, shop at the stalls, eat in beach-front bars and discover my girlfriend’s favourite drink, the Strawberry Martini.

From Bali it is a short hop to Darwin where we pick up an Australian bus for the final leg of our adventure. As we travel through the Northern Territory we see jumping crocodiles in Kakadu, gaze across the panorama identified as ‘man’s country’ in the classic movie, Crocodile Dundee, visit the Daly Waters pub and cross the Tropic of Capricorn – quite a lot to accomplish in our first three days in Australia! Before the week is over we have seen a camel farm and I have flown over King’s Canyon in a helicopter; next stop Ayers Rock.

Uluru, as Ayers Rock is now know, is a spiritual centre for the indigenous population of Australia. People who have taken bits of this rock away with them as souvenirs are said to be cursed. The ‘sorry book’ certainly testifies to that: it is full of letters from people who have had huge misfortune since taking a piece of Uluru away and are now returning it, along with a heartfelt apology, in the hope that their run of bad luck will come to an end. Climbing the rock, which many tourists still do, is considered a huge offence by the Aboriginal people but they still leave the choice about whether to do the right thing in your hands.

From Uluru we head to Coober Pedy where we see underground houses and working opal mines. We continue on to Adelaide and say farewell to members of the group who call this city home. We camp by the lighthouse from the ’80s show Round the Twist, visit Melbourne, see the south-coast Great Ocean Road and, on our last night, camp in the Snowy Mountains. On our last day we visit Canberra before driving in to Sydney and the end of our journey is upon us.

***

So, was this the trip I signed up for? No.

If I had the chance to do this exact same trip again would I? Yes.

For me, travelling is not about getting there, it is not about being on time and ticking all the boxes, it is about the journey, the people you meet and the way you deal with it when things go wrong. I had never travelled before this trip; now I find myself watching my bank balance, eager for it to get high enough for me to hit the road again.
_____________________

The AU$400 Month

2008-05-29T04:42:00.001+01:00

In preparation for the next phase of my travels I am trying to save up some much needed cash to do this. I am happy to say that I have been fairly good at doing this while I have been in Sydney and have manages to put away a tidy sum over the last few months but to be honest I need more!

A woman I work with mentioned something to me back at the start of the year that has stuck with me; she called it the $400 month. The aim is to only spend AU$400 over the course of a month. Essentials such as travel to work, work expenses, rent and bills are excluded but everything else has to come out of your set budget.

This sounds fairly harsh and would certainly put a crimp in your social life so why am I choosing to do this? Well the key is to get a group of people to do it and one of the rules is you have to socialise. This results in dinner parties consisting of a goon of wine and beans on toast, amazing cocktails made from the weird booze you have in the back of your cupboard and strange culinary concoctions made up of that stuff you forgot you had in the freezer.

I am sure it will prove to be a real challenge but both my bank balance and I will be very pleased if we make it through the other side. I am starting this crazy month on the 10th June and will finish on the 10th July, the Thursday before I leave Sydney to hit the road.

Check back for updates as the month progresses and we will see if I succeed or fail; only time will tell…

Sircling Stralia

2008-05-20T02:17:00.006+01:00

The next adventure is here! I have decided to leave the harbour side lifestyle of Sydney behind me, I have handed in my notice at work, told my friends and family and am currently planning an epic journey, just me, my girlfriend and the open road, all the way around the continent that is Stralia! (This is, as far as can tell, the real name for Australia as no one who comes from these parts seems to pronounce the ‘Au’ and I think they have a good laugh at us tourists when we do).

We will be leaving Sydney on the 11th July in a campervan that I am yet to acquire (see earlier posts on last minute and deadlines and you will realise that I will probably end up getting this on the 10th July if I’m lucky) and heading North. Detailed plans are still being made on the exact route but North to Cairns, East to Broome, South to Perth and West back to Sydney is a rough outline with a slight detour off to Tasmania along the way.

We have four months to complete the trip before immigration begin searching for us so lets hope we make it all the way round! More details will be posted here as they are worked out and I will make sure to keep the blog going while I am on the road.

OzBus are also doing a very similar trip called OzBus Down Under but there one does not kick off till next year and takes a slightly different route to us but hopefully I can leave a few tips for the future Down Under OzBusers as I go!

Evolution

2008-05-09T04:05:00.000+01:00

I was very interested this week to read in the news about the platypus and the recent genetic breakthroughs that have been made regarding this unusual creature. This unique animal which has a bill like a duck, a tail like a beaver and snake-like venom hidden in heel spurs may well hold the key to unravelling the mysteries that surround human evolution.

I have always found evolution to be fascinating and do not think this process is in any way limited to living creatures. This blog is a perfect example of that, it started as a way for me to waffle on about pointless things while working out my notice before hitting the travelling trail. It then became an online diary for me to keep track of my trip and for others to be able to, in some way, share in the experience. Nowadays, after several site redesigns, 145 posts, over 16,000 visitors and the inclusion of a few add-ons it is still a place for me to vent my random thoughts to the world but it has undoubtedly changed a lot since day one back in July 2007.

The OzBus is also a great example of this, it began as a ground breaking trip from London to Sydney overland, it had to evolve en-route in order to survive, throwing in a flight here, an itinerary change there, a liability disclaimer every now and then, but it continues to grow. The speed at which the company is growing at the moment though brings me back to the start of this post and the platypus. The platypus seems to have evolved by just grabbing at whatever it could find that worked and while it has come out the other end in one piece it certainly has the look of something that was cobbled together in a hurry with the lights off!

OzBus 3 will pull in to Sydney this weekend and I have been keeping up with the journey where possible via blogs but have not seen much from them since Bali. OzBus 4 (Sydney to London) left Oz in April with no fanfare at all and not one blog from this trip has emerged yet. Reading the accounts from the third trip it seems they have run in to some of the same issues we did but are still having a great time so why am I talking about the company growing in strange ways?

Well with only two completed trips under their belt from London to Sydney they are launching:

OzBus Down Under – a 56 day tour around Australia
OzBus Africa - that will do various trips around the African continent
OzBus Hippie Trail – Turkey to Nepal in 49 days
An overland trip from Berlin to Sydney
An overland trip from New York to London

Now don’t get me wrong, I like the concept and am interested in going on a couple of these trips in the future I just think that the company may be evolving a little to quickly, who knows it could end up like the platypus and inexplicably work to the wonderment of the rest of the world but I just have a feeling that it is better to learn to walk before you start running…

Define Adventure

2008-05-02T04:40:00.000+01:00

I have talked a lot about adventures on this site and “trips of a lifetime” but today I want to talk about what exactly constitutes an adventure?

For me it was riding a bus from the UK to Oz, it was quitting my job and deciding to give my life a kick start and setting myself up in Sydney, pretty much as far away from where I started as possible, but I think an adventure is one of the most personal experiences we can have.

For some people going to London for the weekend is a great adventure, to some leaving the rural area you grew up is the most daunting thing in the world and some, such as the dog that cropped up in the news this week, riding the bus to the beach is a newsworthy event! As the weekend draws ever closer I suggest you have a think about what your next adventure will be and make it happen sooner rather than later.

Having an adventure is not always a pleasant experience, but it is always a learning experience, take yourself out of your comfort zone and head for the hills you may be astounded by what you find there.

Yet again…they are just friends you haven’t met yet

2008-05-01T00:29:00.001+01:00

How did you spend your ANZAC weekend? Did you attend a dawn service or pop to your local and play some 2-Up? Did you go away for the weekend or did you just catch up on that never ending list of things to do around the house?

I spent ANZAC day at my local, we met up with a couple we met at dinner the week before, we had swapped numbers after dinner and said we would meet up the next week. After much debate about: when we should text, is it to early to text, oh they have texted us should we text back straight away? We eventually agreed to meet up and after few beers and deciding that 2-Up was a getting a bit crazy as the police kept showing up to break up the crowds our craving for a quick gamble took the 4 of us to Star City Casino. As usual it was not a profitable trip and we soon decided a take away and beers back at the flat were the way to go to finish the night off.

Our new friends joined us as well and we knocked back a few beers, played some Mario Kart on the Wii (LOVE THIS GAME – thanks for getting it for me Sarah x) and then went our separate ways at the end. It was nice to meet new people and refreshing to spend time with people that have not spent 3 months on a bus with me; I hope to see them again soon.

The rest of the weekend was filled with shopping, some puppy gazing at the pet stores in Bondi and a trip to see the rugby and witness a triumph for the Waratahs over the Sharks, a girl I work with lent us her tickets as she was out of town so we had a great view and a great evening. A relaxed Sunday finished off the long weekend and it was off to bed trying not to think about the fact it was Monday tomorrow.

So in summary we had a great long weekend, met new people, played Mario Kart on the Wii, watched rugby, played with puppies and chilled out, what more can you ask for?

New Stuff!

2008-05-01T00:26:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone,

I am playing about with the site and adding new stuff here and there, the latest being the Google search at the top and the new video links at the side.

The videos are of me throwing my self of a 160m high bridge in Nepal, don't worry I am attached to a bungee! I am also working on adding a photo app at the moment so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Any comments on the new additions or suggestions for further improvements please let me know :-)

Happy Birthday to...ME!

2008-04-22T03:50:00.000+01:00

A self indulgent title I realise but as today is my birthday I feel perfectly justified in being a little self indulgent. I tun 28 today which is one of those curious ages, I suppose it counts as entering the late 20’s but it really does not seem a very significant number to me. Thirty will be the next big one I think and who knows where I will be by then?

So what do I have planned for this year I hear you ask? Well I began celebrating last Saturday with dinner a few drinks at my favourite local eatery in North Sydney, I kind of forgot to invite anyone till last minute so we ended up as a group of three but it was still a lovely meal and by the end we had somehow grown to a group of six as three other diners ended up joining our table. I do enjoy meeting complete strangers like this and they turned out to be a nice bunch, we are supposed to be meeting two of them for drinks this Friday for ANZAC day but we will just wait and see if that comes off.

This morning I got a couple of cards from home and some great presents from my girlfriend, one being a voucher for a Sydney Harbour Bridge climb and the other being a pre-ordered copy of Mario Kart for the Wii that I can pick up this Thursday (so excited about this it is a little bit worrying) and we are off out for dinner tonight at Australia Square which has a revolving restaurant with some great views. Even though one of my favourite travel writers has mixed views on revolving restaurants I am still looking forward to it.

So in summary I am having a quiet and civilised birthday this year but in no is this a sign of things to come, I fully plan to have many more loud and uncivilised birthdays in the future but am glad to take it easy once in a while.

So back to the present, this weekend is ANZAC day, a very serious day for many Australian’s and one that I can see the significance of having spent some time in ANZAC Cove in Turkey and visited various war memorials to the brave ANZAC troops who have fought in various conflicts throughout history. While I will certainly enjoy the long weekend I will also make sure that I spare a thought for the real reason behind this holiday and encourage you all to do the same.

Last Minute...

2008-04-11T03:19:00.001+01:00

What is it about the last minute that I find so attractive? For some reason I seem to be able to achieve more things in this minute than in the rest of the day. I think it all comes down to motivation in the end.

I am off to a black tie event tonight and I finally decided I had better lay my hands on a Tux yesterday, after work, and I could only afford to shell out $100 top. An impossible task by anyone’s reckoning. I headed for a rental place first “sorry sir it takes longer than that to get it ready”, I then went to a suit shop, $490, not a chance. Then I went to one of those discount men’s outfitters, result! For the princely fee of $80 I scored a Tux, shirt and bow tie so I am now kitted out for this evening. I have know about this event for a week, there are about 3 rental places I could have gone to but that just would have been too simple. It was only at the last minute when it was either come through or go to a black tie event in a grey suit that I finally got it sorted.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that leaving it to the last minute is the best option for everyone, it is stressful and requires a certain kind of determination to pull off and sometimes no matter how hard you try you still end up screwed in the end. But I have to say, for me, I love it and have a strong feeling that I will be a last minute guy for the rest of my days, have great weekends everyone!

Realisation...

2008-04-10T03:35:00.003+01:00

I have birthday just around the corner and will be turning 28 on the 22nd April this year. As often happens when a birthday is near I look back at my life and think about what I have achieved and so I put together a little summary of key dates and timings in my life:

22nd April 1980

Born

1984

Started school

1996

Passed GCSE exams

1998

Passed A-Levels
moved to London to attend Uni

2001

Graduated Uni
Got a job

2005

Got married

2007

Separated from my wife
Left my job
Jumped on a bus that travelled through 19 countries and over 40,000km to get from London to Australia
Got commissioned to write for Lonely Planet
Created a blog that over 15,000 people have read since it started

2008

Got a new job in PR
Settled down in Sydney
And then…

Now it is my sincere hope that from this year on every year will be as full of key events as 2007, it did not start out the best but it finished up as the best year of my life so far. Thirty is often seen as a milestone by many and I certainly don’t want to get there with any regrets so I have 2 years to get my ass in gear!

So all I can say for now is watch this space, I am not entirely sure what the future holds but I can promise you it is going to be an interesting read!

Every ending is a new beginning

2008-03-28T02:22:00.000Z

As the week comes to an end and the weekend begins I find myself in a philosophical state of mind, those special few of you who have been reading my blog from the beginning will remember that before the trip the majority of my musings were on random social phenomenon and personal philosophies and the like and very rarely had anything to do with actual travelling, well for today at least those days are back.

When something comes to an end it can often be sad and the lead up to this can often be stressful and worrying but as with all things in life taking the bull by the horns and actually doing it is the key to moving on.

While I was back in the UK I finally drew the line under several things that I had avoided dealing with before I left and the sense of relief is amazing! Issues I had avoided addressing before I left had only intensified while I was away but by simply getting off my ass and doing something about them I left the UK with out leaving a to-do list behind.

A lot of things have come to an end for me in the last 18 months but equally a lot of things have begun as well. Who I am today and who I was at the end of 2006 are as different as chalk and cheese but I have a new clarity of vision about the future and a group of friends who will always be there to back me up when I need them. It is a great feeling.

So I find myself in a great mood as I approach the weekend, I am off to the Easter Show on Sunday and may finally get round to talking the Sydney sightseeing bus tour on Saturday so watch this space for more riveting content in the not to distant future…

Return to Oz

2008-03-25T01:05:00.002Z

So I am back in Oz, my two and a half week tour of my old UK haunts has come to an end and I have flown the 11,000 or so miles back to Sydney and I am happy to be back. On my last day in the UK I was seen off by snow storms and freezing temperatures but my first day back on Sydney was all sunshine and warmth.

In spite of the climatic advantages of Australia I still had a great time back in the UK. Flying in on a Friday I had a day to pull myself together before my brother’s wedding on the Saturday which I am happy to say went ahead without a hitch and the wedding “cake”, which was actually a castle made out of Krispy Crème Donuts with a gingerbread bride and groom, was an instant hit.

Then it was off to London where I spend the week working on my house, getting it ready to sell, and seeing as many of my old work, uni and school cronies as possible. Needless to say this involved a large amount of pub time and a hefty alcohol consumption level. After a week of catching up with old friends it was off to Ireland to catch up with my OzBus buddies!

I flew into Dublin and jumped on a bus to Drogheda where I met up with my old travelling buddies for the night; we grabbed some dinner, hit a bar with live bands and headed on to a club before heading back to our dorm room at the hostel to pass out for the night. Out of the 11 our on Saturday only four of us were still around for the Sunday. We headed further into Ireland visiting the legendary Nobber and Muff Crescent, Drumcondra, seeing a local Patrick’s Day Parade, drinking way too much and posing for photos wearing our “I’ve got Irish Roots” bibs (best not to ask!).

After a great weekend it was back to London for a few days, a last few catch ups and then back to the Midlands to spend some time with the family before flying back to Sydney. The trip was great but I offer one piece of advice to all travellers who pop home for a holiday, it is anything but a holiday, it is hard work seeing everyone and you are bound to offend someone by not meeting up with them and do not expect to come back refreshed, you will need a few days off when you return if at all possible.

I am glad I got to see everyone but now I am back in Sydney I am happy to be, I was sitting there last night, cuddled up on the sofa with my girlfriend watching the telly with the view of the harbour bridge out the window and I felt the most relaxed and comfortable that I had in the whole time I was away. Before I left I wrote an entry about where home really was and now I know, it is wherever you feel happiest, it is not a place, it is a concept and for now home for me is here is Sydney cuddled up on the sofa and I am very happy to be here.

Home for a holiday

2008-03-05T02:31:00.000Z

So this week I will be leaving the Land of Oz to return to the UK but not for good, I am going home for a holiday which in itself is a strange concept. Home is not somewhere you vacation is it? Or is that when you travel the world the concept of home becomes a bit fuzzier than it once was?

I fly to Birmingham on Friday; my brother is getting married on Saturday so I will get to see all my family and be there to see him get hitched, then I am off to London for a week to catch up with old friends and work mates, sort out the bits and pieces I never got round to pre-OzBus before I head to Dublin for a mini OzBus reunion over Paddy’s weekend. I will then finish off my trip back in London before driving up to Birmingham for my flight back to Oz.

It promises to be a hectic trip, the kind you need a holiday to recover from more than likely but I am looking forward to it a lot, I wish a certain someone could come with me and I will miss her a lot over the next couple of weeks but I know she is here in Oz waiting for me when I come home (see what I mean about the fuzziness of the home concept, I am just plain confused!)

Regrets...

2008-03-03T22:07:00.000Z

Regrets are something we all wish we could avoid but what do you do if you can see them coming? The obvious answer is react, take action to make sure they don’t happen but this is often easier said than done.

One course of action can seem like the perfect solution one minute then full of holes the next and unfortunately the only real way to know which way is going to work is to try it. I find myself here in Sydney and I think I can see the potential for regrets creeping round the corner. Now I have to decide how to handle that and it is a scary prospect.

I have confidence that whatever I choose to do I will come through ok but whether I will come through without regret is an entirely different matter, as with so many things in life only time will tell.

The Weekend the Weather Came Back!

2008-02-24T22:41:00.002Z

For all of you who curse those of us in Sydney for our sun blessed weather, I am sure you are very happy to hear that recently the weather has been wet and windy and going to the beach was definitely off the cards. Well not that I want to ruin your enjoyment but this weekend it finally got its act together! The weather was fantastic, after nearly three months of waiting Saturday turned out to be beautiful with clear blue skies as far as the eye can see. We took this opportunity to visit the Sydney Tower which we have had a ticket to since December and were just waiting for the good weather to kick in (we just were not expecting to wait this long!).

The views from up top are amazing, you can see over 50km out to sea and get an amazing 360 view of the City, well worth a visit if you are in town. You can also shell out an extra $40 to climb round the outside of the tower but we decided to opt out of this for now, maybe next time. We then headed in to meet another couple of OzBusers who had returned to Sydney for a while before continuing their travels. We then headed to The Rocks for the evening catching a glimpse of the maiden voyage of the Queen Victoria and the final journey of the QE2 on the way.

The end of the evening was spent trying to stay up to catch the six nations rugby, which we failed to do but due to the magic of recordable TV we caught up with the matches in the morning and I am glad to say England, Ireland and Wales all came through victorious! It was then time to head to the beach so we jumped in the car and headed to Manly, one of the more well know beaches in Sydney. After some sun, surf and sandcastle building we packed up and headed for some dinner before heading home to chill out before work on Monday, a great weekend with good company and fantastic weather, what more can you ask for?

A new addition to the blog...lets see if it works!

2008-02-22T00:15:00.003Z

Hi everyone, surprisingly enough it still seems that people are coming to my blog and checking out my random ramblings, admittedly nowhere near as many as when I was on the road but I am glad that a few of you have decided to keep coming back.

I got an email from someone the other day asking me if I could add a forum to my blog so people could discuss travelling tips and share experiences, unfortunately I am not tech savvy enough to do this but then I had an idea. If any of you do fancy starting up a little traveller’s community, a forum to discuss ideas and experiences, get suggestions for your next trip, suggest topics for me to blog on or just meet like minded travellers, I have made a Facebook group just for this blog, OzBus Diaries - The Group. Don’t let the name fool you, it is not just for people who have been or plan to go on the OzBus, it is for any and all travellers who fancy joining up.

There is a link to the group at the top of my home page and if you fancy joining just pop into Facebook and send me a request. If you are not a Facebook user yet I highly recommend it, especially if you are on the road as it is a great way to keep everyone informed of what you are up to and share your photos along the way.

So as the weekend is nearly upon us I will wish you a happy Friday and hope you have a great weekend, for any of you in Sydney looks like there might be some beach worthy weather this weekend, finally, so I for one am planning to make the most of it. I am also hitting the Sydney Tower this weekend, thank you for the suggestion of Australia Square from one of my readers and I will add it to the to do list, still going to do the Tower as I have ticket for it but will definitely try out the revolving restaurant soon.

And another one bites the dust...

2008-02-20T23:55:00.000Z

As we near the end of March we say goodbye to another OzBuser who has decided to leave Sydney, having used his working visa on a previous visit to Oz he needed the much coveted sponsorship before he got a job and this turned out to just be too complicated. He leaves us for the shores of New Zealand where we wish him all the best and if the drunken plans from last night come together we will see him for a skiing holiday late this year!

To see off our bus mate we headed out to Newtown last night, the four out of the five OzBusers who still reside in Sydney, our departing friend and the tour leader from OzBus 2 all met up in a Irish bar for a quick pint (not a schooner I am glad to say but an actual pint!). We then headed on to a bar called the Vanguard where we had some dinner and check out a live band who were pretty good to be fair.

As it was a school night and our departing Irishman had an 8:30am flight it was not destined to be a late one, so after dinner and a delayed but well worth it banoffeee pie (it has been so long since I had one, you just don’t get them here) it was off home for a good night’s sleep.

So now there are only five of us left here in the harbour city and we have been in Sydney for the same amount of time that we were on the bus. Life is getting back in to the rhythm and routine you expect from normality but the tug of travelling is now ever present and in a few years when we have truly had our fill of Aussie life I have no doubt that we will begin another adventure. Who knows where it will take us and how many stops along the way will distract us but one day we will go home, the trick is going to be working out where that is as I truly have no idea anymore...

The Blue Mountains

2008-02-18T03:05:00.000Z

Well I have ticked one more thing off my to do list, I spent this weekend up in the Blue Mountains, this is an area bout 90 mins drive out of Sydney with stunning views, fresh air a plenty and the perfect place for a valentines weekend away.

I had booked us into a lovely hotel called Lilianfels which is apparently the only five star hotel in the Blue Mountains, it was lovely! The room was slightly bigger than our North Sydney apartment and the bed was only slightly smaller than our entire bedroom, the staff were friendly and attentive and we enjoyed our stay immensely.

We visited Scenic World on the Saturday which is a place where they have a horizontal cable car that traverses a valley with amazing views of a waterfall and the famous three sisters and orphan rock formations. It even has a clear glass floor section for the more adventurous so you can look straight down to the valley bottom over 200m below you. There is also the world’s steepest railway that is more like a roller coaster than a train that takes you down into the valley below. A stroll around the rain forest at the valley bottom was then followed by a ride back up in a more conventional up-down cable car. It was a fun way to spend the afternoon and I recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in or around Katoomba.

After a little shopping on the local high street to buy swimmers, as I had forgotten to pack any, it was back to the hotel for a quick dip in the pool then a lovely dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. We drove back to Sydney on the Sunday morning and headed out for the evening with friends to see Fools Gold at the cinema. This is a perfect Sunday evening film as it requires very little mental commitment to keep up with the plot but is entertaining enough to keep your eyes open throughout.

It was a great weekend but now it is back to work again for the week, next weekend holds the promise of ticking the Sydney Tower off my to see list and who knows what else I can squeeze in?

Things to do…

2008-02-12T23:31:00.000Z

Now as I have mentioned I lived in London for a number of years but fell victim to the classic Londoner trap of, well I live here I can see it any time, and left without visiting the Tower of London, going on the London Eye, visiting London Zoo and many other unbelievable oversights considering how long I was there.

Now I am in Sydney I fear I will fall fowl of the same attitude so I am determined to see more. What follows is a list of what I have done so far and what I thought of it and a list of things still to do, if I have not written about the things still to do in more detail soon feel free to give me grief and encourage me to do them.

Done

Sydney Aquarium – loved it
Sydney Wildlife World – rubbish
Dinner Cruise in the Harbour – went on Australia Day, had a great night
Coogee to Bondi cliff walk – was very cool, lovely beaches and a great way to spend an afternoon

To Do

The harbour bridge climb – I feel I should do this as I am here, but is it worth the money
Skydive – always wanted to do this but also a bit scared of it, we will see
Sydney Tower – have a ticket just waiting for a nice day, honest!
Zoo – planning to do this soon, there is an option where you camp at the Zoo and have a night time tour, should be cool
The Blue Mountains – going this weekend
Visit the Opera House – I will get round to it eventually...

So I will keep you all updated on how I get on with this list and feel free to let me know if you think I have missed anything crucial off.

OzBus Diaries - The Sydney Years

2008-02-12T02:35:00.000Z

So today we start a new chapter in my blog, OzBus Diaries - The Sydney Years, I doubt it will attract as much interest as the tales of my worldly travels on the magical bus but I plan to continue none the less.

When I first started the blog it was mostly random social commentary on things that happened to me day to day in the run up to the trip and this is how I plan to continue but obviously with a different twist.

I am certain I am not the first traveller to decide to stop off on the way and settle down for a while and I know I won’t be the last. So this blog will now become a guide to Sydney’s culture as seen through my eyes, I will try and offer tips and advice on living in Oz and will always be willing to answer any questions you have, just post them on the site.

So where to start? Well let’s kick off with what you need to settle in Sydney:

1. A working holiday visa

An essential bit of kit, relatively easy to get online this lovely little visa lets you live and work in Oz for 12 months, but there are some catches and conditions. For one you have to apply for it before you turn 31 and enter the country within a year. Secondly when you enter the country they just check it is on their system, they don’t put anything in your passport. In order to carry on with the to-do list you really need a hard copy so make sure you hit the immigration office ASAP. Finally you can only work for one employer for 6 months then you have to change jobs, there are ways round this but I come to them later.

2. An address

Whether it is your hostel, a place you have rented through Gumtree or a friends you need an address for a while, you can’t get anything without it so put this high up on the list.

3. A Bank Account

Head for ANZ, they do travellers accounts but be aware that you need $2000 to use the account, you can set up the account with no money as long as you have ID and an address but you can’t withdraw cash till there is $2000 in there, sounds more complicated than it is. Once you reach $2000 for the first time there is no more minimum balance so you can spend spend spend till you are skint and still use your account.

4. A Medicare Card

This lets you use the Oz medical system to a limited extent but is worth it as you can register with a doctor, you will need your Visa stuck in your passport to get this one, you just need to go to a Medicare centre and apply, quick and easy, again you need an address to have the card sent to .

5. Next steps

Ok you are set up, Seek.com.au is a great place to look for jobs and Domain.com.au is a great place to look for somewhere more permanent to live. If you want to stay longer than a year you have two main options, the first is to work out your first visa and then pick fruit for three months, they give you another year visa as a reward. The second is to get sponsored by an Oz company, depending on what you do this can be hard or easy but Google it and find out for yourself. There are other ways such as being in relationship with an Aussie for 12months or more, having a child with an Aussie etc but these are less conventional.

I am sure there are many more little things to do but I am confident you can work these out for yourself, I managed to and I am far from the sharpest tool in the box.

I have spent the last nine years in London and I loved every minute of it but my time there was up, I had done my stint in the Big Smoke and when I came back from travelling I was going to move out of London anyway. Sydney just called to me, it is a buzzing, vibrant city with a perfect mix of 24hr hedonism and tranquil harbour living, and it is up to you which you fancy today. I look forward to my time in Sydney and plan to make the most of it, we are only young once and a life is a terrible thing to waste.

The OzBus Saga Continues

2008-02-11T23:12:00.001Z

This weekend saw the departure of OzBus 3 from Ireland, another group of brave travellers set off on the voyage of discovery, as I understand it they will take a week longer than we did and rack up a couple more countries if all goes to plan so good luck to you guys, enjoy every minute of it and remember it is more than a journey, it is an adventure!

I am really not sure if anyone still comes to visit my little blog and to be honest I have been neglecting it recently and have written nothing for quite some time so here is an update. I now live in Sydney with my girlfriend; we have a little flat overlooking the harbour. I work in a PR firm in North Sydney and still see the remaining bus members who have stayed in Sydney on a regular basis and I spent New Year’s at an old friends place watching the fireworks from his balcony.

I am off back to the UK in three and a bit weeks as my brother is tying the knot but this is just for a holiday, I am flying back to Sydney after a short break to catch up with friends. Have my travelling days come to end? I don’t think so. I am just having a break, after flying through the world at break neck speed on the bus it is nice to stop, get back to normality for a while, I don’t see myself growing old here in Oz but I don’t see myself running off again just yet.

It is time to recharge the cash reserves, enjoy the weather and the lifestyle that Sydney has to offer and just take each day as it comes; there is always another adventure just around the corner it is up to you when you decide to turn it.

Twas the week after Christmas and all through the house...

2007-12-28T05:52:00.000Z

...there were lots of drunken people and Chritmas leftovers.

With Christmas now behind us and New Year on the way it is time to think about what we plan to do with 2007, I seem to be planning out my new life as a citizen of Sydney, finding somewhere to live, looking for a car to get myself around in and so on and I am sure I am not the only one with big plans afoot.

With New Years comes resolutions, what will yours be for 2008? Will you keep them? Do you care? All valid questions in my opinion but one thing is for sure if 2007 didn't go to well for you make sure 2008 does. If 2007 went great, make 2008 better.

It really doesn't matter how bad it gets becuase if you look hard enought there is always a spark of light at the end of the tunnel so keep going. Merry Christmas everyone and I wish you all the best 2008 you have ever had:-)

So What Do You Do When You Get There?

2007-12-22T07:17:00.000Z

What happens when you have made it all the way? This a question all of the OzBusers now have to deal with, some carry on their travels with our Irish brothers heading for South Africa less than a week after we arrive. Some head off round Oz, others come together in Sydney for drinks, birthday parties, to plan Christmas etc. Many are looking for work others just resting from Christmas and New Year before moving on.

Me, I have decided to stop for a while, I went on this trip to make a new start, I had notions of carrying on and travelling more of the world but now I am in Sydney I find that I have no wish to leave. In the two weeks I have been here I have managed to get a job, a good job at a respected PR firm with high profile clients, the job allows me to stay in Oz for a number of years and so I will just take it from here and see where life takes me, who knows what it has in store but I can’t wait to find out…

Day 85 – Jindabyne – Sydney

2007-12-22T07:16:00.001Z

Sunday 9th December

This is it, the last day of trip, a drive to Canberra, a look round parliament, one last fly filled spam sandwich lunch on the side of the road, many goodbyes, much swapping of details, plans for meeting up after the trip and so on.

We finally pulled in to Sydney around 6pm and after 12 weeks on the bus, 18, 19 or 20 countries depending on who you are and we had made it. Some people still have unresolved issues about the trip and Andrew from OzBus avoids the groups attention by keeping his distance and avoiding eye contacts but despite of all this 29 out of 38 OzBusers made it in to Sydney on time and on schedule. It has been the trip of a lifetime and one none of us will ever forget.

We all head off to our hostels, most to one called the Wake Up but me and a few others are booked in to a dodgy place in Kings Cross. Then a select few, including me, head to see a flat which we plan to rent for Xmas and New Year. This turns out to be gorgeous and we sign up on the spot. We then rejoin the group for farewell drinks which keep us out till the early hours and the trip is then finally over.#

From my point of view it has been an amazing trip, in spite of the all the problems along the way I have enjoyed it all and am glad I did it, If you plan to do this yourself read what is written here and in other bogs form OzBus 1 and 2 and contact those who have done it to fond out what it is really like, it is great but go into to eyes open and with enough spare cash to take a time out every now and again. This is the end of the trip and the end of the daily blog entries. Thank you for reading this, I was surprised by how many of you did and touched by many of you your comments over the weeks. I will keep blogging about what I get up to form now on but I am sure it will not captivate your interest as much as this crazy bus journey did so I will finish this part of the blog by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Day 84 – Melbourne – Jindabyne

2007-12-22T07:15:00.002Z

Saturday 8th December 2007

Today we head off into the snowy mountains, an area bigger than Switzerland and the place to go for skiing in the winter. A fairly uneventful day on the bus most of it was spent swapping contact details and promising to keep in touch.

A camp dinner by a lake was followed by an early night was how the last night of the trip went.

Day 83 – Melbourne

2007-12-22T07:15:00.001Z

Friday 7th December 2007

A full free day in a town beckoned and while many headed to see the sights of Melbourne the rest of us went in the all day session, our Irish hobo look-a-like received a beard trimming that was long overdue. It was the hostels birthday as well which meant free bubbles and cake for all.

The day was finished off with a trip to the Crown Casino for a steak dinner and a bit of fun on the roulette tables before bed.

Day 82 – Warnambool – Melbourne

2007-12-22T07:14:00.001Z

Thursday 6th December 2007

Today’s drive down the Great Ocean Road will show us many spectacular rock formations like the twelve apostles, seaside towns such as Torquay, Koala bears, a rain forest and a hostel in Melbourne with free fizz for the ladies, a good day through and through.

That night we hit the town for farewell drinks as our Irish Squaddie, our Ozzie photographer and our Irish rose were all leaving us before we left Melbourne.

Day 81 – Adelaide – Warnambool

2007-12-22T07:13:00.000Z

Wednesday 5th December 2007

Today was destined to be another driving day for us. We stopped off to see an amazing blue lake in an old volcanic crater where our token ginge dropped her camera which was rescued by our Irish squaddie and not lost to the lake as some papers reported.

The campsite on the great ocean road was very nice, the beach just by it provided the best sunset of trip and the lighthouse, which looked familiar to me, turned out to be the one from the tv show round the twist. A camp dinner and a few boxes (goons in Oz) of port saw the day off nicely, tomorrow we will be driving the great ocean road to Melbourne, where will again lose a few more people.

Day 80 – Coober Pedy – Adelaide

2007-12-22T07:12:00.000Z

Tuesday 4th December 2007

A decent amount of driving got us in to Adelaide and to our hostel in reasonable time. Two of our Ozzies will leave us here and not get back on the bus, one of then will um and er a bit but in the end she will stay.

We did not have much time in Adelaide, just enough to go out for some dinner and a farewell drink then it was back to the hostel for a bit of kip before an early morning leave the next day.

Day 79 – Uluru – Coober Pedy

2007-12-22T07:11:00.002Z

Monday 3rd December 2007

The last week on the bus began with a fair bit of driving. We left the Northern Territory and headed into South Australia, our next stop the Opal mining town of Coober Pedy. This is a town where it can get so hot that the residents have taken to living under ground.

A quick informative movie was followed by an opal polishing demonstration and a tour of an opal mine. Then it was a quick pass through the mandatory gift shop before settling in to our campsite for the night. The group would spilt in to three tonight, one group staying in underground dorms, one camping in tents and a few grabbing the few huts with air con. It was then off to watch the sun set over the badlands where Mad Max was filmed. A group dinner of pizza was followed by bed, tomorrow we would be in Adelaide and would lose a few more of our OzBus family.

Day 78 – Uluru

2007-12-22T07:11:00.001Z

Sunday 2nd December 2007

Having skipped the sunrise – which was not the best so I am glad I did – we headed in to the resort near the campsite and grabbed some breakfast, did some shopping and generally relaxed. Washing was done, another no spectacular sunrise was viewed then my girlfriend, Mr Bee and myself snuck off for dinner at the resort.

We have a very pleasant dinner and then went to get the resort bus back to camp. Unfortunately for us this does not run past 9pm. Fortunately for us I had a torch because our pitch black bush walk home would have been much worse without it! Still we made it back in one piece and hit the hay pretty soon after, turns out on of our fellow busers had been taken to hospital for dehydration but she would be fine by the time we had to leave the next morning.

Day 77 – Kings Canyon – Uluru

2007-12-22T07:10:00.000Z

Saturday 1st December 2007

The day starts well, the promise of a helicopter ride, up with the sun and ready to wish the OzBusers a fun bush walk me and a few others decide to check everyone has stuck to the deal for the nice tents and made their beds up. We checked the huts and all seemed fine till we came to one that stopped us in our tracks. While everyone else had played the game this person had left their bed unmade and obviously slept in, rubbish on the floor and the fan had been taken apart.

Some enquiries around camp led to the obvious culprit being identified, our on board journalist had, as per usual, decided the rules did not apply to her and had left her room in a state and wondered off to reception to try and get on the internet. Something snapped in me at this point and I went off in a rage to find this ridiculous little woman and get her back to sort this out. When found she claimed she had not slept in the bed and did not know that we were supposed to leave the rooms clean! Amazing how everyone else seemed to catch on. She headed back and did a half assed job of sorting it out before rushing on to the coach to do the bush walk, with her laptop in hand! My girlfriend very kindly then tidied up after the silly woman and we went off to find out helicopter flight.

Luckily no amount of annoyance from this stupid woman could ruin the experience of flying the canyon in a helicopter, it was amazing! My girlfriend, Mr Bee and I marvelled at the views and landed back at camp happy and ready to hit the road again to get to Ayres Rock, which is exactly what we did next.

On the way we drove round Ayres Rock, went to the visitors centre, learnt about the reasons why you should not climb the rock, saw the “sorry book” where people have returned stolen parts of this mystical rock after receiving bad luck and saw and interesting confrontation between one of our Ozzies and our journalist about the previous nights antics.

A disappointing sunset at the rock was followed by a camp dinner and a few drinks before hitting the bunks, the next day we had the option of seeing a sunrise over the rock before having a day to ourselves. Now I decided not to go to the sunrise. “What?” I hear you gasp, but I have been let down by too many sunrises on this trip and could not take the disappointment of another.

Day 76 – Alice Springs – Kings Canyon

2007-12-22T06:58:00.000Z

Friday 30th November 2007

Kings Canyon was a fair drive away and we would not be visiting the canyon till the next day. It was a hefty drive but we would arrive at the campsite before dark if all went to plan. On route we would have the pleasure of seeing our first camel farm of trip.

The wild camel population of Australia is over 500,000 and camel farms crop up quite regularly. This one was very interesting, a nice little café, camel rides for those so inclined and a very nice camel called Blackie who quickly became and OzBus favourite.

We headed out saying our farewells to Blackie and continued on to King’s Canyon. Here we were kindly given a cheeky upgrade where we would be sleeping in pre pitched tents with power! The only condition was that we did not use the sheets and we left them pristine the next day, a fairly simple request followed by all but one but that is a story for tomorrow morning, not now.

A few beers at the campsite bar saw us of for an early night, those waling the canyon in the morning needed to be on parade at crack of sparrows. Now I was not one of these lucky soles. As I think I mentioned before I had been hoping to take a helicopter ride over Katherine Gorge earlier in the week but had not been able to. Turns out you can do it at Kings as well so that was my plan for the morning as I headed to a comfy bed.

Day 75 – Daly Waters – Alice Springs

2007-12-22T06:53:00.000Z

Thursday 29th November 2007

With an early morning breakfast in the Daly Waters beer garden kicking off the day it was in to the bus and on our way towards Alice Spring bright and early. While there was quite a distance to be covered today there were also some treats along the way.

Our first stop of note would be the devil’s marbles, and impressive rock formation said to the eggs of a great serpent (according to aboriginal stories) here our guide explained more about aboriginal trading customs, territories and dream time. We then walked round the marbles posing for photos in split rocks and sheltering from the heat in natural caves.

The next stop of the day worth a mention is the Tropic of Capricorn, one of those things you have heard of and are excited to see but essentially turns out to be a poncy monument and a white line in the ground, still a good photo opp and one of those great little anecdotes to drop into dinner party conversation, “oh the tropic of Capricorn, I crossed that once”.

After this it was time to plough on towards Alice Springs, when we arrived we set up in our camp site and headed out to a local backpacker bar. Here we had a good feed and caught an interesting reptile show then it was off to bed ready to head out to Kings Canyon the next day.

Day 74 – Katherine – Daly Waters

2007-12-04T13:08:00.001Z

Wednesday 28th November 2007

The morning at Katherine provided several options, a boat tour, kayaking, relaxing in the air conditioned visitor centre or a helicopter ride over the gorge. I went for the helicopter ride but unfortunately they were all fully booked by the time we got there so I settled for the visitor centre and a chance to catch up on my emails and Facebook.

After this we headed out towards Daly Waters, a pub in the middle of nowhere that may be my favourite ever pub. On the way we stopped for a dip at a hot springs which thankfully was not too hot and still very refreshing then carried on to our destination. Thankfully the option to upgrade to an air conditioned room for a nominal fee was available and after a few beers and a bit of beef and barramundi for dinner it was off to bed for a refreshing chilly night in a comfy bed.

Day 73 – Kakadu – Katherine

2007-12-04T13:07:00.001Z

Tuesday 27th November 2007

Today would have a leisurely start with the sun boiling us out of our tents at around six and breakfast at around eight we were soon packed up and back on the road.

Today we were driving all the way to Katherine Gorge where we would camp the night then see the gorge in the morning. Along the way we would see aboriginal art, local wildlife and vegetation and even go for a dip in lake with a waterfall at one end of it (the sign next to it said the crocs in this particular area are fine as long as you don’t provoke them!).

We arrived at Katherine Campground and were presented with a welcome surprise, pre-pitched tents with bunk beds! Although it was still to hot to sleep we still tried and a few beers helped out as well.

Day 72 – Darwin – Kakadu

2007-12-04T13:06:00.001Z

Monday 26th November

We landed in Darwin in the early hours, unfortunately many of our bags, including mine did not. We were told they had been taken off in Bali due to payload issues and would arrive tomorrow. Slightly worried and not entirely confident that I would ever see my bag again we headed straight to our hostel to grab a few hours kip, Adventure Tours and our Aussie guide would be meeting us in the morning. After getting our heads down for a bit it was up and off to find a fry while we waited for the luggage to arrive from the airport, I am glad to say it was there when I returned.

We then loaded up and had a bit of time to have a quick look round Darwin then it was on the road again to head towards Kakadu National Park, the park where much of Crocodile Dundee was filmed.

Our first stop was to see the jumping crocodiles. These were awesome and lived up to their name 100%. After this it was on through the park to our campsite being shown much of the area on the way by our new guide.

Our first night on the road in Oz was spent in tents, something many of us had not missed, and with the temperature being a tad on the high side this was for from the best nights sleep of the tour but we made do and the campsites pool was very cool, in more ways than one.

Day 71 – Indonesia – Australia

2007-12-04T13:05:00.000Z

Sunday 25th November

Our last day in Bali began with a nice lie in and ended up with a bit more shopping, including replacing my broken camera, a last wander on the beach and a final strawberry martini. It was then time to pack up and say farewell to our island paradise. An late night flight to Oz beckoned and we all got back on the buses and headed to the airport to begin the final stretch of the OzBus journey, Australia is country number 19 for me and many others on this trip. Those who have stayed with the bus the whole way will mark this as country number 18 and our token ginge will be the winner having manged to rack up a total of 20 countries as she seems to be willing to get off the bus whenever anyone suggests it.

As we take off from the airport the fact that this journey is entering its final days is beginning to sink in.

Day 70 – Bali

2007-12-04T13:04:00.002Z

Saturday 24th November

We woke up to find the hotel sanctuary we had enjoyed for the last week invaded by OzBusers. They were everywhere! The day was spent shopping, chilling on the beach, swimming in the pool and generally enjoying our last full day here so not much to report on this one I’m afraid.

Day 69 – Bali

2007-12-04T13:04:00.001Z

Friday 23rd November 2007

Today is the day our bus mates are due to rejoin us but as they are not due till this evening plans for the day have already been made. The girls are planning a pampering day of manicures and shopping and the boys (and one of the girls) decided to hit the water park.

The water park was cool, lots of slides, cool pools, a swim up bar (which prompted one of my Aussie mates to comment that this was the only bar he had been to where you could have twenty beers and still not need to get up for the loo, think about it) and a good day was had by all.

We wandered back from the park and saw the OzBus arriving in a trio of minibuses and heading to the hotel they were booked into for the first night (those of us who arrived earlier in the week had popped in to see this place and advised OzBus that staying here was not a good idea, and for once they listened but could not get out of the first night).

We then headed off to find the girls before rejoining our fellow OzBusers for dinner and spent the night swapping gossip and stories from our time apart.

Day 68 – Bali

2007-12-04T13:03:00.002Z

Thursday 22nd November

Today does start off slightly differently to be fair, in a moment of madness the previous day we had booked ourselves in to go dolphin watching at dawn on the other side of the island, now due to distances this meant a 3:30am leave. The five of us crazy enough to sign up all made it on time for a bumpy bus ride to the other side of Bali.

The journey was too bumpy for some and a bit of travel sickness ensued and the boats were very low in the water causing the salt water to drench me completely and render my camera useless but all this faded into the background of our minds as we saw dolphins jumping over the waves not 6ft away from us, it was all worth it for that.

After getting back to the hotel most of the day was spent sleeping followed by a trip to the Strawberry Martini bar for dinner then back to the hotel, tomorrow the OzBus catches us up!

Day 67 – Bali

2007-12-04T13:03:00.001Z

Wednesday 21st November

Another late start was quickly followed by a trip into town for some more shopping (a TopShop had been sighted by the girls on a previous expedition), a bit of boogy boarding in the sea, some quality fake merchandise purchased, nice dinner, few beers, bed, another easy day here in Bali.

Today we were also joined by the two Yogikarta flyers who flew in late the night before.

Day 66 – Bali

2007-12-04T13:02:00.001Z

Tuesday 20th November 2007

Now I will apologise now as the entire for this week are not going provide riveting reading as it really was a chill out week for us.

Today we woke up late, went shopping for a bit, found a great beach front bar that makes a heavenly strawberry martini that my girlfriend instantly became hooked on (pure coincidence that this also happens to be the most expensive drink we will find during our stay in Bali!), enjoyed the beach at sunset, had another nice dinner and a few drinks and then hit the hay.

Day 65 – Jakarta – Bali

2007-12-04T13:01:00.000Z

Monday 19th November 2007

The group split into their separate section this morning, the train goers leaving at the crack of sparrows, the Yogikarta flyers leaving mid-morning and the Balinese sun seekers leaving early afternoon. We found our accommodation in Bali on the web in the morning and arranged for them to pick us up at the airport with all the technicalities out of the way it was off on another flight with our favourite unsafe Indonesian operator who again got us there in one piece if a little delayed.

The hotel airport transfer went smoothly; our rooms were ready on time and very nice for the £6 per person price tag. With the OzBus not due till Friday and our departure to Darwin scheduled for late Sunday we had a full week in Paradise ahead of us!

We unloaded out gear and headed in to town, we saw the Bali Bombing Memorial, the main stretch of shops, had dinner in a cool little bar with a live band then headed back to the hotel to chill out on our porch with good friends and a late night tipple or two.

Day 64 – Jakarta

2007-12-04T13:00:00.000Z

Sunday 18th November 2007

The day began with calls to the room which due to sheer tiredness and the need for a lie in were duly ignored. Breakfast in bed followed then it was off down to the lobby to see what the plan was. Unsurprisingly there was nothing too appealing planned so the morning was taken up with planning for after Jakarta, there were several options open to the group.

We had just discovered that our OzBus companions had run into a little trouble with the Indonesian roads, i.e. they had been washed away in a flood (the roads not the OzBusers). This now meant they were flying into Jakarta today but not staying, they were getting a connection flight straight on to Yokikarta, the home of the Bora Bora Temple. This was one of our options as well.

So with this info at our disposal three options were developed:

i) Fly to Yogikarta, see the Bora Bora temple and then fly on to Bali, staying ahead of the group
ii) Get the train to Yogikarta and rejoin the bus there
iii) Fly straight to Bali and enjoy a week in a beach paradise before flying to our final country of the Trip, Oz.

Two people went for option number one, two went for option number two and six, including me, went for option number three. With this decision out the way we found ourselves an Irish Bar, ate drank and were generally merry before hitting the hay.

Day 63 – Singapore - Jakarta

2007-12-04T12:59:00.000Z

Saturday 17th November 2007

After a reasonably organised departure from our hostel 10 of us jumped on the MRT to the airport and boarded our flight to Jakarta, slightly apprehensive about flying on this dodgy airline we still gave it a go and I am glad to say had no problems.

We landed into Jakarta and then grabbed a cab to the hotel. After a leisurely lunch, more due to the time it took the food to come than how long we spent eating it we decided that after of whirlwind few days an afternoon off was in order. A dip in the pool, some time on the web and a quick nap was needed and we decided to stay in Jakarta for another night so we could catch our breath,

The group split in two for the evening with half going to an Aussie Steak House and the rest hitting the bar district. I was part of the steak house crew and we had an amazing meal and found a lovely little hotel bar round the corner. My girlfriend decided to tell the house band it was my birthday so I had to sit through a rendition of “happy birthday Mr Andy” but it was still a good night.

Having carried out extensive research into what to do in Jakarta being carried out by other members of the group we went to bed with high expectations for the next day.

Day 62 - Singapore

2007-12-04T12:57:00.000Z

Friday 16th November 2007

Waking up on the train at 8am as we pull in to Singapore we breeze through passport control and grab an overpriced cab to the hostel. We are greeted with what I consider to be our first proper back packer hostel this trip with rooms coming off a central lunge with a big TV and a selection of dodgy DVDs, a kitchen to the side and shared loos and showers. It was cheap, it was clean and it did the job perfectly, we have a day and a night here before flying to Jakarta in Indonesia tomorrow morning.

So what do you do for a day in Singapore? We began by getting the MTR into town and wandering the streets in search o the sights; we found the famous Raffles Hotel and had a nose around, saw a huge Christmas tree reminding us all that despite the warm weather Christmas is still on its way, and enjoyed this smartly presented city.

To continue our tour we signed for an amphibious bus/boat tour. Half an hour on the river, half an hour on land, we saw the Singapore Lion, a hotel that apparently looks like and elephant but I could not see it myself and much more then it was back to the hotel to plan our next move.

Now for the evening there was a definite split in what to do so we did the obvious thing, split. Half went off to enjoy the night life and a Singapore Sling at Raffles and the other half, which included me, went to the Singapore Night Safari. Now many of you geography buffs may be thinking that this sounds a bit strange as the Singapore is not big enough to have a safari and you would be right. The Night Safari is a very well put together night time zoo where you can see nocturnal animals that are hard to see in the wild. We say tigers, leopards, rhinos, fling squirrels and much more. We even fitted in a quick Singapore Sling in the Zebra bar.

After a fun filled night we got back to the hostel, confirmed our accommodation in Jakarta and headed to bed, ready to head to Indonesia tomorrow where we would arrive well ahead of the group and plan our next steps.

Day 61 – Kuala Lumpur – Singapore

2007-12-04T12:56:00.000Z

Thursday 15th November 2007

The day began at the crack of sparrows for some of the group, 2 brave volunteers met in reception in the early hours and headed into town to get the group tickets to go up the Petronas Towers, unfortunately it was 1 ticket per person so they failed in their mission, if our OzBus guide was to be believed this means all we have left to do today is shop!

Luckily for us she was wrong, our little tour took in palaces, museums, a park that was the most impressive war memorial I have ever seen, the KL tower we had been up the night before and finished off at the dark caves. The dark caves has a temple up the top of 200 or so steps and, unsurprisingly, some dark caves home to many bats and 7ft long glow in the dark snakes, the tour was great and we left for the station happy that we had made the time to enjoy this amazing city.

Arriving at the station with time to spare we were surprised to discover that one of our group had never been on a train before and for a first time experience he was blessed indeed, for our £5 we had a bed in carriage of 40 or so beds, they were clean, comfy and the carriage was quiet, it was a great trip as the gentle motion of the train rocked us to sleep we drew ever nearer to Singapore.

Day 60 – Penang - Kuala Lumpur

2007-12-04T12:55:00.002Z

Wednesday 14th November 2007

After a morning of driving across Malaysia we reached KL in the early afternoon, with the group granted three hours to see the city and being told that apart from the famous Petronas Twin Towers and shopping there was nothing to do in KL anyway, our splinter group borrowed the OzBus minibus and headed for our hotel, it would be some time till we saw the bus again.

We found the hotel easily and checked in with little trouble. After unpacking and settling in we sorted out the train tickets to head to Singapore on the sleeper train the next night at the princely sum of £5 each and booked some extra flights to Indonesia for the less organised among us. These flights were again very cheap as the airline we chose had a serious crash in January and is banned in the EU due to its safety record, bargain!

With all that sorted out we headed out to the KL tower, a very tall telecom tower with great views of the city at night. By the time we had done this the night was getting on a bit and dinner still had to be found. Driven by hunger we made our first mistake, dinner at Planet Hollywood! The food was not the best, the wine for the girls was free but not the best and if it was not for a bottle of JD between three the night could have been a total right off. Still with a full day tour of KL planned for tomorrow before leaving for Singapore at 10pm it was time for bed anyway and we all headed back enjoying a sense of freedom that we had not fully experienced since Kathmandu!

Day 59 – Thailand – Malaysia

2007-12-04T12:55:00.001Z

Tuesday 13th November 2007

Another day of travel and paperwork ensues with the usual chaos of a border crossing with the OzBus keeping everyone on their toes, a change of bus, a change of guides and a change of currency takes up a large chunk of the day until we arrive in Penang and are greeted by a gigantic 20 or so storey hotel. The hotel has lovely rooms and working wireless so we begin our plotting.

To give you some background on why we are planning this departure I will have to let you know where the bus is going tomorrow. A quick three hour stop is planned in Kuala Lumpur and many of us were looking forward to spending a little more time here so have decided to do just that and throw in a trip to Singapore just for good measure!

What began as a small group soon blossomed into a larger one with 10 people booking in to get off the bus with us, accommodation was found in KL, a sleeper train to get us to KL was researched and flights from Singapore to Jakarta in Indonesia were found so we could rejoin the bus and after all that work sleep was fast coming and the morning held the promise of new adventure.

Day 58 – Koh Samui – Songkhla

2007-12-04T12:54:00.001Z

Monday 12th November 2007

As a new weeks starts we leave the shores of Koh Samui and head for Songkhla, our last Thailand stop before we hit Malaysia, not a very eventful day to be honest, a fair bit of driving, a nice looking hotel, even it the staff were hard to speak to and the place was taken over by two large weddings, and wireless internet seemed to be available.

The internet sparked ideas of leaving once more and we tried to plan another short departure from the bus, turns out the wireless was up the spout but the seed of dissent had been sown and the next time Internet became available we planned to take full advantage of it! With half formed plans flying round our heads sleep was a long time coming!

Day 57 Koh Samui

2007-12-04T12:53:00.002Z

Sunday 11th November 2007

With the scooters not working out to well we reverted to the jeep today and I am very glad we did. We began the day with a trip to the Samui Aquarium which is also home to a large group of Bengal Tigers, we watched the Tiger show, saw an amusing bird show and refused to sit for a photo with a obviously doped up tiger. After this we headed back out to see a waterfall that was a hefty walk for a nice but slightly disappointing view.

After this busy morning and early afternoon we decided a massage would finish us off nicely. We stopped off at a few places only to be told that they were fully booked but determined to find somewhere we soldiered on and were rewarded with a lovely massage and a reflexology session that I honestly didn’t fall asleep during, honest, the snoring was just a coincidence!

Refreshed and happy it was time for a quick change back at the hotel then off to dinner at a restaurant on the other side of the island to finish off our time on the island paradise in style!

Day 56 – Koh Samui

2007-12-04T12:53:00.001Z

Saturday 10th November 2007

Having spent the day before exploring the town by jeep we thought day two on the island could be the day to give the scooters a try so we hired a couple, crashed one in the car park, paid for the damage and decided that was not the best idea after all.

Instead it was time for a wonder in to town to see what the shops had to offer, a very good Ulster Fry at an Irish bar in Chaweng and a night out dressed as Lady Boy’s just for fun (my water filled condom boobs were the stars of the show). Tired and a little worse for where from the drink it was off to bed, tomorrow would be our last full day in Koh Samui and there was plenty left to fit in.

Day 55 – Koh Samui

2007-12-04T12:52:00.000Z

Friday 9th November 2007

It was a wet and windy morning that greeted us as we woke up in our beach bungalow and definitely not a day for lazing on the beach. With the roads in a bit of a state mopeds were ruled out and hired jeeps were to be the order of the day. Several people followed suit and after a bacon and egg breakfast it was off to see the island.

Our first encounter would be with another jeep full of OzBusers that had not got enough petrol to reach the petrol station, on our way out to see the sights we provided these stranded busers with their very own Irish Squaddie to sort them out and went off to explore.

While driving along the flooded roads, which was immensely fun by the way, we spotted a sign for a crocodile farm, having enjoyed our trip to the snake farm in Bangkok we decided to give this a go and headed off down the back streets to find it.

A few winding roads later and we were there and we were not disappointed. There were crocs a plenty, a great crocodile show with crazy Thai blokes sticking their heads in crocs mouths and hands down their throats. We saw a snake show with King Cobras, met another baby monkey and saw a tiger and a bear.

After having a great time we headed on, found a good spot for lunch, headed to see the island’s famous Big Buddha and went back to the hotel satisfied that we had seen all we planned to that day.

In the evening I shunned the drink and took the wheel again heading to the other side of the island for dinner and completing a whole lap to get back to the hotel.

Day 54 – Bangkok – Koh Samui

2007-12-04T12:51:00.000Z

Thursday 8th November 2007

Rejoining the bus after enjoying our freedom for so long was strange to say the least, and was made even stranger by the lack of OzBusers joining us on this stretch as many had already gone and others would leave later to go straight to Koh Samui rather than stay in Chumpon for the night as we planned to.

After an enjoyable ride on the bus, a nice lunch stop and a very nice driving day we were given the option to vote on whether to drive through and get Koh Samui today, this would be the first unanimous OzBus decision ever! We then headed on to the ferry and the beach paradise that awaits.

The boat ride, despite reports of choppy seas by preceding OzBusers, was easy going and we were soon motoring along to the home bay resort, our home for the next four nights. A nice break in a beach paradise seemed perfect but the rain had different ideas! Much of the island was flooded and we went to bed after being told that getting around tomorrow may not be the easiest task but we were determined to give it a go anyway.

Day 53 – Bangkok

2007-12-04T12:50:00.000Z

Wednesday 7th November 2007

Our last full day in Bangkok beckons, a last chance to see the sights and soak up the metropolitan culture before heading on to the island paradise of Koh Samui. A taxi ride into town for a spot of lunch is followed by a wander round the sky train station. With no clue which trains go where we eventually go for the tuk tuk option and head off to find ourselves a river boat cruise to see the back streets / canals of this amazing city.

We are shown the canals that criss cross the city with falling down shacks neighbouring temples and impressive looking boat piers then we reach our first stop, a snake farm. Slightly apprehensively we entered to be greeted by a Thai man with a very large python around his neck offering to place him round our shoulders and take a photo (for a small fee of course) we declined. The next temptation, a 4 month old baby monkey called Cappuccino was to hard to resist and we forked over a few baht so me and my girlfriend could cuddle the monkey and have a quick photo with him.

We then wandered round this obscure little zoo seeing monkeys, deer, a bear and a tiger, we caught the end of the daily snake show and after buying a lurid pink stripper hat to replace one lost by an Australian OzBuser in Corbett it was back on the boat. We saw floating markets and the famous bread eating fish before being deposited back near the hotel.

We return to bid farewell to a selection of OzBusers who have decided to head to Koh Samui under their own steam and leave by bus and ferry for an overnight crossing to the island. With my mind made up to get back on the bus I will see them again when we arrive on Friday morning as planned. Having seen them off a quick dinner round the corner and a bit of market stall shopping and it was off to bed ready to get back on OzBus bright and early in the morning.

Day 52 – Bangkok

2007-12-04T12:47:00.000Z

Tuesday 6th November 2007

Another day in Bangkok beckons as I am sure I have mentioned before I have been to Bangkok in the past so decide that the best use of my day will be to catch up on my blog, which I must confess I had been neglecting for a while, and take advantage of the high speed internet to upload some of my photos onto Facebook.

By the time I had finished all this off evening was fast approaching and it was time to hit the town, a stroll down the Koh San Road, dinner at a nice little Italian place, lethal dinks at an Irish bar and drunken heart to hearts led to a great night, tomorrow is our last day here before we move on. Again the group will split with many making their own way to our next stop in Koh Samui rather than spend two days on the bus.

Site Redesign

2007-11-30T01:05:00.000Z

Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of updates recently but I promise they are on the way real soon.

In the mean time I received an email from someone asking if I could change the colour set up of the blog as the white writng / black background combo was giving her a bit of a headache as she read the site.

I figured if one person emails about it a lot more are thinking it so welcome to the new and improved OzBus Diaries.

Enjoy!

Day 51 – Bangkok

2007-11-06T07:25:00.000Z

Monday 5th November 2007

With no concrete plans for the day a lie in ensues. When we get up we discover our motley crew has split, some have stayed in bed as we did others have gone to town. Luckily those who have gone to town have left us an itinerary. With some careful thought I work out that if we leave now we should be able to catch them at the MBK shopping centre where they plan to be for lunch and shopping. I have been to Bangkok before and know how large this centre is so am not entirely confident that we will locate them.

It turns out luck is on our side and within 5 minutes we have found the group, an afternoon of shopping and giving in to the temptation of McDonalds follows and we agree to meet up again outside the shopping centre later that evening to go for dinner drinks and bowling. It was now time to nip back to the hotel and greet the group as they arrived. A couple agreed to join us for the evening, some were drawn to the ping pong shows as we had been and others were already planning there departure from the group for a while for an extended beach holiday on Koh Samui.

We met up at MBK as planned and went for dinner. Now the standard story with an OzBus dinner is that some like it and some don’t but tonight we found the perfect restaurant, a giant buffet set up where you can get everything from steak to sushi, you have a swipe card that says what you had and then you pay for you own. Everyone enjoyed their dinner, there were no arguments about paying and we headed up to the bowling alley on the top floor happy.

Beer towers, white wine, glow in the dark bowling, pool tables and arcade machines made for a great evening and we returned to the hotel via taxi in a fantastic mood. Tomorrow beckons and the possibilities are endless.

Day 50 – Nepal – Thailand

2007-11-06T07:24:00.002Z

Sunday 4th November 2007

A day of travelling. Up early, check in at the airport, fly to Bangkok, taxi to the hotel, check in, and breathe! We are now in Bangkok.

After some time to relax and sort out our stuff we met up again in reception and head out for the evening. We acquire a selection of Tuk Tuks and head out for dinner and a show. Dinner is seafood and overpriced but good, the show, well when in Bangkok…ping pong, darts, bananas and so on. It was an experience but not necessarily a good one!

Tired from a long day it was back to the hotel, tomorrow we rejoin the group and we are all mildly surprised by how un-excited this prospect gets us. With this time away from the group will we be happy going back to the gruelling schedule or will we begin to increasingly workout ways to shadow the group while sticking to our own agenda, as usual only time will tell…

Day 49 – Kathmandu

2007-11-06T07:24:00.001Z

Saturday 3rd November 2007

A 5:40am departure followed by a 3 and a half hour drive got us to the second highest bungee jump in the world, at 160m walking over the bridge to the waiting area was scary enough but in a short tine we would be attaching ourselves to bits of rope and throwing ourselves off!

We were briefed about what would happen, weighed to see who would go first (lucky heavy me won the prize) and then led out to the bridge. The canyon swing was up first and so was I. Now the swing involves having a harness strapped to your waste then jumping off, you are in free fall for about 4 seconds then you swing like a pendulum out over the canyon.

I was tied on, lead to the edge, 1, 2, 3 was counted and much to my surprise I actually had the balls to jump off! My brain obviously disagreed with this decision as about half way through the freefall part I blacked out, coming to at the far end of the swing, scary experience but an amazing one as well. A small trek / mountain climbing expedition later I was back at the top of the canyon and doubting whether I had it in me to jump off again for the bungee.

When it came round to my turn to bungee I was still unsure but when I was stood on the edge and the count of 1, 2, 3 sounded again I jumped again! This time consciousness stayed with as I free falled head first into a 160m deep canyon, bounced up again, free falled, up, free fall and finally down. Amazing experience!

The bungee and the canyon swing were awesome and definitely one of the things to do before you die ticked off my list but this is not something I can really see myself doing again for a long time but I would recommend it to anyone once.

Getting back into Kathmandu late it was time to grab dinner with the group and pack up, tomorrow we fly to Bangkok and the day after the rest of the group will join us again.

Day 48 Kathmandu

2007-11-06T07:23:00.000Z

Friday 2nd November 2007

Up early for a mountain trek a selection of us all boarded a mini bus and headed out for a leisurely stroll in the Himalayan foothills. We strolled through villages, saw an English School and watched a show put on by the pupils to mark the opening of their new school building, saw spiders and beetles, marvelled at the scenery and got more and more tired and sweaty.

We reached a stage, about 2 hours in to what we thought was a 2.5 hour trek to be told it would take another 3 hours or so to reach our final destination, this was not what we wanted to hear and MrBee jokingly said we should try and hitch a lift. Surprisingly the next thing we saw was a bus loaded with supplies and locals come round the corner, they offered us a lift, we accepted gladly. This bus is the local supply bus and goes up the mountain every 2 days to deliver groceries, we helped them unload at each stop and they took us to our final destination where we grabbed some lunch then headed back to town, happy and contented with our trekking experience.

A quiet dinner and a bit of shopping finished off the day nicely, it was then off to bed ready for bungee and canyon swing tomorrow.

Day 47 – Kathmandu

2007-11-06T07:22:00.000Z

Thursday 1st November 2007

For anyone who has not been white water rafting and wants to, do it, do it now! After a hot breakfast we hit the road at a leisurely pace, stopping for loo breaks and tea breaks when we wanted and reaching our destination happy and looking forward to hitting the river.

16 of us went along and we mounted up 8 to a raft before heading out. With some tame and some not so tame rapids ahead we received basic instructions on what to do from our boat guides and set off into the river. It was awesome, our Australian girl was the first to go out of the boat on the rapids and had a scary experience with the boat bouncing on her head but we recovered her lost flip flops and she made it back in the boat in one piece so that is ok. We all dived off the boat for a swim a couple of times and had water fights with the other boat whenever we got close enough.

A nice lunch was laid on for us at the end, ice cream dessert was well received and a large rabbit hutch that also contained a deer made sure that our leftovers went to a good place. Happier about leaving the bus for a while than we thought we would be we all headed back to the hotel buzzing with the excitement of a great day.

With an early morning trek ahead the next day a quick mill around the hotel reception was followed by an early night

Day 46 – Kathmandu

2007-11-06T07:19:00.000Z

Wednesday 31st October 2007

Today is our first day away from the group, my girlfriend and MrBee the fellow originator of the plan to stay take control, with MrBee handling the logistics and my girlfriend making sure everyone is where they are supposed to be. They organised a new hotel for us, made sure we got there, booked up our activities, made sure we all know how much to pay and when and generally made the decision to stay a lot easier on everyone concerned. They even managed to accommodate for one who decided to stay at 3am, just before the bus left!

The new hotel was good, internet was slow but free, rooms were big and clean, cheap DVDs of the Simpsons Movie and Anchorman were watched on my laptop and a free relaxing day was had by all. After a quiet dinner it was off to bed, tomorrow white water rafting beckons!

Day 45 – Kathmandu – Freedom

2007-11-06T07:18:00.003Z

Tuesday 30th October 2007

A new day dawns and with the decision to leave the bus for a while made it is with high spirits that we crawl out of bed in the early hours to board a flight around the Himalayas where we will glimpse the peak of Everest. The flight is fantastic the scenery is amazing and for once we know that the scary 3:30am departure planned for the next day does not apply to us. We spend the day taking in what Kathmandu has to offer, getting badges and flags sewn to our bags and clothes to show the world where we have been eating steaks at the Everest Steak house and then a group dinner so we have one last session as a group, this will also be a strange evening as a mock OzBus wedding between our Irish squaddie and ourSouth African beauty has been planned for no real reason other than entertainment and I am the best man.

After dinner many joined us on the roof terrace for an impressive set of fake vows from our Irish priest (his girlfriend wrote his script and is quite the wordsmith) I gave an impromptu speech and the reception was at a bar down the road with a live band and fun was had by most. The end of the night would see me returning to the room and being unable to get in as my girlfriend had the key, when I find her I will truly throw my dollies out the pram and slam doors all over the place but I will calm down and with a whisky in my hand pass out in a chair and snore away till the early hours, at 3am I will be woken up and head down to wish farewell to my fellow OzBusers who I will see again in Bangkok.

Day 44 – Kathmandu – The Beginning of the End

2007-11-06T07:18:00.001Z

Monday 29th October 2007

Having stayed up for the hike we were disappointed that the clouds hid the sunrise and our hiking guide was verging on mute. What was pitched as a 2.5 hour hike kept us away from Kathmandu for over 7 hours and when I returned to find a refreshed and happy crew who had not gone on the hike I headed to bed fuming and in the worst mood I have been in on this trip so far. After failing to get any sleep I headed back out and found a group of OzBusers heading for lunch, having no idea where anyone else was at this stage, including my sensible girlfriend who had not gone hiking but had gone to sleep, I joined them and after a few drinks and a steak I felt my mood lighten a little but I was still not the happiest bunny in the hutch.

I returned from lunch to find the lobby buzzing with excitement around my girlfriend and another OzBuser huddled over a piece of paper, my girlfriend looks me in the eyes and says “I’m not getting back on the bus”. The prospect of long drive days on rickety buses back through India has proved too much, as we are doing all that driving just to catch a flight a group of people had decided to stay in Kathmandu and enjoy what it has to offer and then rejoin the group in Thailand. Now this initially started at 5 out of 38, by the end of the day there will be 11 out of 38, 8 more will decide to brave the friendship highway themselves to reach mount Everest base camp, others will fly to Kalcutta to rejoin the group and fly to Bangkok with them from there, in total 27 will leave not be on the bus when it leaves for India on the 31st of October and even after my previous diatribe on the topic I will end up as one of the 27.

With plans afoot the news of the impending departure of many is broken to the rest but never ones to let this get us down we did the usual and hit the pub, a little place called Tom and Jerry’s provided cocktails and pool and we danced and drank the night away, all our troubles a distant memory, 5 extra days in Kathmandu now beckoned, with white water rafting, trekking and bungee all on the agenda.

The question that sticks in my mind as I fall into a drunken sleep is if over 70% leave the trip is it not the trip that has left them…

Day 43 – India – Nepal

2007-11-06T07:15:00.002Z

Sunday 28th October 2007

21 hours on the road. The driving day to end all driving days, there is not much else to say about today, the repercussions of today will be felt for days; people’s future decisions were undoubtedly influenced by this day. A long drive to the Nepalese border, a complicated rickshaw ride to get the bags across, mix ups at the border, road side toilet stops, girls in the bushes to the left boys to the right, no tea, dinner at 23:30 and hotel arrival at 3:30am, with a dawn hike planned for 4:30am. The two OzBusers who left for Goa are waiting for us in Kathmandu but spirits are low and many of us figure that with an hour till the hike bed is a mute point.

Day 42 – Varanassi

2007-11-06T07:15:00.001Z

Saturday 27th October 2007

An early start had us heading out of the room and straight for the bus under cover of darkness as we head towards the river Ganges for a dawn cruise. Our guide seems agitated with our bus drivers and at one point threatens not to take us but whatever the issue is it is quickly resolved and we are on our way to this mystical river. It is said that to bathe in the Ganges is to wash away all your sins and if you drink the river water on your deathbed you are guaranteed entry to Hindu heaven.

The cruise turns out to be very good; the sunrise is pretty, if a little smoggy, we see funeral fires burning on the banks and hear of how children, monks and those bitten by cobras are not burnt but merely sunk into the river, people at the other end of the boat to me even see a set of feet sinking below the surface. As with many places the mystical is mixed with the commercial and many boats selling everything from relics to DVD’s (one even has a working telly on board) approach us as we cruise. We light prayer candles and float them down the river and marvel at monkeys climbing round the cityscape as we float by. The river tour finishes and we return to the hotel via a Hindu temple where we ring a bell to let the gods know we are coming and learn more about the significance of the cobra.

After a quick nap to recover from the early morning we headed to the hotel pool and enjoyed a few beers, some sun and a bombing contest. After our swim it was time for a quick change then we joined up with a few others and our tour leader and head into the city to see what the evening has to offer and we are not disappointed. There is a fiery display on at the waterfront, small kids tug at our heartstrings and wallets trying to sell us things we have no need or desire for. Older men try to get us to pay them money so they will show us where the best views of burning bodies can be found and taxi drivers try to charge us over the odds for the return home but it was a good evening, we had dinner back at the hotel and then hit the hay for the lat time in India, tomorrow Nepal beckons.

Day 41 – Lucknow – Varanassi

2007-11-06T07:14:00.000Z

Friday 26th October 2007

Waking up to a delightful breakfast of hard boiled egg toast and cornflakes was made even more fun than usual by the lack of tables. This resulted in a lap based breakfast before hitting the road and heading to the home of the Hindi religion, Varanassi. We are due two nights in this amazing city and I have every intention of combining some much needed R&R with some good old fashioned sight seeing.

We arrived in the afternoon and after unloading and ordering a spot of lunch at what turned out to be a very nice hotel we started to plan the rest of the day. First port of call was to be laundry, the hotel offered a service so we bagged up our clothes and send them off to be washed, simple. Just after sending the laundry off my girlfriend heads off to see what is going on downstairs, do they have internet, etc and locks me in the room as she goes. This would have been fine normally as I knew she was only going to be 5 minutes but as she leaves the laundry service calls I have sent them only one sock and they are sending someone up for the other half of the pair. A minute later the knock on the door reminds me I am locked and much to my girlfriends amusement upon her return, I have to slide the sock under the door and confuse the poor man from housekeeping.

After this mini drama we perused the list of hotel services and discovered a very reasonable priced massage and grooming service which after this many weeks on the road had a certain irresistible appeal. After some careful thought and deliberation me, my girlfriend and my little sister all went for the same package, the “Cheers 2” at the princely sum of £11 we were really pushing the boat out. For our hard earned cash we would receive a pedicure, manicure, oil massage, deep pore facial and steam bath. It all sounded a bit on the girly side but I was sold none the less.

When the time came I dutifully followed my little Indian man into the massage centre which sounded very glamorous but was not. Imagine a greasy spoon café’s kitchen but instead of gas rings and a grill pan there is a massage table and you have a fairly good mental image of where I was sitting. Unperturbed by this I just sat back and went with the flow. The man started off with the unenviable task of giving me a pedicure (those of you who know me will understand that my feet are very far from being my best feature). After working them over with the usual pedicure tools and cutting my toenails with a scalpel which he will also use later to cut my finger nails, he then decided the dead skin on my feet was so bad that he left the room for better tools. He returned a little later with a razor blade and proceeded to cut away at the dead skin. By the end of the manicure and pedicure everything looked good so I was willing to turn a blind eye to the strange methods employed.

Next I was asked to strip down to my birthday suit and lie on the table, no towel was offered to protect my modesty but again for those who know me you will realise that my modesty is not something I am worried about. Apart form the over zealous hair pulling and some “accidental” hand slips which resulted in me being touched in places that I normally only let my girlfriend have access to it was a very good massage and facial and after my steam bath (a tin lined shed full of steam) and a quick shower, I was clean, relaxed and ready for anything.

I found a small group of OzBusers on the lawn playing shithead and waited for the girls to come out of the massage centre. When they did ti turned out the modesty had not been an option for them either. Joint showers, joint steam baths and eyefuls of fellow female OzBuers flesh had all featured in their experience. The quote of the day has to be from my girlfriend who emerged stating that “that massage was only slightly less intimate than the ones you give me”. It was certainly an interesting experience all round.

This was all discussed in great detail over dinner and more games of shithead then it was time for an early night as a dawn cruise of the Ganges meant it was early start the next day.

Gossip Corner 2

2007-10-26T11:02:00.001+01:00

Here we are the long awaited second instalment from L’ll S:

To say that we have bonded would be a massive understatement. We couldn’t be more relaxed in each others company if we’d know each other for 6 years let alone 6 weeks. Not a breakfast goes by without a discussion about one or others bowel movements and the consistency of ones stools.

There are times on the road when the bus is a sea of limbs as each of us lays awkwardly across each other in “compromising” positions in order to try and get comfy got once and get some sleep. We share our possessions, our beds, our toiletries and our germs without a second thought.

As for gossip, we share that too. It could not be more rife at the moment. I have never heard so much rubbish spread about a bunch of people in my life – well people who weren’t celebs or politicians.

The tangled web of incest and deceit grows ever more entwined so that when the truth finally does come out it is dismissed in an instant as just another “bus rumour”. Therefore I have found that the best way to keep a secret on the OzBus is to tell everyone. Trust me, it works. Start your own “rumour” based totally on fact and see how many people believe you.

Some people seem to making the same mistakes by thinking no one sees them when they are up to mischief and others are being about as subtle as the OzBus in Quetta. As for myself, who knows, some rumours might be true!

Day 40 – Agra – Lucknow

2007-10-26T11:01:00.003+01:00

Thursday 25th October 2005

Today was going to be a driving day, setting off early we drove the 350k to Lukcnow arriving at 6pm, a quick bush toilet stop and a cold dinner of Dall and rice at road side café was all we had to break up the day.

When we got to Lucknow we were shocked to see Marks and Spencers, McDonalds and a huge shopping centre. With time to kill before OzBus birthday drinks for one of the Aussie guys we headed out to go shopping! Finding everything we needed and more we returned to find the hotel bar served Smirnoff, Cobra Beer and had the dark dingy smoky atmosphere a pub should have, they even had bar stools! Birthday drinks went on till the early hours and we stumbled off to our beds drunk and happy.

Day 39 – The Day it All Went Wrong – Delhi – Agra

2007-10-26T11:01:00.001+01:00

Wednesday 24th October 2007

So when morning came it was time for my Irish friend to tell the others of his impending departure from the bus, he would rejoin us in Varanasi a few days later or in Nepal if he felt he needed more time. His brother was determined to go with him but the company of a fellow blonde OzBuser and a trip to Goa for a beach holiday resulted in his brother staying and us being two members down as we head out, lets just hope they come back as after what is about to happen we may need the numbers!

The rest of us, a little down from this morning’s events already boarded the bus and were informed that a decision had been made about our route. The friendship highway to Tibet has been deemed un-passable and we will no longer be visiting Tibet, China, or Laos, instead we will be leaving Nepal and heading back into India. We will travel down to Kalcutta and then board a flight to Bangkok. This is a real shame, the extra flight makes the whole driving to Sydney thing a little less impressive but it cannot be helped I suppose. We had all know about this possible alternative route from the start but many did not take it well and there is much talk of leaving the bus in Kathmandu and pursuing there own route for a while before trying to rejoin the group later on.

Do not get me wrong here, I am not too happy about this either, my longstanding Welsh housemate just got back from travelling and raved about Laos so I am gutted I am missing it but this does not mean I plan to leave the trip. Flying half across India for a beach holiday I also consider to be a little excessive. If I fancy a beach break we have 3 nights in Bangkok followed by three nights in Koh Samui, I have been to Bangkok before so could easily skip it out and have a week on the beach in Koh Samui but this is not really the point I am trying to make. If I had wanted a smooth easy trip I would have signed up for OzBus 7 or 8 when all the kinks were out, if I had really wanted a smooth trip I could have flown first class all the way for what this costs. We are the first OzBus and the media enjoys printing stories about us whinging on in regard to the food and the driving time, they have it wrong. We all have our bad days when it gets to us but we also all knew we were planning to drive from London to Sydney in 12 weeks, a pretty spectacular achievement but it only takes one paper to print a stupid story and the whole group is tarred with the same brush.

This Saturday will mark the half way point of the trip and we have now spent 6 weeks together on a bus, we are a closer group than we could ever have imagined and I truly hope that we all pull in to Sydney together at the end of this pioneering trip.

Woah, I got a bit carried away there, sorry, back to the trip. Today our diminished and grumpy group is heading to Agra, the home of one of the seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal. We arrived early afternoon, paid the foreigners 750 rupee entry charge (20 rupees for locals) and headed in to see this amazing building. It is truly an awe inspiring moment when you see it for the first time and I am proud to say that I have now seen this iconic building first hand. We retuned from our walk around the Taj to find we were staying locally and that it was time to check in.

The hotel was nice, the staff very friendly and the hotel restaurant very good. One OzBuser who does really consider her bag to be her problem caused a bit of an issue and nearly left it behind reception, where a fellow OzBuser had put it for safe keeping, the next morning but the less said about her and her bag the better, I am out of rants for today. After dinner it was time for quick beer on the hotel terrace then an early night.

Day 38 Corbett – Delhi

2007-10-26T11:00:00.003+01:00

Tuesday 23rd October 2007

Today was destined to start well, get better then be the beginning of the end for some OzBusers. Breakfast was good and the bags were quickly loaded and we were on our way to Delhi. We ended up with a good sized room, handy as our tents were socked so we had to put both up in the room to dry, and we happily headed out to the local bar for a quickie. Next stop internet then on to Connaught Square where shops and a place called Spirit Bar beckoned.

We reached Spirit Bar a bit behind the crowd and found most of the OzBusers had been enjoying overpriced cocktails for some time and were three sheets to the wind already, cheesy music and silly party games followed until the price of the drinks drove us away and we headed for the tuk tuk ranks. Again the token ginge gets a mention as she somehow managed to convince her driver to hand over the controls of his livelihood to her despite her obviously inebriated state.

We got back to near the hotel and headed to a cheaper local bar to carry on the party, people began to drift off until there were only two left, me and my Irish partner in crime who looked like he needed to talk, the details of the conversation are and will remain between me, him and whisky but needless to say it was serious enough for him to tell me he planned to be the first defector and leave the bus for a while come the morning! Despite some very drunken attempts at talking him out of it and reverse psychology by the time we turned in he was still determined to leave come sun up.

Day 37 Corbett

2007-10-26T11:00:00.001+01:00

Monday 22nd October 2007

Up at the crack of sparrows as one of my fellow OzBusers is keen on saying, we were eager to hit the trails in our jeeps. Excited at the idea of seeing tigers in the wild you could feel the excitement on the air. We headed out, 5 to a jeep, some, me included, opting for a half day safari and others went for a full day in the hope that this would be more likely to yield a tiger sighting. After a few hours on the trail we had seen spotted deer, a woolly necked crane, black faced monkeys and a tiger…footprint. Alas the day was not destined to yield a tiger sighting for the half dayers and the full dayers were to have no more luck than us.

It was still a great expedition and we were happy when we came back to camp and spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon enjoying the sunshine and the fresh air. As it neared 3:30pm it was time for the next adventure as a few of us had signed up for an Elephant safari, which is basically the same as the jeep safari but slower and involves riding on an elephant. This was awesome, despite our token ginge losing a fellow OzBusers much beloved stripper hat and my girlfriend looking up at spiders while her sunglasses fell to the dirt then accidentally deleting one of the best photos of the trip this was still my favourite part of the Corbett visit. Our guide even plucked poisonous spiders from the tress so we could get better photos and our elephant, George, was amazing (apparently she was called Helena but I prefer George).

We returned to camp to a nice diner, a quick get together in the booze brothers tent then off to bed ready to head back to Delhi in the morning.

Day 36 – Delhi – Corbett

2007-10-26T10:59:00.003+01:00

Sunday 21st October 2007

The day began with a bit of Delhi sight seeing, we have been staying on New Delhi but before heading out we were to visit Old Delhi where a Mosque, the Red Fort and a Bazaar awaited. The Red Fort was fun, despite the extra entry fee for foreigners, instead of hiring a guide we opted to make up fictitious facts within our little group, the most notable being the conversion of the stream of paradise into a bowling alley in the early 12th century and the fact that this used to be called the Green Fort then someone worked out it was Red and changed the name. There were also a large amount of Chipmunks hanging around the grounds.

After this we discovered the bazaar was not open yet and headed to the mosque, here we would have to fork over extra cash for a camera ticket, without which you could not take photos, still you have to roll with the punches sometimes. It was a nice Mosque as Mosques go and to be fair we are verging on world authorities on the subject by this stage of the trip! It was then back on the coach via many street hawkers, one who was so persistent he haggled for you until my girlfriend finally gave in and bought the mini chess set for 300 rupees, he started at 850!

Our next stop was the Cornett Tiger Reserve and two nights of camping beckoned. After a long, incredibly bumpy, drive we arrived at night and were offered the chance to upgrade from tents to bungalows at the princely sum of 2,500 rupees, wanting to save pennies for safaris and beer I stuck with the tent option! A nice meal, a few drinks and a roaring camp fire were fun for all and it was then off for an early night ready for our 6am safari the next morning!

Day 35 – Amiristar – Delhi

2007-10-26T10:59:00.001+01:00

Saturday 20th October 2007

This morning was to present the oddest breakfast so far, a veggie club sandwich, a boiled egg and chips! Fed, but in a very strange way, we hit the road for the long drive to Delhi.

We reached the outskirts of town in the early afternoon and spent a couple of hours working our way through the traffic, Delhi is home to 100 million people so traffic is always going to be an issue whatever day it is. To make it worse today is a festival day with people taking to the street on mass and burning effigies making the traffic even worse than usual. We eventually got close the hotel and after a heavily laden 15min trek to the hotel we were checked in and settled.

Once we had unloaded and cleaned up a few of us hit the town to look at the local shopping scene and see what we could find for dinner, for once we were destined to be lucky. After wandering around for a while we found an upstairs vegetarian restaurant and for what worked out at bout £1.20 a head we left full of food and happy. The next stop was the obligatory internet stop followed by a strange discovery. After so long we were not sure we had found it but there is was, a bar! A couple of beers later and a good old fashioned gossip session later we headed back to the hotel hoping to catch the England South Africa game on the telly. Alas this was not to be and I would not hear of our defeat till the morning, still at least I would go to sleep in blissful ignorance!

Day 34 – Pakistan – India

2007-10-26T10:58:00.003+01:00

Friday October 19th 2007

With heavy hearts we left the hotel and headed to the border, loaded up with all our stuff it was then time to walk across the border to a new country and new buses. We said out goodbyes and heartfelt thanks to our guide and after filling out several forms in triplicate, copying them and signing them in seven places we were in India (well known for its love of paperwork!)

The new buses showed initial promise, the seats seemed comfy, the air conditioning worked and all was well. Still in 2 separate buses, OzBus 4a) and OzBus 4b) (not their real names but what the group have labelled them) we headed for Amritsar, our first stop in India and blissfully only 30k away.

Arriving early afternoon time we ordered lunch and a few beers (alcohol is legal again :-) then headed out to see the town. Our main stop was to be the Golden Temple, a Sikh temple in the middle of a square, surrounded by water. It is an impressive sight and we enjoyed strolling around and seeing the ceremonies taking place in the temple. The afternoon was topped off by the discovery of Duracell batteries on the way back to the hotel making it possible for me to take photos again for the first time in days!

The evening was filled with drinking and card games, some found and joined a wedding procession and three of the more adventurous of the group shunned the hotel and went to sleep in the Golden Temple were anyone is welcome to stay the night for free. India had made a good first impression on the group and tomorrow we head to Delhi!

A note on Pakistan

2007-10-26T10:58:00.001+01:00

Pakistan was undoubtedly my favourite country so far, our guide was excellent and made sure we were all looked after. We had a police escort but never felt that we needed them or that they were restricting what we could do in any way. In some of the more rural areas we were seen as a tourist attraction but by the end of the trip we were being treated just like everyone else.

Pakistan has a bad rep in the media and there has been a lot of reporting on recent troubles in the country that I am sure you have all read. It is also one of the places that caused people I know to say things like “you’re going there! Good luck”. Now I have been to the country and spent time there I would happily recommend anyone I know to come here for a holiday. Plan it well and get yourself a good guide (for details of the guy we had who I highly recommend drop me an email and I will send them over) but do not write this beautiful country off because of what you have heard from others, come and see it for yourself.

Day 33 – Lahore

2007-10-26T10:57:00.002+01:00

Thursday 18th October 2007

A lie in, such a simple thing, but so refreshing! We had decided the night before to give the organised tour of Lahore a miss and grab a tuk tuk and head out to the town Bazaar and we had a great day. The people of Lahore did not consider us to be a novelty, we were not mobbed or stared at and had a really nice time wandering around buying this and that as went, apart from accidentally stepping on a dead rat all was good!

Heading back to the hotel we discovered that many of the OzBusers had decided to do their own thing for the day and all seemed in high spirits, especially those that had got tickets to see South Africa play Pakistan at the cricket and ended up on the big screen and the local TV coverage of the match! Ozbus were treating us all to dinner tonight so there was time for a quick freshen up before meeting the rest of the guys in the lobby.

Dinner was fantastic, a buffet of mammoth proportions with our local guide happily explaining each dish to us, especially the more confusing ones. Some decided to not ask and ended up eating the after dinner leaf wrapped around spices in one go, turns out you are supposed to put it in you cheek and suck the flavour out but this fact was not know to our tour leader who told everyone they tasted horrible!

After dinner we went to a drumming ceremony, this is apparently a regular Thursday night occurrence and basically consists of a lot of men sitting around listening to drumming while smoking, eating anf drinking large amounts of hashish. With Friday and Saturday being the weekend in Islamic countries and alcohol being more illegal than hash this is pretty much the equivalent of Friday night down the pub with the lads. The main difference being that you don’t normally get a bunch of gawking tourists staring at you down the local.

A short bus ride back to the hotel and it was time for our last sleep in Pakistan, tomorrow India calls!