Koh Tao

So two weeks ago when I made my visa run to Burma I thought 15 days would be more than enough time to make my way into the North and cross into Laos. But two weeks later, I found myself back at the same border crossing renewing my stay for another two weeks.

The plan was to spend 4-5 days on Koh Tao where the diving is cheap, but the Lonely Planet didn't say anything about how freaking beautiful and amazing and relaxed and fun Koh Tao was. So I stayed for two weeks. Amazing!

The diving was...good. Nothing compared to Koh Phi Phi or the Andaman Islands but it was alright. I finished my advanced course and have now logged over 20 dives and I'm still craving more. There's something so surreal about being underwater I just love it.

The other great thing about Koh Tao were the beach bars. They would get pretty lively at night (nothing like Koh Phi Phi) but were still alot of fun. The island is small so most people gathered at one of two bars. There were hoards of holidaying Brits there drinking their faces off, as usual, but I always seem to find the backpackers making the experience alot more enjoyable. On July 1st, Canada Day, all the Canadians were out having a great time, I think we ended up in a group of about 20-25 of us. This really made my night.

On the 9th, the night of the full moon, I took a party boat over to Koh Pha-Ngan to check out the infamous Full Moon Party. Man that was crazy. Over ten thousand people on the beach drinking and dancing until the sun comes up and then some. And this is low season, I can't imagine what it's like in the winter when there are 30,000 people! I had a great time, met a ton of wicked people and managed to make my way back to the ferry at 6am the next morning.

In other news, I finally lost my camera. When it comes to my camera I'm usually really really good at keeping it with me. I take it out to all the bars and never have problems. But it finally got stolen one night on Koh Tao, or maybe I lost it, it's a long story. Either way it's gone, I just wish they would have left me the memory card. Two and a half months of pictures and videos. Damn.

I'm in Bangkok now, going camera shopping in a bit and preparing to head north to Chiang Mai. I'm looking forward to seeing some culture again. I got into an argument with this dumbass British girl telling her there was no culture on the islands and that all the Thais that live there are solely there because of us, the tourists. And it's true. It will be nice to see the real Thailand, maybe learn a few more words than Hello and Thank you.

The Andaman Coast

Ok so again no pictures, sorry. I was going to post some now but this computer keeps saying it has a virus and the last thing I need is to lose all my pictures or possibly have to buy a new camera. So Southern Thailand. Wow! It is absolutely spectacular here. The rain stopped the day Jeff arrived and the baking sun continued to shine for the entire time he was here. When Jeff left last night the rain started again and its been pouring since. Go figure.

Krabi province is spectacular. Five days on Railey beach, a secluded peninsula accessible only by boat, was definitely too short. There are three unbelievable beaches there all within easy walking distance and enclosed by massive limestone cliffs. The scene is very low key with some chilled out bars lining the beach where you can lay back and enjoy a beer at while listening to some live music or watching some Thai kick boxing. We even caught a snake show one night. Railey is also the climbing capital of SE Asia (Jess probably would have cried or something ;) but I decided to save my excursion money for diving on Ko Phi Phi.

Phi Phi Island is a two hour ferry from Railey famous for its dive sites and rowdy night life. The island itself if beautiful; the water is crystal clear and the sand is so white you need sunglasses to go out. It's a shame you have to share it with thousands of speedo clad holidayers drinking their faces off. But the night life is cool, especially when you start drinking buckets of Samsung (Thai whisky) and Red Bull, Thai style. They say the Red Bull they sell here would be illegal at home, I don't know why and I'm not really sure i want to but it definitely does things to you... But after 4 nights of watching westerners drink until they cant walk I really started to wonder how much more of it I could take.

We didn't drink every night we were there, however. Sitting on the 'second best dive location in Thailand' there was no way I was going to miss an opportunity like that. And the diving certainly didn't disappoint! The first morning we went diving I learned the hard way what drinking Samsung and Chang (dirt cheap Thai beer) can do to you the next morning, even when you're taking it easy. But besides yakking off the boat after my first dive, it was fantastic, so much so that we did two more dives the following morning and a night dive the day after. I saw everything from large octopus to moray eels to reef sharks and one enormous leopard shark!

Once we were tired of the Phi Phi drink till you drop scene we moved on to Phuket and found a tranquil little beach town called Kata. Another one of Asia's spectacular beaches with a good chilled out night vibe. Jeff caught a plane out of Phuket last night to head back to work in Aus, it was great seeing him for two weeks, I guess he took the sunshine with him...

My Thai visa permit expired today, you only get 15 days in Thailand when you enter by land. I've stopped asking 'why?' when it comes to some of the ridiculous things they do in Asia but this one is a real mind boggler. So in order for me to stay longer I had to get to the nearest border today which happened to be a crossing with Burma. What an ordeal... Six hours to the border town by bus, find Thai immigration to get an exit stamp, hire a long boat to take you across the inlet to Burma (which means stopping at numerous checkpoints), one hour later get off and go to Burma immigration, get entry and exit stamp, get back on the boat, more checkpoints, get Thailand entry stamp. Fifteen more days. What a joke. The whole process cost me about $25, and all the while i was thinking how useful and benificial to them it would be if the Thai government just let us pay instead. But, it's Asia.

I wanted to walk around and take pictures of the town on the Burmese side but the men in army fatigues and M-16's on their shoulders reminded me of why I shouldn't buy any of the duty free items they were pushing. Not that there's anything to be worried about, but in case you've been living under a rock for the past 10 years, Burma's government isn't exactly a government you want to support. And the idea of just taking pictures and leaving doesn't sit with me very well me either. They dont need that kind of tourism. One day I'll really go to Burma, sit down and talk to those who want to talk, buy things from the locals and get off the beat and track. Maybe next trip.

I'm off to Ko Tao tonight for a 5-6 day stay on this tiny little island in the Gulf Coast known to be the cheapest dive location in world. Diving and Pad Thai. Mmmm.

Monsoon

So I was hoping to post some pictures of Malaysia but it's going to have to wait so instead I will just provide a quick update... Kuala Lumpur was a really cool city. Spent 4 nights in the Chinatown district shopping for knock off everything and drinking overpriced beers at night. I met a ton of really great people and my only real complaint with the city was that it was too expensive. I visited the Petronas towers and an amazing aquarium, but mostly spent my days around Chinatown.

I left KL for an island to the north called Penang, the food there was amazing! I then spent five nights on a large island further north, close to Thailand called Langkowi. Again it was way too expensive for me but it was beautiful none the less. Most of my days were spent on the beach and swimming in the sea. The island was duty free however so beers were incredibly cheap. It is the off season right now though so almost all the beach bars were empty in the evenings and there were very few people there in general. I found some great people staying at my guesthouse and we all decided to tour the island on motor bikes and visited the main tourist spots.

As far as culture goes Langkowi didn't have much of it, the Lonely Planet described it as an escape from SE Asia and they were right. It was hard to find local food and the western food was sub par.

I just arrived in Thailand yesterday to a small beach town called Krabi on the far south of the Andaman coast. It's very nice but again seeing as how it's the off season there are very few people here. Went out to a bar last night and had fun playing games with other travelers trying to pick out which of the Thai's were lady boys. Yikes!

So I guess I was spoiled on Langkowi, it was sunny and 35 degrees everyday, hardly what you would expect durring the monsoon, but here in Krabi it's been raining off and on since I arrived. Monsoon rain, not Victoria rain.

Jeff, my buddy from UVic, arrives tomorrow. Pretty stoked to do some drinking with him! Thanks for the emails everyone.

Steve

McStomach Ache

Just gonna throw down a few lines about how things are going for those of you who actually read this... Malaysia is COOL. Man it's great to be back in the developed world again. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved India, but many things were really starting to get on my nerves in the last few weeks. For instance: the honking, man I swear I was ready to throw a brick at every car who honked their horn in India. It's incessant, you cant escape it no matter where you go. Even when you're the only person on the road and a car is driving towards you as soon as they're about a meter from you they honk their horn (I can't recall hearing a single horn here in Malaysia yet). But it was more than that... in India you can't ever just do something on your own. If I wanted to sit by a lake or a river and just enjoy the view within minutes I would have several people sitting next to me asking me the same BS questions: "where you from? you want something? just look sir." And if it's not the street hawkers harassing you then it's the Indian tourists who want to take a picture of you with them in it and practice their English with you. The Indian obsession with the West is really messed up. They want to be like us so badly, completely willing to abandon their own culture and yet I haven't seen anything that tells me they've got the slightest clue where to start.

And the garbage. Man the garbage problem is truly an epidemic. It is by far the most common conversation among travelers. India is dirty. Plain and simple. Sure there are many beautiful places you can go where they seem to have or are starting to get their act together but in general it's a really dirty place. One day I met a young Indian guy from Bombay traveling around Amritsar. We had just finished eating some corn on the cob from a street vendor and I was carrying the wasted cob in my hand for several minutes (you will never find a garbage can in India but it's really hard to just chuck these things on the side of the road even though it's often full of garbage). When he saw that I wasn't going to just toss it aside he took it from me and did it himself. I explained to him that in my country, this is highly illegal and can result in a fine if the police were to see you, and more than that, the people around you would most likely get upset because it's just not acceptable. His reply to me, and I swear this is word for word: "then my country is better because we can throw anything on the ground anywhere we want." Keep in mind this is a college student with a good paying job in one of India's most developed cities. The thing is, they just don't freaking get it. And it's more than the garbage and the honking; it's the paan chewing and the wild dogs on the street and the hawking spit that everyone (including children as young as 6 or 7) has no problem doing anywhere they go.

Bah, I love India! It is beautiful, and I really do miss it. I just needed to rant. haha.

So Malaysia...WOW. Tioman Island was beautiful. It was ranked in the top 10 most beautiful islands in the world (I have to say, I think the Andaman's were better) but it was stunning as you can imagine. I got 3 dives in there including one night dive which was stellar.

I am in a city called Melaka right now and it feels like I'm in any other city back home. Taking the bus across the country was no problem. They drive like normal humans here; no tearing ass around every corner and nearly side swiping any slow moving vehicles off the road. They stay between the lines and obey the traffic signals. This was a pleasant change.

As for culture, boy does Malaysia ever have alot of it. I know we like to think of Canada as a very multicultural place but walking down the street here makes our western wear look like uniforms. Most people are very well dressed. In one short block you will walk past Chinese people dressed in designer jeans or short shorts and then maybe pass a group of Muslim women all wearing head scarves. Turn the corner and you'll see an Indian mother adorned in a beautiful sari with her daughter walking beside her in jeans and a tank top, both women wearing bindi's.

And the food. Hell ya! It's SOOOO good. And it sure is great to be able to eat meat again. I think they put chicken in every meal here and it's always safe to eat (I had meat maybe 3 times in my 4 months in India). Oh, and you can drink the local water too. Sweet.

So today I had a Western day... There is a massive 6 story mall here, by far the biggest mall I've ever seen in my life filled with every brand I've ever heard of and hundreds more I haven't. I did some shopping, drank at Starbucks and ate at McDonald's. I definitely broke my $25-30/day budget but it was so nice to just feel like I was at home again. Oh, I ate at McDonald's in India, I forgot to mention that before, Jess and I decided we had to at least try it so on our last night there we checked one out. Now obviously they don't serve beef there so I grabbed a 'Chicken Maharajah Burger' which didn't taste at all like chicken and the sauce was pretty weird but the fries were normal so that was cool. But here in Malaysia it's stellar. Not quite European McDonnald's quality but better than North American. And my Starbucks was fantastic!

OK, that's all I've got for now. I hope for those of you who read this that it's enjoyable. I am completely in love with Malaysia as you can tell. No one has called me into a single shop, everyone who has approached me when I looked lost has helped me with no ill intent to lead me to their guesthouse or ask for money for assisting me. Malaysians are incredibly friendly.

Oh, I forgot to mention the only really really shitty thing that's happened to me here. Bed Bugs. Holy freaking crap this is not cool. Last night I slept in a dorm room and woke up scratching all over, when I looked around the 2 other people I was sharing a room with were doing the same thing. This morning I saw that I am covered head to toe in the most itchy rash I have ever had in my life. It is so unnerving it makes me sick to my stomach, literally (much much worse than those itchy sand flies, Jess, which I am still dealing with as well). It's crazy that in 4 months in India/Nepal I never slept in a bed with those creepy little suckers and man am I ever thankful for that. Now I have definitely learned my lesson: check every bed before you sleep in it.

I think I'm going to head to Kuala Lumpur in the next day or two, definitely excited to check out this modern city, who knows, maybe I can score a job with Petronas! haha.

Cheers,
Steve

Nepal, Varanasi and North India

Here are a whack of pictures from my travels over the last month. Enjoy!

The incredibly short runway at Lukla airport, 2800 meters.

The first and only Starbucks I've seen on this trip, on the way to Everest of all places.

Look closely and you can see how the Sherpa people carry all of their gear on their heads. Crazy. I met one man carrying 90Kg.


The stunning mountain town of Namche Bazzar, 3500 meters. There are no roads up here so everything has to be carried in.

Dawn at Namche Bazzar.

Sam, Me, Tamara, Chris and Jess. Sam and Chris were two stellar Canadians we met on the plane to Lukla who were on their way to summit Everest. By far two of the best people I've met on my trip.

The highest camp, Gorak Shep, elevation 5100 meters.

Of all the days we decide to go up, we arrive on the day a bunch of Brits decide they're going to set the world record for the 'Highest Cricket Game'. British people do some really weird things.

I must say, Cricket is incredibly boring.

An early (4AM) start to catch the sunrise over Everest. This is looking back down the valley we came up over the previous 8 days.

Kala Patthar, 5550 meters. So so awesome.

So we celebrated with some whisky.

Sunrise over Everest, the peak on the left.

Everest and Everest Base Camp below left next to the ice flow.

Later that afternoon we walked to Base Camp.

And had some delicious apple pie!

The walk back through some enormous valley's was impressive.

The streets of Kathmandu.

Kyaking on the lake in Pokhara, Nepal.

A flash storm in Pokhara, I watched lightning strike less than 100 meters away. THAT was scary.

Bathing the Elephants at Chitwan National Park, Nepal.

Sharing the roof of a bus on our way out of Nepal.

Varansi, India. By far the craziest most intense place I have ever been in my life. This is the holy Ganges River, where people from all over India come to cremate their loved ones. Let me just say the water is pretty sick and there is nothing in this world that would get me to jump in there.

But thousands of people bath and swim here everyday. It's holy water.

But aside from watching dead bodies be carried through town and their smell that penetrates the city from being burned on the ghats, and if you can get passed the endless harassment and the dozens of cows and cow shit you have to avoid in the narrow streets that are just wide enough people (and dont forget to keep your head up for oncoming motorcycles) and if you make a point not to look at the dead bodies that wash up on shore after they've been sunk in the Ganges (children, pregnant women and suicide victims can't be cremated) then Varanasi is a really beautiful place.

And the Puja festival performed on the ghats every evening is pretty cool.

Ahh Rishikesh, a quiet hill station in the North, the place where the Beatles came to chill out and write the White Album. Definitely a great place to escape.

I was God awful sick from the food in Varansi so Mama Jee took care of me at her guesthose with tea and thali.

And when I felt better we when rafting on the Ganges, here at the mouth of the river the swimming was pretty stellar.

The Golden Temple in Amritsar. Very beautiful although the constant bombardment to have my photo taken with Indian tourist was really trying.

The India-Pakistan border closing ceremony. This was like going to a sporting event. 'Hindustan! Hindustan!'

The Golden Palace at night.

My last stop in India before returning to Delhi was Dharmsala, the place where the Dali Lama keeps his Tibetan Government in exile.

Outside the Dali Lama's temple. This place was really really beautful. A nice tranquil and spiritual place to end my journey of India.

I leave for Singapore this evening and will start the SE Asia leg of my trip. First stop: Tioman Island, Malaysia. Man I can't wait for the beach!

Nepal

Well, first off I'm sorry for not posting in a month, I feel like I've done so much and there is so much to tell!

The trek to Kala Patthar and Everest Base Camp was simply amazing and by far one of the best experiences of my trip so far. We flew from Kathmandu to Lukla where the elevation is about 2800m (thats about 10,000 ft to you Dad). This airport is insane. The runway is maybe 300m and it's on a very steep slope up a ridge that they use both for slowing the planes down when they land and for airspeed when they take off. A little hair raising landing here? Bah, I love that shit! From there we climbed for 8 days to reach the highest camp, Gorak Shep, elevation ~5100m. Gorak Shep is the hub for day hikes to Kala Patthar and Base Camp. The weather couldn't have been more perfect.

Base camp, at ~5350 meters, I have to say, isn't much. The walk there was stellar, a trail is cut through an enormous moraine and you're only a few meters away from the ice flow, often walking over buried ice along the way. The camp is nothing more than a bunch of tents full of mountaineers and their guides and due to the size of the surrounding mountains, there is no view of Everest from here. Seeing the ice flow they have to cross to reach Camp 2 however, was impressive. This is the most difficult part of the accent and they will have to cross it 3-4 times. To put it simply, it was massive. We had apple pie at the German bakery they constructed made our way back.

At 4am the morning after we arrived in Gorak Shep, we left to summit Kala Patthar (elevation 5550m/18, 200ft) and catch the sunrise over Everest. This was by far the most spectacular place I have ever been. The sky was very dark blue, the darkest I've seen, and there wasn't a cloud to be seen. Kala Patthar is completely surrounded by many of the tallest mountains in the world. Everest was certainly not the most beautiful mountain, but seeing the sun rise from behind it's peak was breathtaking.

To put things in perspective, mount Robson in BC is just under 4000m, Everest is 8900m. At Kala Patthar, we were only a few hundred meters short of the highest mountain in Canada (Logan) and the surrounding mountains were still several thousand meters above us.

The weather was great, it was definitely cold at night but certainly not as cold as our trek in India. The climb was somewhat difficult but I loved every minute of it and enjoyed carrying my own pack this time. I was eating three solid meals a day but I still think I lost over 10 pounds.

Food was expensive. A bottle of water, that might cost 30Rp (50 cents) climbed up to 300Rp ($5) at Gorak Shep. But I understand it, there are no roads or anything so everything has to be carried in by the Sherpa people. These guys and girls are amazing. They carry the loads on their heads, many of them over 50-60Kg. I met one man carrying 92Kg on his head. Unreal.

The trekkers atmosphere was great. We met tons of people from all over the world from all age groups. But by far the funniest (or weirdest) thing we saw was the world record attempt at 'The Worlds Highest Cricket Match' held at Gorak Shep. This was funny. I will never understand, nor do I want to understand, how to play cricket. British people do some really strange things sometimes.

Oh, and no altitude sickness! I think Jess and I were probably still acclimatized from our trek in India 2 weeks earlier so we felt great the whole way up. But I'd say more than 70% of the people we met had symptoms, including our travel companion.

So, after 9 days of climbing, we descended in 3 very long and tiring days back to Kala Patthar and caught an early morning flight out to Kathmandu. We spent a few days there exploring more of the city and then moved on to Pokhara, a quiet lake town and the general starting place for the popular Annapurna Circuit, something I hope to do one day when I return. Pokhara was a nice place to relax for a few days. Jess then took off on a kayaking trip and I went to the jungle on safari in search of Tigers. Didn't see any, but I got to play with elephants in the water and managed to spot a few crocodiles and rhinoceroses.

Nepal was amazing and I loved every day that we spent there; all 30 days of our allowed visa. I'll save my next post for describing the shear insanity and chaos that is Varanasi.

All this and now Everest!

OK wow SOOO much to write about but so little time especially if i want to post pictures!

Ok so... We left Calcutta on an overnight train to Darjeeling, a nice little hill/mountain town to the north. This was a really nice place and such a great change of pace from the incessent honking and street harassment in Calcutta. Unfortunately it was raining when we arrived and didnt seem like it was going to let up anytime soon. On our way to Darjeeling, we obtained permits to enter a northern region of India called Sikkim so we decided two days of the rain was enough and kept going further north to the mountains. We also managed to organize an expedition to the base of Sikkim's highest mountain Kangchenzonga, the 3rd highest mountain in the world.

Yuksom was a 5 hour jeep ride away through some pretty awful hillside terrain. We did however manage to fill the jeep with 12 people including the driver which made for an even more enjoyable ride! :S

We spent the night in Yuksom and met with our 'crew' that was to take us up there. For two people to reach the Gochela, the base of Kangchemzonga, and return over a total of 8 days we required 1 guide, 1 cook, 1 helper guy, 1 Yak Man and 3 Yaks. Gochela is approximately 4900 meters. This whole experience was unreal and I want to go into more detail but I dont have the time so I will try and let the pictures speak for themselves. What I will say is that this was probably the best I have eaten on my entire trip and it was extremely challenging but absolutely worth ever minute (although I was seriously questioning my motivation freezing my ass off sleeping at 4000 meters).

After our trek, we were pretty burnt out and our faces were fried from the snow and sun so we decided...for some reason...to walk to a little lake town called Kachepouri. This took about 3 hours carryng all of our gear (~30-35 pounds) on our backs but again totally worth it. We settled into a little homestay at the top of this hill run by an 82 year old man who has 11 children the youngest being his 4 year old daughter. Pretty awesome guy, he cooked for the Dalai Lama in Tibet for 30 years so the food we ate, as you can imagine, was stellar.

NEXT...we jumped on a 7 hour jeep ride back to the closet border town to Nepal and crossed the border at about 9 o'clock pm, everything was closed of course, so although we could walk across the border we had no visa's to enter Nepal but had already stamped out of India...this meant getting random people to help us wake up the immigration officials! We overpaid for our visas.
Next morning, wake up, buy bus tickets to Kathmandu, 17 hours the tell us. Our bus leaves at 2pm. Now Nepal is notorious for it's bus accidents but we didn't have too many options so we decided driving overnight was what we should do. Didn't matter. Five hours into our bus ride (well we were probably stopped waiting for people to fill the bus for at least 2 of those) we reached a ferry crossing on some random backroad that was closed due to a 'strike'. It's 7pm and people on the bus are telling us it won't open again until about 6am. Pretty sweet. There were about 15 buses in front of us and it takes about 15 minutes to get one bus across the river.... see pictures. So of course Nepali's want to capitalize on these 'strikes' and our meal options were very limited so we ate some rice and dal that im sure was made with river water. I didn't get sick but I can't say the same for my travel companion...

I slept on the riverbank, and on the bus, both were god awful places to try and sleep. The next morning we got across the river by 10am...not bad. Then it was another whole day of riding the most uncomfortable bus in the entire world. We finally arrived in Kathmandu the following morning around 6am. So a 17 hour bus ride took 40. The icing on the cake was getting ripped off by some asshole taxi driver on the way to the hotel district. So not the best first impression of Nepal for me, but the people we met when were were waiting for the ferry were amazing and patient and now that we are here I am definitely stoked about this place.

Kathmandu is crazy. I love it here. There are people everywhere, and its smoggy as hell (many people on the streets wear face masks and I really don't blame them) but there is no harassment to look in shops and the Nepali's are just not as obsessed with westerners as Indians are. A shopping spree in this city would be SO awesome. There is brand name outdoor gear (fake and real) in everyshop and it's all SO cheap compared to home!

Tomorrow we leave for Lukla, the start of a 15-18 day trek in the Everest region. It should take about 8-9 days to reach base camp (~5500 meters), I'm really looking forward to the challenge. We will have to cross alot more valley's than we did to reach Gochela and this time I don't have a Yak to carry my pack...

I hope you enjoy the pictures everyone, some of them date back as far as the beginning of March and you will have to scroll from the bottom up if you want to see them in order.

Drinking Everest beer in Kathmandu after a day of planning and preparing for our asscent.

A relatively quiet street in Thamal, Kathmandu.

"You make dollars in your country, why wouldn't you just fly?" Some Nepali to me and Jess when we were waiting for the ferry crossing.

A double rainbow at Paule's place on the hill above Kachapouri Lake.

Gochela, our final destination after 6 long days of trekking. Elevation 4900 meters.

Prayer flags at Gochela. Although it looks lower, Kangchenzonga is the peak on the right, the 3rd highest mountain in the world.

There was alot of snow and we both forgot to wear suncreen...

One of the many outstanding meals we ate on the trek. They actually cooked us pizza up there...PIZZA!

A lookout about an hour away from Dzongri.

Totally worth getting up at 4am for.

Dzongri. Elevation 4200 meters. So so so beautiful.

Then we encountered snow...

And then we spent the night in a mountain village called, Tsokha, the only village on the trek. Elevation 2900 meters.

But the sun came out the next morning.

So we froze that night. The first of many cold nights.

It was a rainy start to the trek.

Sometimes, even in the streets of Calcutta, a herd of goats may come by...

Rickshaw pullers and their passengers in Calcutta.

Jess and I enjoying some chai and beedies in Calcutta.

One of the unreal sunsets on Beach #7, Havelock Island, Andman Islands, one of my favorite places in India.

The lagoon at Beach #7, Havelock Island.

Beach #5, Havelock Island, the beach where we stayed. You could walk for 500 meters and the water wouldnt get over your knees.

The aftermath of getting 'painted' at the festival of Holi, a celebration that takes place all over India (don't ask me what it's all about I just know you throw paint at EVERYONE).

Some night traffic in Chennai.