Return to Sydney (via Dubai)

Hey all. I'm now In Dubai and tomorrow I will catching a flight to Sydney.

I have had an interesting trip getting to Dubai. My bags were heavy... like really heavy. in Kathmandu i had my pockets absolutely stuffed full of the heaviest things i could fit in there. I was carrying about 5 books in my jacket, battery chargers and things in my cargo pants, and the guy searching me was like... "what's going on with this guy". despite this I was still like 8-9 kg over my weight limit. This dodgy customs guy looks at me and says "come with me". the guy looks at my bags, sees that they are overweight but says "don't worry, its ok" ... wink wink.... he keeps doing this for a while and i figured he wanted a bribe. I opened up my wallet in front of everyone and pulled out some money... the guy panicked and snatched the money off me as quickly as possible (without looking to see how much it was) and put my bags on the plane.

If the guy charged me for excess weight it would have cost me up to $100. The amount i gave him was 50 Nepalese rupees. (less than 1 dollar Australian). If the guy looked at the note i gave him he would have probably got the shits and charged me, but because i did it in front of everyone he panicked soo much that he didn't even look.

When i checked my bags into the Air India counter in Delhi their scales were broken so they couldn't weigh my bags, how fortunate, Oh how I love Air India.... so efficient, so reliable.

I now face Dubai airport... I'm planing on ignoring all the rules and talking my way through everything (Italian Style). Wish me luck..

So finally i will be back in Sydney... does anyone remember me?

(View of my hotel in Dubai, err.... actaully no, my hotel was about 45min away from here where all the migrant workers lived. I think my hotel was one of the only finished buildings in the area)

Indian 30 hour train ride

Hey guys I don't have enough time to write a proper post, but I'm going to do my best to give you some idea as to whats been happening. Right now I'm in Bodhgaya, which is like Buddhist capital of the world or something. To get here I had to catch a 30 hour train from Dehra Dun, (if you don't know where that is don't worry, I don't either)

The train was a truly memorable experience. On the train we were watching the security guards holding machine guns smoking marijuana right in front of us, had some Hindu yogi hassle us for bisects and when we refused he started flashing his penis at us and showing us pictures of Hindu gods in the attempt to threaten us, had a eunuch ask us for money and then try and put a black magic spell on us, when we all started laughing she/he left us alone. We also had a group of locals storm our carriage because they thought were movie stars and wanted our autographs and to shake our hands.... most interesting train trip I have ever had.

India is truly a crazy place, and when you get used to it, it can be a really fun place to be. Just to let you know.. i have never seen a digital camera for sale yet. A crowed of people gathered around me while i was taking photos in complete amazement just to watch me take photos. they had never seen anything like my digital camera and were fascinated to see how it works. Also don't be surprised to see 5 year old mobile phones being advertised as "new mobile technology" here.... In fact all technology is about 5 to 10 years behind in India. I bought some dodgy DVDs the other day. one of them was music video hits in India from the 1970's. If you thought Saturday night Fever was bad wait till you see this.... it cost me about $1... a great investment in Indian music video culture.



(There are many great photo opportunities in India... this was one of them)