A month has passed of 2009, I’ve started off with high expectations. As usual with the beginning of the new year brings with it the perception of a clean slate, where past failures can be forgotten and fresh start can begin.

I have listed a few things which I would like to get done this year, and I”ll mindmap them and sort them out soon enough.

• Sell a print or digital of one of my photographs
• Do more photography, I enjoy it and find it relaxing, so why not
• Loose 10kg, get to size 34 pants, 15% body fat
• Start a small home business (photography or computer fix/repair)
• Get a job that I want
• Find and buy into a managed fun that has regular savings
• Find and buy shares into company
• Build the network that I’ve been thinking about
• Read 2 books per month
• Write more (journal and blog)
• Practice meditation
• See my friends more regularly
• Join the 365 project - take a photo per day
• Take a photo of myself everyday
• Build a stronger relationship with my fiance
• Continue to understand and believe in myself more
• Dig into my family history and record it - family tree with stories
• Learn a second language or two
• Ride to work or at least half way or to the station
• Learn to cook…better
• Develop a ‘early riser’ routine

I think that this is a good list and I’m going to do my best to keep at it.

Summer in Australia while hot isn’t as bad as some other places…India. The heat will now forever now be associated with my trip to India and all the feelings and experiences that I had there. There people that I met and talked to and the things that I saw.

I remember driving in the car and sweating through my clothes, I didn’t turn the air conditioning on, I did roll the window down a bit but mostly I enjoyed the heat and the sweat. It is amazing how I felt, it was like muscle memory but more about my emotions and how they remembered and then how my body reacted accordingly.

It is interesting how I still remember Japan, almost bordering on obsessed and continue to think about the place most of the time, but India still hits me like a brick.

I didn’t think that Hiroshima would be as moving or emotional as I thought that it would be, the peace museum has a wealth of information that takes you through the whole story of the atomic bomb and it’s after effects to the point that I had to stop to take a breather.

The city is well worth the visit for the Peace Park alone, because not only is there enough to do but it is just such a great place to sit and relax, read a book and watch the world go by, such a well designed place and typical Japanese style everything has its place as you can see from the A-Bomb dome to the Flame of Peace.

The nightlife isn’t that bad either, I was looking for a beer and granted that I had to walk a couple of kilometers but I found a Irish pub where I watched the Fiji vs South Africa game with a whole lot of expats and locals, haven’t had as much fun yet.

Transport around Japan is ridiculously easy, it is almost too easy all I have to do is check out at the hotel go to the JR station in town and tell them that I want to go to Kyoto next, they tell me when the next train is, I show them my JR Pass and I get a reserved seat. Trains run so often that it is never a problem and because these are the Shinkansen they take hardly any time to run between cities. I sometimes feel a bit cheated because coming from India where travel can often be difficult and it is so easy here, but the amazing side of Japan more than makes up for it.

I took the option of doing a day trip to a place called Miyajima Island, which is just off the cost of Japan about an hour away from Hiroshima, it is famous for the Tori gate that it has which looks like it floats when the tide comes in. Unfortunately I was there during low tide so didn’t get that most famous of views, but the island was still excellent place to visit if not for the tori gate & shrine, there are some fantastic views and walks around the parks on the island as well.

Beppu was such a nice town to just laze about it, I had a great time travelling to the onsen just out of town and had a real experience for the first time. I got such a great vibe from Beppu, I think that it was just because it was a town in the south of Japan, where a lot of locals like to come on weekends or on days off to just relax, I meet some great people here and would have liked to stay longer.

The first onsen that I visited was a free public one that took about 1.5 hours to get to, but it was well worth it, up in the mountains and hidden by bushes and a cemetery. I had a few broken conversations with some other Japanese men which was hard but the hardest part was actually going through the onsen ritual of washing yourself and then getting in naked, once you do it though you are right, I was in and out of different onsens for the rest of the day.

My second day I tried to go to Aso-san to see a live volcano, but as with live volcano’s it was closed due to dangerous fumes blowing in the wrong direction, it was a nice journey but felt a bit wasted.

I had planned to make my way to Nagasaki, but unfortunately I cannot find any accommodation so I had a to change plans and go to Hiroshima instead.

The transfer from Bangkok was long, but the arrival in Japan was a little bit confusing. The first thing that I noticed - nothing is in English writing. First road block.
Through some manner of communication I was able to get to my hostel that I was staying at, which was designed in traditional tea ceremony style so had the tatami mats and futon and seats low to the floor and everything.

Fukuoka is a great city and probably no better place for me to start. It wasn’t that exciting there wasn’t that much to do which didn’t matter because all I really did anyway was sleep and rest. I did go and see some shrines and temples and walked around at night.
I do plan to make my way through to Beppu and Aso and then to Nagasaki, I didn’t say long which I think was good for me. I am starting to get itchy feet travelling on my own again.

It is not an easy place to travel but it is rewarding, if you keep an open mind. That is how I would describe India for me and what I got out of it. Like I said that I didn’t like it very much when I first started, but it grew on me to the point that I began to enjoy it and be comfortable.

The poverty is never easy to deal with and I don’t think that I will ever get used to it, there were moments that it was crippling to the point that you couldn’t watch while some helpless child tugged at your clothes, they didn’t want clothes, food or water, they wanted money.

Culture shock is something that you have to expect but can’t really prepare for of course, the way that India does a lot of things is different to the way we would image doing it. As an example more buses at home would have signs on them saying where they are going or what number they are - not some dude yelling out where it is going and finally hearing him as he speeds off into the distance.

There are great things about India, there are some people that are nice and actually want help you, the place is like nothing else that I have seen so I won’t be forgetting that too soon. The scenery is magnificent and so is the history.

I don’t know if I will go back again, only time will tell, but I did know by 22 days I had enough.

Like I said I was sad to leave but I was very glad that I was going.

Getting to the end of any journey is always sad, I just wish that I had more time to spend with new found friends than I actually got. Again another killer train journey.

After finding out the day before that our scheduled train had been cancelled it was further delayed when we got to the station, when we finally did get to Kolkata we didn’t really get much time to look around because we were all very tired and wanted some rest. Plus we were all very busy planning some presents for our tour leader.

The day went well, I don’t know how else to describe Kolkata as a cleaner than usual town (as far as Indian cities go) while there were bits and pieces of what I had seen through the last month, the wide flat roads didn’t seem rite, and there wasn’t much of a smell and…no cows. It was a nice place but just lacked that interesting streak about it, I guess that I was just too tired from all the travelling. I was done, but more the prospect of leaving the group that you have travelled with for the last 22 days just seemed more depressing.

One of the holiest places in the Hindu religion and so an important place for the majority of Indians, it was a bit of a tough time getting to Varanasi for us, with a cancelled train (and of course no announcement of cancellation) while on the platform we would have been lost if not for out fearless leaders who was able to somehow organise us to get on the train that was actually on the track all without us loosing a beat. It is moments like these that I’m glad that I joined a tour group, too think that I was going to go it alone, what would I have done in this situation, could I have been stuck at the train station overnight or until I worked out that the train wasn’t coming.

Again a well chosen hotel that offered us excellent views most of the way down the right Ganges we relaxed a bit before starting a short orientation walk so show us the sights that had to be seen. I found Varanasi an interesting town - and this might sound weird to you - but it smelled so much more different to other towns that I had been in, there was the rubbish, the cows and the sewerage all the usual stuff but there was something else different, I couldn’t pick it then and I still can’t pick it now. I do know that I haven’t seen so many cows about the place in India yet.

The 5am cruise down the river Ganges was the most significant event that we did which proved to be quite interesting. The first pass that we made was quite some distance from the river edge, but on the way back we came a lot closer, this provided a much more intimate view of the bathing, but I just wasn’t comfortable with taking photos so close to people. I am sure that if someone walked into my bathroom and starting taking photos of me while I was showing I would be pretty pissed off. On another note, did you know that they actually catch fish on the river, I assume that they eat it to, but I don’t like to think about this because of the septic state that the river is in. What with all the dead animals, rubbish and what ever is put in there.

Some bad news at the moment, we were told that all trains to Kolkata has been cancelled because of flooding in the area so nothing is going that way by land, our options could have been a different train or a plan either way it was going to cost us more money. We were all worried throughout the day until we finally found out that we indeed had to take a different route, that it would cost us more money and that we would have to leave much much later than expected. We were supposed to be out of Varanasi by about 6pm instead we left at about 11:30pm for a 12:30am train.

On the plus side, the storm hard actually moved up into the country towards us resulting in the biggest storm that I have witnessed to date. If you can imagine me standing on a roof watching lighting roll acorss the sky, it was hours and hours of fun I tell you.

Of all the places that you should go to while in India, Agra would be right at the top of the list (Varanasi next) for one obvious reason - The Taj Mahal.
The place that we stayed was a mere 50 meters walk from the east gate of the Taj complex so getting there was not a problem. The whole area is dominated by the Taj Mahal everthing from the people, shops, transport and food. So it should be, in a lot of ways it is hard to describe in a manner that would do it justice it just has to bee seen to be understood why it is so popular.

We also went to the Agra for and explored that, which was interesting to see because the design and architecture is different to the structures in Rajasthan - where here it has more variety in building styles which influence from all religions a races.

These are pictures from Fatehpur Sikri (I think)

I am somewhat confused as to why Bharatpur was put on the list, we were told that it was a recent change in the tour schedule. Bharatpur is famous for it’s world heritage bird sanctuary, that unfortunately due to poor rains it hasn’t seen much wildlife, but as I was to find out later this was somewhat incorrect. Based on this information I decided that it would indeed be a good time to just sit and relax and take a break from the travel.

There isn’t much to report, I didn’t do much because there wasn’t that much to do besides relax by the pool and drink beer which we did. As I did find out later a trip to the sanctuary would have been a good idea because there were plenty of other animals as well as birds to see.

We only stayed one day and we were off again moving on the next bus.