I've managed all but the last few stages of my journey; so far about 1000 miles by plane, 450+ miles by train, 100 miles at least by taxis and rickshaws (Chennai is NOT an easy city to get around, neither is where I am now just for sheer size) so I have just the last 400 or 500 miles on the bus to go, plus a couple of taxis, and I'll be in the capital of Laos as per the plan by about midday tomorrow, that's Monday.
I wish I had changed my clothes since Friday morning but it's just not gonna happen. Hey-ho.

Right now I'm in Bangkok. Yes, I made it as far as that Nice place, but I think I'm only seeing the best of it. More on that later though, because this post is relentless and uncaring - I really, really need to get through these photos!

So I'm dispending with much of the explanations, just see if you like any of it:

-

More of the crocs:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture236.jpg

Birds:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture235.jpg

Senery:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture234.jpg

And the bats:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture233.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture232.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture226.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture231.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture230.jpg

Yes these are the bats, hope I got some pictures of their distinctive wingshape as well...

Meh, birds mostly, with some rocks & water at no additional cost:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture229.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture228.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture227.jpg

Ze painted storks and the black & white storky fella too, with wings in a perfect pose, on the right of the picture:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture225.jpg

Regular birdstuffs:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture224.jpg

This looks like it'll end in tears and bloodspray, somehw:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture223.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture222.jpg

Nestage:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture221.jpg

Big birds! :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture218.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture217.jpg

A cormorant:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture216.jpg

A cormorant and friends (they were also there all along, the devious swine):

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture214.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture213.jpg

Neopolitan avian lifeforms 3s 2235 - 2236:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture211.jpg

Storkstuff:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture209.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture208.jpg

Big fat porker of a crocodile! I wouldn't say it to his jaws, mind you:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture202.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture207.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture204.jpg

And - yay!! Guess who this is on the right (no not the croc ) and I'll just prepare yself for the war to be offiially declared
:

That's her again, see, but only just; plus, the Storks actually are more interesting in this shot. Becasue you can see more of them than just a fraction of arm, probably:

And her ladyship in-situ with the wildlife again:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture200.jpg

Storky nesty flappy things:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture199.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture198.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture197.jpg

Things:

Branches:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture195.jpg

Can't see it properly whatever it is:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture194.jpg

Lots of roosting bats:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture193.jpg

-

Big bird in flight:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture192.jpg

Big bird nesting:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture191.jpg

Something green and leafy:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture188-1.jpg

-

I'm going a little nutty sat here.
Right, I'm off to see a bit of Bangkok. Shame I wasted another great title on this motley collection of snaps, but hey.
One day we shall be even and up-to-date, one day...

The first person to congratulate me on the sheer aching brilliance of the title today gets a gold star. Don't push, form an orderly line please.

Right, I have a laptop now and while my wallet wishes me to curl up and die quietly, I on the other hand am gonna make good use of it besides just watching a bucket-load of films, and try to do most of the writing on there thus saving me internet bills and fees. So not too much waffle here, just photos

-

The title is particularly good to describe me today yesterday, but not really the pictures as they are all super happy fun time stuff, not me in my fluctuous (yes I own that word too, as of now) mental state. It's been 20 21 days of controlled drinking, or it will be come tomorrow midday-ish, and aside from feeling chuffed with myself I'm going a little crazy with it.
This includes doses of inaccurate and randomised wrath towards nothing in particular. Also peevish. Hence the `ire`. I should shut up now lest my wallet starts its crowing again.

-

A distant stork/crane/light aeroplane:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture103.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture104.jpg

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This tree, is cool. It was perched in the quiet recess' of the bird sanctuary (actually bang in the middle of a little courtyard, but it was a quiet day) and clearly was there only for decoration.
Look at Maria in the bottom corner. See the way she is looking at the tree, as if somehoe sizing it up:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture099.jpg

The charming and daring Maria, illicitly climbing one of the amazing trees that thrive through aerial roots alone. She wasn't supposed to be here, of course, but she's out of control really. Not a thing I can do.

Now I'm not sure why I wasn't climbing myself and was therefore able to take this picture, but there must have been some blindingly enormous reason because I'm well 'ard, I am. I would swung up there in a sec- no, I would have levitated up there in an instant had I wanted.
Obviously I didn't want, for some reason:

There you go moi darlin' I finally got around to posting those pictures. Rotate them with the magic of the right-click and they're all yours. At last...

-

This is the right way up - if you ever wondered just how those aerial roots start, well, here you are. Very much like a gigantic, many-limbed potato only with leaves, and proper roots, and densely fibred woodstuff, and..
..okay it's not much like a fucking potato. But then a potato isn't a nut either, contrary to that silly rumour, and bananas are not herbs.
They're both actually varieties of personal defensive weaponry, elegant weapons for a more civilized age... takes anti-psychotics

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture100.jpg

Trust me, everyone, at least one of those links will be cool

-

Jungley tree things, very atmospheric although possibly only to botanists:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture098.jpg

You'll be wanting a botanist and a geologist for this one to be any fun:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture097.jpg

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A brief detour back to Mysore.

In the park outside the maharaja's palace, apart fom the well-dressed man taking a piss against a tree in full frontal view of the busy street, there were a couple of odd trees with strange fruit in them. What was that album`strange fruit` again? I'm sure someone I once knew of released one with that title.
Anyway, real non-musical (as far as I know) strange fruit. Trees. :

This one I do know, these huge seed cases are where the spice tamarind comes from. The spice is very strong and sour, and therefor immensely popular in regulated doses. You see these seed pods all over India, from little ones half an inch wide and a few inches long, to these monsters and bigger - as they get larger the outer shells become very tough and woody and as they get up to about 18" in size they could probably be used in combat
:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture264.jpg

In the hotel room in Mysore we filled ourselves silly with sweets (ohhhh my god Indian sweets... virtually lethal doses of sugar in every single one. Mmm!) and I noticed the container - now yes, I know it's only a cardboard bnox, and yes, we all know that this little symbol is innocuous and actually rather uplifting and noble in this part of the world.

That isn't stopping me from labelling this place as the Third Reich Sweetshop and Bakers GmbH, however:

It is just odd to see swastikas everywhere - even on bakery boxes - when all you've ever seen of it before has been in relation to goose-stepping numpties!

-

A few pictures of houses on the way back from the bird sanctuary - I just love the architecture in India. I hope I managed to actually get some of the better buildings though; these were all taken form a taxi at full speed:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture262.jpg

Yay!
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture260.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture259.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture258.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture257.jpg

Ahhh, that's what I was looking for - these are just regular `middle class` (middle/upper caste) houses:

-

Back in the wildlife sanctuary, I shall save the picture of Mari and I lest I incur much wrath (I think she looks lovely but of course I'm gonna check if I'm rioght first ) but instead ou may have this, ridiculous picture of a grinning idiot. The bamboo looks nice, at least:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture252.jpg

There's those crocodiles as shown to you by the park, before you get into the boat:

The entrance to the park was something like 150 or 125 rupees per person (per foreigner anyway, Indian nationals pay about 15-25 rupees from memory), but they also charge you 25 rupees for every camera you have and 100 rupees for a video camera! Obviously they need to make money, but it's a bit clinical the way they've worked it out I thought. Par for the course though, so no worries.
But then the boat trip costs 500 rupees extra once you are inside...

Now this in the real world equates to around £6.50p but I am a severely cheap man and living here for a month or three makes you readjust your expenditures, anyway. I've been thinking in rupees for almost half a year now, I adjusted my thoughts very quickly on the advice of some seasoned travellers in Arambol.
So the boat was gonna cost four time the price of admission - per person!

Of course it would have been foolish to listen to me because then I wouldn't have seen any of the incredible wildlife (durr!) so Maria stepped in, paid the whole fee, and managed to snaggle the boat for one lot of rupees for us both.
She was so charming and we were so enamoured with it all that the scheduled half-hour trip became 50 minutes of wonderment on the lake.

There was another tourist, an Indian guy with a bald patch and more expensive camera equipment than I'd ever seen outside of a showroom before in my life, and he offered us a generous 25 rupees to share our little private boat.
I thought he was proper cheeky at the time, but Indians only had to pay about 25-50 ruppes for the private boats, so it was all in good favour after all. Once we returned to alnd of course we were far too overwhelmed and buoyed up by the experience to take anything for it.
It really was spectacular

-

Glassy water with distant white bird creatures:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture250.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture249.jpg

You can see these for yourselves o' course:

Now have you guessed what those black things hanging from the trees are yet? :

Yes, that's right. Bloody thousands of gigantic bats!

Hopefully got some shots of them in flight - they had, quite easily, wingspans of a metre or more. They were very, very big bats. Probably fruit-eating, or so I hope

-

Did I happen to mention that I think crocodiles are cool? :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture244.jpg

This one of the egrets fluffing its feathers - and being slightly more relaxed than one would have thought being so near the carnivourous beastie::

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture239.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture238.jpg

Finally, have a lovely tree :

Right I gotta dash - got a train to catch to Chennai (643km) then a plane tomorrow night to catch to Bangkok (1300-ish km) then a train to catch on Sunday morning to the Laos border (about 700km) and then I gotta actually get into Laos.
Phew.

Looks like it'll be fun - I wont be posting here, obviously, probably until Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday depending on what the state of the internet is in Laos.
Unless I can get online at Chennai airport and have done some work on the new lappytop, at any rate.

See ya in the new country, I hope!!

Look, right, you try thinking of titles to rhyme with the entire Harry Potter and keep them slightly relevant to the subject matter.
So what, I don't have any pictures of a chemist in this one but come on, I've been banging on about all the lovely, freely-available valium over here for months now

Actually that isn't quite true, it seems to be more or less limited to Goa unless you go and get a prescription, which I probably will do later today or tomorrow. I have more genuine cause for the stuff than pretty much anyone else travelling through here so stop reading at me like that!

So the title might be more appropriate than we first thought.

And oh yes, those spammy astrological nonsense poeple have been booted out by the lovely chaps/chapesses at Blog.co.uk Three cheers for sensible thinking and the snide upsetting of ethereal pseudo-apple-carts, yay!!

-

We are still at the bird sanctuary and will be for a little while, which is nice

A painted Stork all it's lonesome and, well you can see this one so I needn't go on:

-

It's me! And a friend:

I like to think that this is me being tongue-in-cheek but actually it was a more like turd-in-pants because we'd backed up to this guy - a sleeping 9-foot crocodile - and I had no idea, was chatting away facing the other way right up until maria or the guide made some suitable gesture to indicate my proximity to a reptilian finale.

Happily enough he was sleepy, I probably would have mentioned it if things had gone the other way, but my, I see this picture now and can't help thinking: Bloody hell I really do look like Dad sometimes, minus the grimace of course:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture158.jpg

-

Another of our crocodilian chum:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture157.jpg

And a lovely few shots of a stork in various places:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture156.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture154.jpg

(rotate 'zis one)
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture153.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture152.jpg

(Rotate this) a black & white stork standing there with an alarming similarity
to my old boss. It's the thin legs and shark's-fin knees that do it. My old boss or one of the Bash Street Kids outr of the beano, anyway :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture150.jpg

(Rotate this one too) birds, night heron, stork, nesting storks and egrets, all in lovely perspective, or something.. :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture149.jpg

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"Terence! Did you shit on this rock???
You did din't you? All over the blasted thing. Everywhere. You're a disgrace"
"Errr, no, well I've been ill, err, oh fuck it I'm off to the pub" :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture146.jpg

An Egret and four storks,
sitting in a tree,
------

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture145.jpg

A nicely silhouetted shot of one of the islands, you can see how many pairs are hanging out even on this less densely crowded one:

A pretty featureless silhouette shot, but still, Isn't water just lovely? :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture143.jpg

Yes I did get a lot of photos of painted storks didn't I:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture142.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture141.jpg

Now these two, umm, were going at it like knives, quite frankly. In public too. Disgraceful:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture140.jpg

I want a huge lake with little islands like this in it, nowww!!! :

And these guys? Yeah they're a must, seriously. Crocodiles are so very very cool:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture136.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture135.jpg

Same thing with added background avians and worse lighting :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture133.jpg

Scenic:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture131.jpg

Some birds - plovers of some kind? Too big? - that I clearly can't recognise, in a tree, at 90 degress so get out your rotating frock and spin 'er 'round:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture128.jpg

Birds nesting, doing little of interest:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture127.jpg

Ahahahaha!! Guess what these are:

These you can see, you don't need to guess, but when was the last time (or any time) you saw a whole gang of Herons, le alone night herons, let alone nesting, eh? They're a bugger to spot in England, so I thought this was kinda novel and cool (rotate I'm afraid):

Absolutely load of the bigger, black and white storks nesting. I'll look up what species they actualy are soon, honest:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture124.jpg

And a sleepy crocodile, aww, isn't he swe-GNARF!LAR!!*mangle*GRAEURGH!!HRKCHUURG!!*chew*AIIIAIIII!!!!IIILLCHGGG!LLLCHK!!!*spit*UUuuuurrrrrrr.... :

Okay there is nothing OBVIOUS in the way of wildlife to see here, but it is awfuly pretty:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture122.jpg

Still, can you guess what they are yet? :

The low, silent menace of crocodiles at sunset.
Is it all that dark for you actually? I'm in some cheap-arsed little internet cafe (I have a thing to say about the phrase `internet cafe` by the way) for the sake of only paying Rs. 15 instead of Rs. 25 per hour and not insulting the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys, I'm sorry, the people of France, and the monitors here are a bit crap. Everything is dark, so I hope thes eare better lit on better screens.
Anyway, stunted menacing sunset crocodiles, and all that:

Lots of shiny water - beyond that I can't see a thing; can you? :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture119.jpg

Our friend the crocodylus humanochompus once again, in the distance, and in a pair:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture118.jpg

Looks a lot like an egret, although if you twist your head you get a better view (rotate it, in other words) :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture116.jpg

Crocs a la rocky distance:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture115.jpg

Gigantic creep vine a la bambeau strangleur:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture114.jpg

This was that first sight I got of the crocodiles - you can see why, if it didn't move a fraction over several minutes, one might reasonably assume it was a prop, part of a light-hearted attempt to mislead the gullible tourist.
I was wrong, of course, thankfully :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture112.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture111.jpg

Now I doubt you can see it, slippery little bugger, but I tried to catch this crimson and russet coloured little devil by stealthy stalking, whch of course didn't quite work, so he's in there for my benefit as much as anything:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture110.jpg

He's somewhere in the middle - yes, that tiny smudge of reddy-brown!

-

A small white bird in a larger brown lake. With stones, no less:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture108.jpg

A small black bird (a Cormorant) in brown lake with lillies:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture107.jpg

Spin this round for a lovely view down that man-made lake, nice trees on the left, too:

And that is it for today, PhotoBucket no longer wishes to speak to me, once again.
Toodle pip.

Hmm, I seem to have made a small but fundamental error: I've spent £610 in the last 48 hours, which isn't quite within my usual budgetary limits...

The repairs to the camera (RS.1,500 : £19.50) were annoying but justified, and I slipped into the repair shop again this morning (just about morning, anyway; not sleeping before about 2/3am still) and the little repair man took it and confirmed the freeness of his impending repair, which was nice. No more costs there unless something's actually buggered, and he damn well should have spotted it the first time, really

The plane ticket out of India; this Saturday; is justified but bloody annoying. My ticket to Bombay, India from the London Heathrow, UK - a distance of about 4450 miles - cost me £290.
A flight from Chennai (Madras) on India's East coast just to Bangkok, Thailand - about 1300 miles - costs £140, almost half as much.
I can well appreciate economies of scale and the minimum cost of these things, but even still something just a fraction under the 100 quid mark was what I would think is reasonable.

Bear in mind that I am using every one of the following sites when I look for flights and go with the cheapest, between them you should be able to find some spectacular deals. Try them yourself - all of them if you want the best price, because they all searcc differently and they put different fees on varying flights and itineraries.
As it happens, SkyScanner is often the best of these, and most actual bookings seem to be going through eBookers (the actual seller of the ticket: these following sites are all what they call `screenscrapers` and they trawl through dozens of different airlines for you) -

http://www.kayak.co.uk/flights?tab=flights&oneway=n&cabin=e&travelers=1&depart_time=a&depart_date=8%2F04%2F2008&nearbyO=n&return_time=a&return_date=15%2F04%2F2008&nearbyD=n

http://www.travelsupermarket.com/travelmerge/travelsearch.aspx?package=4 (theis one is just for UK departures so no good for me for a couplea years!)

http://www.skyscanner.net/

http://www.sidestep.com/

http://www.foundem.co.uk/search/flights.jsp

http://travel.kelkoo.co.uk/c-172201-flights.html

http://www.momondo.com/

http://www.expedia.co.uk/default.aspx?eapid=737-3&AFFCID=expe.uk.001.000.995083

http://www.travelocity.co.uk/

http://www.mobissimo.com/search_airfare.php

http://www.opodo.co.uk/opodo/HomeServlet?locale=en_GB&CMP=uk-aff-gen-000000

http://www.ebookers.com/shop/home?tduid=983fec690784d65167b00b1b17d116a8

http://www.airline-network.co.uk/?partner=affiliate&AID=10460889&PID=1658918 (Uk departure only).

-

Hopefully the above lot might be useful to someone Onto the meat of the thing though, I went and bought that laptop didn't I?

The sharp mathematicians and most accomplished liars amongst you will have worked out what this cost already: £Too,Bloody,Much,Pounds.00p

I went just a little bit overboard and bought an AMD Turion Dual Core wotsit processor in this flat, shiny computery thing I now own, with 2GB things of memory stuffage, a graphics card that hopefully is capable of playing all the cheap, ripped-off DVDs available here of which I intend to buy a monumentally inhuman amount and the usual assortment of DVD rewritable drives, supra-100GB hard drives and with that shiny new Windows Vista that I've heard so many complaints about already which is probably par for the course in desktops these days or possibly even old hat (it is so hard to keep up to date with the advances in computers, isn't it?) but for me, being a cheapskate, and for a laptop, being essentially a compromise by very definition, this makes me very very smiley

i) DVDs in this part of India cost Rs. 70 or Rs. 80 for a single film, or even a 6-films-in-1 disc thingy! That's either about £0.92 or £1.00 each, for many new-ish films not yet on DVD I imagine (such as, maybe, Jumper, HP & the Order of the Phoenix, Hitman, War, sveral dozen others. I have no idea if these actually are available yet on DVD in the UK, but I had only heard of War, Hitman and HP before I left 5 months ago, and there are loads more big-name films I've not been aware of).
I think you can probably hear me say "sweeeeeet" from over there in England

ii) Yes, I had to look up `supra-`. Intended for use as the opposite of `sub-` I hope Mother and Father dearest can tell me if this is even appropriate

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If you want to be even more confused than you thought you were already by the way, have a look at the Wikipedia page for this processor. And that's just the processor - one chip of hundreds in there (admittedly the most sophisticated, but you get the point). And Wikipedia is supposed to be an accessible resource, even aside from the debacle that is the debate surrounding its reliability.

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Anyway, right, well I wrote the above yesterday but got lost in a mire of moviedom after, predictably enough, I started watching films! The good films are of course the ones you pay more for. Regular DVD players have no trouble with the 6-in-1 or 8-in-1 discs but it appears my shiny new Microsoft flagship rules & regulations enforcement, genuine "advantage" bollocks, overly-legal, goody-two-shoes operating system isn't having any of it.
Happily enough I've swapped all the mutiple-film discs with regular single movie versions this morning, so, I now have 10 films to watch which should keep me slightly out of trouble for a day or three

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I did get to watch a couple of movies last night though, which was very nice indeed, and if I may play at being Jonathon Ross/Barry Norman for a minute....

I can reliably inform you that War, with Jason Statham and Jet Li is a great action film with an excellent story that I'm sure must be an adaptation of an older Hong Kong movie, such is the thematic motivation of all the players and the pleasing supply of clever (although slightly dumbed down in this one I'm sure) plot twists. they were wholly predictable by about the halfway mark, but I put this down to Westernised dumbing-down, rather than any lameness on the part of the originator

It should entertain you for more or less the whole duration, it is rather good all the way except perhaps until the last 5 or 6 minutes, in fact, and if until then and no longer only because the details of that vital closing act don't really have time to sink in. You need the story to be continuing along a little for the events revealed there to have proper meaning.
It is, however, very disappointing throughout in that Li does pretty much no fighting but rather a lot of shooting instead - for anyone who doesn't know or hasn't heard of Jet li, then I ask you: have you heard of Bruce Lee?

Well, Jet Li is a far better, more accomplished martial artist with a vastly superior variety of disciplines at his disposal - contest this if you will, fight fans, but whether due to advances in cinematography and film quality and the understanding of how we mere human audiences watch and comprehend things, or whether it's down to sheer skill and adaptability and more highly accomplished & wide ranging styles, Jet Li's films are far, far more impressive. Even Especially discounting any of the ridiculous wire-work so beloved of our so beloved Yuen Wu Ping

2nd on the hit list, the `new` Haydn Christiansen film Jumper is, well, it's watchable but in the end it is very, very shallow. Really, the whole way through it seemed like they had rented each character from another movie, even the casual addition of Samuel L. Jackson couldn't properly revive this spluttering beast of a picture.
Wonderful premise, truly superb as an idea and as an accomplished special effect, and there are some great bits in the first half of the film, but the complete lack of any explanation - of anything - makes it all very superficial.
You can actually predict the film's level of thoughtfulness very accurately from the short, swaggering and incongruent opening voice-over

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Anyway that's quite enough from me: I have to negotiate the bloody minefield that is the new Windos Vista and try to make some sense of it. It's not easy, as anyone used to XP and its predecessors who now grapples with the weirdness of Vista will probably testify.

Ho-hum!

I am actually going to have to produce a wobbly Egret to justify the title today aren't I?
Let's see what we can do.

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And so, we find ourselves at Bangalore. This city is one of the two I.T. hubs of the nation and is responsible for a good part of the country's recent years of financial growth and success. Of course, as even the Lonely Planet can correctly note there is a bit of a problem with this new-found wealth filtering down to anyone, say, below the level of Vice Chairman of a multi-national company already pulling in 6 or 7 figures a year, but hey, that's business!!

Actually it's not, not always, at least. Except in this case it probably is - not that we saw much of the city (a taxi ride, a bus station, a train station, small chunk of an inner-city dual carriageway) but it didn't look strikingly prosperous as compared to anywhere else.
Well it was quite clean.
But they weren't distributing free iPod Nanos on the street corners or anything.

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OKay, as I said we didn't se much, so, your insight into this famous, important and powerful Indian metropolis is limited to the train station and anything muggins here was able to snap along the way.
Speaking of which I got my camera back from the repair shop today - lens works but the shutter button doesn't, so I can't actually take pictures, although I can look at them on a miniature LCD screen instead of going to the bother of lifting my gaze and peering at the real article. I will be wearing my best angry-but-still-civil hat down the same said repair shop tomorrow...

Bangalore train station from the footbridge; it all looks pretty familiar:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture018-1.jpg

The somewhat idiosyncratic/blunt/discriminatory/benevolent (delete as per your own interpratation and cynicism levels) nature of the railway carriage sub-division:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture016-1.jpg

This is only there to prove where I actually was - all I wanted was a picture of the platform sign and a 20-foot platform to stand on to take some nice shots of the station as a whole (and the massed ranks of autorickshaws out the front, must have been over a hundred) but no, I couldn't remember that much. So I settled for a purposeless photograph that I will now, purposelessly, share with you:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture015-1.jpg

You can see things are pretty damned informal despite the guys in the photograph below; if you fancy it you can drive your little 3-wheeler right onto the platform to make unloading easier and everyone croses the tracks at one end of the station by wandering carefree over the rails:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture014-1.jpg

This is very typical of urban houses I've seen in cities, even if it was just a passing shot of a random house. If you can't squeeze the mansion into the city, squueze all the features of a mansion into the space you have got:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture012-1.jpg

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Hampi group photo!

There was a very interesting guy called Dave at Hampi, staying in the same guesthouse. A Yorkshireman who lives half a year over there climbing, and visits his highly adaptive, highly adapted mate who live here pretty much all year round in a cave some miles away!!
That's Dave int he thoroughly ridiculous hat next to Maria, and the two guys on the edges were some of the ever-helfpul staff - I cannot bloody remember their names. The guy on the Left had one you'd think you might remember - Maria, can ye help mae oot, lass?? :

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(Bangalore again)
He he he - this is cool. I suppose with the recent assassinations and stuff I shouldn't have been taking photos of armed security personnel; not that it ocurred to me, mind you, but Maria (seen here harassing them for all their worth) was just about to duck or start running:

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Back in Hampi just briefly...

Another unlikely balanced rock - if anyone knows that they have seen these exact pictures before do let me know please :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture005-1.jpg

Rocks, mountains, bloody rocks and mountains...

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture003.jpg

Sodding carvings:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/rory155-1.jpg

F*%†#!± temples! :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/rory148-1.jpg

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And now we must break for some video. It seems I have an absolute shedload of videos - almost the whole last 2 pages of this album - so I'll stick some here and another load more in a video post afterwards to clear them all up, as it were.

Course, we gotta hope I actually still possess the things......

Ahhh. It seems that we don't

I'm not going to swear, but I will tell you that now none of us will ever get to see a full wraparound shot of Mysore Palace and Gardens; the Waterfalls near Madikeri *fume*; the uber-bumpy bus rides; the - I can't help myself, the fucking bastard fucking shits - Indian traffic dodging films which are worth small lumps of pure gold; the eagles circling the city skyline in Mangalore, from the hotel roof, no less; the waves crashing and throwing up clouds of spray and streaming in rivers over rocks on Mangalore beach; the cats and crows from the same area walking around each other without concern; and of the videos of the huge birds, bats and crocodiles flying at the bird sanctuary near Mysore; the coconut rop spinning from the backwater trip here in Kerala; the view of the valley - it was SOME view believe me - on the ridge of a mountain on the last day of the Madikeri trek (we'd only spent 72 hours getting there, of course I'm not bitter); the local cigarette roller who was making the Indian cigarettes, bedes, at a rate of knots; etc. etc. ad infuriatum.

In lieu of this I'm gonna let Kevin Kline say it for me. Just the first two scenes sum up perfectly how I feel:

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I feel better for that. Gonna have to get A Fish Called Wanda when I get that laptop... right, okay, moving on; the only video that seems to work at all is this tiny, 2-second `film` where you can at least see a croc moving. About 6 inches. Still, better than a slap in the face with a wet disembodied limb:

Soooo... Woohoo!! First dedicated travelling album finished! That's one and a bit albums down, one more to go. many duplications so hopefully I'll be able to clear through them in the 3 days I have left in this country not dedicated to transport and running away (booked my flight to Thailand this afternoon, see).

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And, we have achieved the wildlife sanctuary, at last. This place was called Ranganatthittu.. Ranganananathituu... Rangang...Rananga... *checks* .. Ranganathittu Wildlife Sanctuary (come one now, I was pretty close) and it was wonderful.
Wonderful beyond measure, the guide took us out in a little boat and rowed as almost silently out across a large lake studded with heavily-wooded islets, and, well, the sheer volume and variety of life was incredible.

Night herons, painted storks, cormorants, cranes, egrets, Ibis', spoonbills, even pelicans Kingfishers go without saying, of course, but you lose them in there - you lose anything smaller than a bloody heron in there - because of the size of the biggest birds. There were, among the painted storks (and the colours! Ohhhh!) were another kind of stork even larger and almost as big as the pelicans which were, frankly, almost implausibly large.

There were also, of course, absolutely loads of Marsh Crocodiles as well, they may not be Saltwater or Nile crocs, but they were big enough and thorougly magnificent.
Anyway, enough of that, have a look at some of the stuff:

Night herons:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture187.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture188.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture186.jpg

Painted storks nesting en masse:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture182.jpg

I have to say here that I was too excited to get proper photos; we were in the middle of these guy's flight paths and right next to hudreds of each species nesting, flying in, flying out, repairing nests etc. and it was pretty overwhelming, plus my camera isn't a proper one so I apologise for the fect many photos are quite distant and possibly not very well focused

Just a bit of lake scenery:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture176.jpg

Nesting Pelicans!! Not easy to see I'm afraiod; they were hard enough to spot as they nested in the very highest of the trees, almost above us by the time they were pointed out (we'd never have spotted them ourselves):

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture169.jpg

Lake scenery with nice glassy water effect:

Nesting birdies:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture178.jpg

A nice chunk of rock, it seems:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture177.jpg

This, I believe, is a painted stork in its lonesome:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture174.jpg

This definitely is an Egret - the fine feathers in the tail fan out over the eggs in the nest, as seen here. This one was doing so with its back conveneintly to us, right at the edge of the island where we passed:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture173.jpg

That other kind of Stork - not gonna wina ny beauty pagents but my, are they impressive nonetheless (needs a little rotate from ya):

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture172.jpg

This look a lot like another kind of Heron... not sure. Not a stork I don't think, but then, there are anothyer dozen species living there that I couldn't identify for a cash prize! :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture171.jpg

The subtley ominous signs of a crocodile in the water, but at least you can see 'em. It is when you can't that you are in trouble, as any Australian will apparently tell you:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture170.jpg

More storks up in the trees:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture168.jpg

A little culvet that ran through one of the islands, not sure if I got it but the foliage is lovely anyway :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture167.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture164.jpg

Storks in both flavours:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture165.jpg

And in neopolitan only :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture155.jpg

- And.. *drum roll* no, it's not a plastic prop (I though one on a rock in the middle of the lake, silent, unmoving, was a model to entice the tourists at first!) but is in fact the first proper glimpse of the Marsh Crocodile, or for those not trusting Wikipedia, the Marsh Crocodile

Plenty more of these