A couple of new things - I changed the background for this page (plenty of palm trees in the photos anyway!) because the loading times must have been getting a little silly, even on the non-photo posts, plus it is of course somewhat more relevant to the spirit of this blog. Still not ideal to my mind though; suggestions for a new backdrop are most welcome

The way it displays is pretty appropriate, as I'm only visiting a tiny part of Africa and wont be in Europe again for nearly 3 years the bits that are left showing mostly cover where I'm going to visit, which is pleasantly convenient. Another quick thing - I spent today inviting a whole new crowd of people from the blog.co.uk site, so for the benefit of any of these guys who read the first page here, here are the facts of what I'm up to:

I am in India at the moment, have been for the past 4 months now and will be leaving within 2 weeks or so for Laos (that's the quiet country next to Vietnam and Thailand) then down through Singapore just for a few days, and into Indonesia for a month or so. Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Papua - all the exotic places where you could never quite remember where they were well they're pretty much all parts of Indonesia. See, you learned something already

Then it's a couple of months for me in Australia, one whole year in New Zealand to kickstart my new career; whether that materialises into one of journalism, coffee-house slavery or male prostitution (hey, we all gotta make a living somehow and that Deuce Bigolo film wasn't all that bad ) I can't reliably predict, but either way, whatever happens, I hope that I get to write in relation to my new job(s) and also that I get a lot better at it You just can't use smilies in professional journalism, so I am gonna have to learn some impressive language skills...

South Africa should receive me briefly (a month or two maybe) some time in late 2009, then I'll be inflicting myself upon the Americas for hopefully at least another year and a half, basically wanting to live in and around the Amazon Basin countries and make use of my impressive Spanish skills, that I had better entirely learn while in New Zealand because right now all I know is the Spanish word for `shoe shop`, and I doubt that this level of linguistic maneuvering will get me out of trouble in deepest, darkest Bolivia. Speaking of which I have the strange desire, you may or may not believe this, to be shot at, and South America seems the best place to give this lethal little diversion a go.
I think it would be fairer and a lot more accurate to say that I want to be shot at and get away, but the basic idea is the thrillseeking aspect of escaping a crazed bunch of gunmen. I don't really go into thrillseeking stuff much - yet - but part of the plan in spending a whole year in New Zealand is to allow me to jump out of aeroplanes, fling myself harnessed to nylon contraptions from cliff-faces, and attach large elastic bands to my feet and hurl myself from the nearest bridge, as it were.

Just the thought of these things threatens to make inroads into my collection of laundered underpants, so in the spirit of overcoming one's fears, this basically is why I want to try and go do them. We'll see if I survive past New Zealand sometime about Easter 2009

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After South America it's central America, which gives me the excuse to traverse the Panama Canal, go to Jamaica on a decent excuse, and basically dick about in the Caribbean for as long as I can pretending to be a pirate.
They also have a little place called `Cuba` around there, and I fancy drinking Banana Daquiris in street cafes and pretending that I'm Michael Corleone from the Godfather for a bit.
Yes, the observant among you will remember that it was actually the treacherous Fredo Corleone ordering the daquiris in the film, but if I hadn't mentioned it you probably wouldn't have remembered that scene

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If I have any money left (unlikely, unless my writing improves and they pay me millions while I'm in New Zealand) I'll go on to Mexico, travel a little up the West coast of the United States taking in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and avoiding Las Vegas like the plague that it is, go through the rocky mountains into Vancouver in Canada, somehow make my way to Chicago then onto the East coast, New York, Washington etcetera, hopefully not come within one thousand miles of fucking Disneyland in Florida and catch a boat back across the Atlantic, and re-enter the land of hedgerows and Milky Tea that we call the United Kingdom via the green and lordly vale of Ireland, avoiding the poisoned North and drinking enough real Guinness in the proper part of the country to sink George Best.

Thence to somewhere in Wales, possibly by a hastily enforced swimming lesson after making so many rude comments about Northern Ireland (I really have nothing against it and even don't really have any problems with the old IRA and UDF - except with "Doctor" Ian Paisley who is a charlatan and a bastard - but will they PLEASE just stop shooting each other? I know ostensibly this has happened but everyone still has a huge chip on their shoulder, it was all about a silly religious split and the English monarchy being so bloody stupid as to try and only take over part of a country, the accent is horrific when you hear it next to a dulcet and melodic native of the lovely Southern segment, it is industrialised to a point past sensibility, and the Guinness there, apparently, is dreadful. This last crime alone justifies my occasional nasty sniping comments), and finally coming back home to Southampton, where I shall immediately begin to plan my next two trips: Europe by bicycle and foot, and Africa by armoured personnel carrier.

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Finally, some of the new guys I invited I noticed may be offended from time to time by my opinions on religion or nation states or whatever - your opinions are of course always as valid as mine and I welcome all debate and fresh ideas. I've had the odd ranting theological debates/tirades with my father from time to time; who will in a few months be a Deacon in the Catholic Church and is an extremely well educated student of theology (there ya go Dad, you get the occasional real compliment too ); so if you don't like anything I throw out there, please say so and we can politely slug it out, as it were

Apart from that I'm a nice guy, so most people seem to think, and am always happy to welcome new faces and friends

Hey! I just noticed that the clicking of photos from this here blog opens them in a new window anyway - hope this works for everyone. If that takes you to a page in my Photobucket account you can click the images again there for the full size version. Some of them, just one or two, are 7 megapixels in size, so it may reduce your computer to a whimpering slave for a second or two
99% of them are only 1600 x 1200 pixels in size or, in English, about the same size as a decently big monitor screen. So don't panic. Please insert your own impression of Lance-Corporal Jones from Dad's Army here Interestingly I couldn't remember the name for a minute there, and a quick search brought up this slightly charming little rundown of the characters from that Dad's Army.
Always a favourite programme of my Grandfather, I'm rather fond of it myself, and found myself reading the whole list with more than just a touch of nostalgia, which I now invite you to do so, too - http://www.phill.co.uk/comedy/dadsarmy/char.html

Another piece of goodness extracted from that site was this - a previously unknown Simon Pegg series! Well it was unknown to me anyway (Simon Pegg was the genius behind `Spaced` which was, obviously, the greatest audiovisual production ever created. Never heard of it? Well up yours )
Anyway this previous series, called `Hippies`, must have been his first attempt to get paid real money for portraying a stoner on television, which is ideal for a man of his quality and vision seeing as he is, quite obviously, a stoner in real life. Or at least he definitely used to be It didn't work out so well, but you can read a bit about it here: http://www.phill.co.uk/comedy/hippies/index.html

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Anyway a bunch more pictures from me today, still at Hampi (well I was there for a month and did quite a lot of sightseeing - plus there was an incredible picture pretty much everywhere you looked). If you ever go to India, and only have time for one place besides the eagerly-escaped airports, I strongly recommend making it Hampi.

This is the view of the sunset from the top of the Hanuman temple mountain, and I just wished to buggery that I had a proper SLR camera (and knew how to use the thing) so I could do this scene justice. My half-arsed attempts are just here:

And this is, I think, one of the best ways to illustrate the best and worst of Indian culture. Pretty bold claim for a hazy, poorly framed photo huh?
Well the signs on the rocks; this is at the temple on Hanuman mountain; forbid anyone from climbing on them, even though it does no harm to anyone at all - the temple is at the top of a flight of almost 600 steps and not that many tourists could come here and wear down all the rocks - and the sign on the far left which I really wanted to include but forgot about fosusing the thing properly, say `photography prohibited` and `no photographs` in big blue letters. This, on its own, would make it one of the most bureaucratic, pathetic and petty-minded little things I could even imagine, let alone see.
The good part? Everyone ignores it, the monks have no problem with you climbing anywhere or photographing until your fingers blister. They have even built little stone paths between the more difficult rocky areas on the plateau to let everyone get everywhere aroudn the top of the mountain, which is immensely sweet of them.

What almost certainly happened is some officious bureaucrat came up here with his red and blue paint pots, saw how much of an awesome thnig this was for people to experience and remember, and decided to try and stop anyone having any fun. I think this only because I have seen some strange and hitherto unrealised aspect of the human mind here in India, among those few annoying officials and unhelpful police I have spoken to; situations where they will go to great lengths to PREVENT you doing what you want to, need to, or feel like doing, just because it gives them a petty little thrill. It is what we know as the `little Hitler` mentality, people who have no power in their lives use whatever they can find through their jobs to make life difficult for other people, because it makes them strangely satisfied to think other people can be unhappy too.
How fortunate for everyone that the Hanuman priests have no time for that nonsense, and disregard that petty little bastard's signs, and he was pretty handy with the paintbrush; there were big red crosses on all routes onto the rocks, messages of `no access` and `dont climb here` daubed on all available surfaces.
There were reminders that photography was not only prohibited, but one rabid scrawling around the rear of the main rockhead proclaimed that `Photographs are illegal!` which I thought was really a step too far.

Anyway you can hardly even see what I've been going on about here, just a couple of the red crosses and things - but the first time I went up there it got me thinking and it really got me annoyed, because I know just the kind of pathetic individual who would go and do that.
Thankfully, these people as are rare as rocking horse shit, as my Mother used to say and we all got everything from the experience of the Hanuman temple that we could have:

Anyway after all that pious ranting, here are a bunch of extra-cute monkeys, doing monkey things (although I still don't have the ones that Holly took of the monkey on my shoulder! Holly where are you?!):

This one was heavily pregnant and the others were all grooming and looking after her:

And other monkeys - with baby monkeys! God, they are as ugly as a sackful of needles when they're young like this, but still unbelievably cute:

Monkeys and crows playing and squabbling on the edge of the mountain, in front of the most amazing view of the surrounding country:

There's some more of that mountain-top viewing:

Down at the lake (which I failed to jump into - gotta get over this fear of deep water!) there were some great photo oppurtunities but, unfortunately, you're going to have to flip them the right way up yourselves because Photobucket have just introduced some new gizmos to edit pictures that the computers here can't handle, so from now on, a few pictures way come up sideways. Sorry. They're quite lovely shots though:

The `lake` was really a reservoir, and you can see the cutoff edge in these pictures where the height of the place really becomes obvious; standing at the reservoir's far edge you could see right down into the most amazing valley of paddy fields, palm forests and banana plantations:

Of course all of those are from the jumpioong rocks well away from the edge, I hope I got some fo the valley below but we rode past it on the bikes each time, so I'm not sure if I did....
..anyway, more stuff! :

"Seven fat cows, and seven thin cows, and the all walked out of the water..."

Great shots of the little bridge you have to cross to get into the reservoir area proper - I saw this goatherd guy coming down the road, and scrambled like a mad bastard up onto a rocky outcrop in time to get the pictures while he was on the bridge:

Last thing I saw by the reservoir that day, was this rock cracked amazingly down the middle:

Back in Hampi town, this is how the levels of the river were dropping after just a couple of weeks:

And from the holy Hampi side (the non-beer side), taken from just above the top of the stone ghats:

And, finally for now, because I woke at 7am and it's 10:40 now and I haven't eaten yet (the things I do for you lot, honestly) these are the fields we crossed whenever we wanted to take the shortcut to our lodgings. Honestly, it's a hard old life.... :

Adios, for now, guys.