India

Namaste. Welcome to India! Yes that is the most touristy photo possible but when in rome India :) It was quite a culture shock after the relatively relaxing trip through Jordan. It took my brain and my stomach a couple of days to adjust to the sensory overload! Also (as expected) Indian food is definitely better in India. It seems everything there is in a constant state of chaos but yet it still works. Was a little sad to leave India, I definately want to go back one day and see the rest of the country. I'd made some good friends and came home with plenty of stories (refused entry to Dehli airport then lost my passport and 2 airline tickets an hour later !!)
 For many, many more pics click here --> India Gallery (344 photos)

  

  

Dubai Stopover

Honestly I was quite unprepared for this trip, finished packing the bag only a couple of hours before I flew out!

The journey from Perth to Jordan would take nearly 24hours. After a 10.5 hour flight to Dubai in which I failed to impress the girl I was sitting next to with my terrible Arabic :) , I had an 8 hour stopover before my (Business class!) flight to Jordan. I'm not going to hangout in an airport unless I'm forced to so I cleared immigration, caught a taxi and headed towards the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa.
Dubai really is a crazy amazing city in the middle of nowhere and I wish I had spent a couple of days there exploring the sights. Have to add it to the to-do list for the next trip!

Click the link below for more images from Dubai

Dubai Gallery (30 images)

The next adventure for 2011: Jordan + India

Yep that’s right, Jordan AND India. I think the toxins from the spiders I ate in Cambodia were still in my brain when I booked this one :) I’ve always wanted to check out Jordan so that I can pretend to be Indiana Jones looking for the holy grail(oh and Transformers 2 was filmed there) but the India part was more of an after thought. As my tour in Jordan isn't that long I thought it’d be a waste to fly so far from home only for a couple of weeks.

The tour company I’ve always used (Gap) helped suggest a couple of options for trips starting soon after I was to finish in Jordan. It was either between Morocco or India. I had no real preference so it came down to whether I could line up flights at the right time. Maybe next time Morocco lol
As for flights, I'm flying with Emirates for all the flights (6). Their website is awesome for configuring multi-stop trips and was pretty cheap considering the randomness of this trip. The flight itinery goes like this: Perth - Dubai - Amman Jordan - Dubai - Delhi India - Dubai - Perth. I’ll be an expert on Dubai airport by the end!

 

Expected highlights? Petra in Jordan and of course the Taj Mahal in India. That’ll take my wonders of the world tally to 3 (The pyramids in Egypt is the other). I'm almost as travelled as Karl Pilkington! Also swimming in the Dead Sea should be pretty cool as well as snorkeling in Aqaba. I'm thinking of taking my waterproof GoPro video camera to get some in-water shots. Camping out in the desert with the bedouins will also be fun. I almost forgot one of the biggest highlights, the food! Im looking forward to India more for the food than anything else :)

Only 2 months to go, cant come soon enough!