Daytripping Brisneyland

Has It Been That Long?

Crickey, last night I realised that I had been back in Brisbane for a month to the day. Time has flown by, and I am still suffering from a Hampi hangover. Well, my work is suffering as I have only just got back into the right frame of mind for that sort of carry-on. I went travelling for more than two months, which I reckon is the sweet spot where you relax completely, so I wasn't ready for the day-to-day of work.

I still miss the crew from Goan Corner, and I am now reduced to living vicariously through videos and photos that they post on Flickr, Facebook and Youtube (more about that below!)

India is Fully Sick

One thing did get me excited just before I left India. I hadn't been sick, except for a few very minor tummy upsets, for my entire Indian holiday. It is common knowlege that it isn't possible to go to India without getting crook, particularly for me with my weak stomach. But I found myself thinking that I was going to get away with seven weeks of fine health. Silly boy.

My last two nights were in the Southern capital city of Trivandurum, and I shouted myself a fairly plush hotel room ($20 a night!) I woke up covered in insect bites on the first morning. I figured that it was mosquitos, but when I woke with even more bites on the second morning I had a terrible feeling that... it might just be... bedbugs. I have never seen bedbugs, but I had a good look inside the bed and saw lots of very well fed little bastards crawling around.

I had to get on a flight first thing that morning, so I spent the entire trip home itching like mad, and had to spend my first day cleaning and boiling everything to kill the critters instead of sleeping. After that it was just a matter of waiting the four or five days that it takes for the sores to stop itching.

But one of the little bites got infected, right on the back of my thigh. In the space of three hours the whole back of my leg wet red, swollen and hard, and I was in a lot of pain. I had to go to hospital where I was put on strong antibiotics and told to report back every second day. Long story short, I developed a doozy of an abscess on the back of my leg that the doctor had a lot of fun squeezing (most painful thing I can remember), and I am still going to the doctor to get it checked every other day.

Good old India, she is a cruel mistress.

Animated Memories

I had lots of fun taking videos on my new camera, and got lots of really good climbers doing some crazy stuff. I have finally finished making a montage of some of the highlights. Actually, I finished a while ago, but there have been various "technical problems" in getting said videos onto YouTube in their HD glory. At least I learnt how to compile codecs by hand and spoon feed them to feed YouTube what it wants (it would seem that I can't help but turn the simplest of activities into technical challenges)

All of my videos will end up on my YouTube channel (subscribe or keep checking back because I will keep adding videos of climbs, explosions, yak jumping and Indian cooking). The movie I made of Hampi was too big, so I have split it into two halves

Part 1:



Part 2:

And, for those who own iPods and iPhones, I have made versions of the videos that will play on them, so you can keep some Hampi highlights in your pocket. Right click and save the following links (they are around 50MB each)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/233337/hampiIPOD1.mp4
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/233337/hampiIPOD2.mp4

If you there are any videos that you remember me shooting that you would like, let me know and I will see what I can do to share them with you.