I've spent the rest of the summer doing very little. My time in Dubai was taken up by (in order of decreasing frequency)

1. Watching sequences of episodes of Arrested Development - hilarious show!
2. Treating Cleo the cat like my firstborn child
3. Reading - about Bad Science, Shi'i Islam, and killing mockingbirds


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We'd been scared stiff of the daily protests going on in Srinagar so we were advised to leave at an ungodly hour for the airport to fly to Delhi. Following this advice, we left our houseboat at 3.30 AM and sped through the city to get to the airport ( Read more... )

With only two days having passed since the agonizing waits to get into Gulmarg were ingrained into our frighteningly short memories, this time we were clever enough to leave the sleepy village at exactly 4 AM for a two-hour ride into Srinagar, the capital of the state ( Read more... )

We left Pahalgam at 8 AM, which was four hours too late. We were advised by our drivers to leave at 4 AM in order to avoid the stone-pelting mobs of village folk on the way to Gulmarg, our next destination. We learnt our lesson when we were stopped on the road a couple of times by people telling us that there were indeed mobs blockading the road ( Read more... )

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I'm back in Newcastle now. It's horrible and cold here. Maybe not entirely horrible, but it definitely is cold ( Read more... )

On Monday, I went to watch the film 3 idiots starring the awesome Aamir Khan among others. The film is about three engineering students in one of the top engineering colleges of India, headed by a mean, grumpy and traditionalist old professor (whose daughter Aamir Khan romances in the film). Aamir Khan's character, Rancho, is an unconventional ( Read more... )

I'm really enjoying being in India. Especially today, since my cousin came back home from university in student-city Pune (poo-nay). We've had the best day together, just eating constantly, napping through the noise coming from the mosque across the road, eating even more (coconut water, ice cream, cottage cheese) and laughing at everything ( Read more... )

I've reached India finally, after about a day and a half of travel ( Read more... )