A week away in Spain last week was very much deserved; a chance for some respite and to catch some rays after our miserably wet summer. I went about this with gusto and torched my chest on the first day. Result.

Despite the pain, Sean, Ryan and myself set about the Asturian town of Gijon (North West Spain) and found ourselves wallowing in seafood and the local cider, which is poured from a height and swilled down quickly. We even managed to fit in some beach prowling, tapas chewing and an eventful Iberian musical experience (which included beer, The Go! Team, a bull fighting ring and some early morning violence).

In the second half of the week we stayed with Ryan’s girlfriend Aihnoa at her family’s holiday home further along the coast in Llanes (neighbouring the town of Poo). More seafood, more cider, drinking games with the locals, a failure to grasp the language and some swimming in the sea later, and the holiday was over very quickly and I spent a further four hours in the car driving back from Essex.

It was all suitably fantastic.

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It’s been a long weekend.

I took Friday as day at the motors (mixing business with pleasure) and with a bit early morning travel managed to get down to Brands Hatch for 9ish. I had been hoping to get to see more than just practice day, but as things happened, the weekend was already booked up (I will explain later) and so I was only able to stay for the one day before having to head back home.

In simple terms, a client’s son (Adam) competes in Formula Renault (think next is Formula 3, then GP2, then Formula 1) and he invited me to come down to watch the opening race of the season. It’s been a couple of years since the last time I got to watch (at Donington) and it’s something I really enjoy so was more than happy to get down there, especially as last weekend didn’t prove to be much of a break in the end.

Will also came down and we had the full day slinking around the pits, paddock and stands. It’s great to get full access to these places, and to get really up close with the kit, especially as I’d taken the SLR down. The weather conspired against us however, and most of the day it bucketed it down so I spent a lot of time collecting puddles in my camera bag. Despite this it was still bloody great, and although not an official race day, Adam’s results were good and looked promising for qualifying on the next day.

After making an epic journey back home, the next morning Deako turned up at 10am ready to get over to Wales. After the success of our photo trip to the lakes six months ago we’d decided to plan another, this time to the Elan Valley.

We were staying in Rhayader (a place which I’ve visited/walked/camped around several times before) and made it our base to get out into the valleys. Unfortunately the weather followed, and we spent a good few hours at the top of the incredibly full and impressive dams contending with pretty heavy conditions. It wasn’t good photography weather, but we managed to get a few locations in before the evening.

Thankfully Sunday was brighter and we traced the second, longer chain of dams and reservoirs. If you don’t really know about Elan and these structures, essentially if you live in or around Birmingham, the water you drink came from here. Most of the five or so dams were built between the last decade of the 19th century and the early 1950s, and they are really impressive bits of architecture. Several valleys were flooded to make way for the new reservoirs and one lake alone contains enough water at any one time to supply Brum for up to 15 days. Eerily, several villages and substantial large houses were submerged in the process, and they still sit at the bottom of these vast pools in which you cannot sail or swim. The scenery is stunning, and after the heavy rainfall, all of these structures were overflowing with run off. It’s a very impressive sight, especially from the base.

In the afternoon we had reached Devil’s Bridge, but as the weather had started to deteriorate again we took a trip to Aberystwyth where it cheered up and we met up with Damith (one of James’ old housemates from Loughborough). We took an unplanned trip to the beach and my first ever experience of home-cooked Sri-Lanken food (which was delicious and despite containing copious amounts of chilli, I managed without a problem).

This morning required some coordination as both mine and Deako’s phones were out of battery (mine unfortunately wasn’t just out of battery it transpires) but we eventually managed to organise getting to breakfast at the right time (our hotel rooms were in different buildings on different streets) and get all the way back out to Devil’s Bridge before we realised neither of us had handed our keys in at checkout.

Thankfully we had planned to return at lunchtime for one final photo opportunity in Rhayader, so after tackling the waterfalls and Jacob’s Ladder, we returned the hotel, handed in the keys and spent the last hour filling up our final memory cards with photos of red kites - a bird of prey that thrives in the Elan Valley and can be relied upon to arrive at the right time every day to feed in a field left with carcass scraps. The hardest thing to do is convert 200 shots made in quick succession into just three or four prize photos.

And so I’m back, with a really broken phone and a very long list of to-dos.

I was finally able to find out that Adam Christodoulou finished first and smashed the Brands Hatch lap record on Sunday in the opening race which is a great way to start the season.

This week is going to be full on.

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On Thursday morning I made my way to Lichfield to meet up with Deako and started on our way up to the Lake District. My first venture up there in four or so years (since the days of Duke of Edinburgh walks), this was a photography trip. I haven’t had a proper break since mid May so it was a chance to grab a few days of semi-rest too.

We covered a lot of distance in the three days we were there, picking up a good number of shots (which I’ve yet to Flickrise). On the first night we spent time over at Rydal Water, Grasmere and then Langdale where we ate at The Sticklebarn (a place I stayed during the residential part of the aforementioned DofE award).

The roads are hilly and the weather cold at times, but really we couldn’t complain – it was decent walking weather and the light seemed to hold. We didn’t even get rained on. On the second day we went out on the Kirkdale pass to the coast over the mountains out to Wast Water then onto Scafell Pike and walked the nearby Great Gable.

While we were at the top of this last mountain we were overflown by what looked like four Spitfires/Hurricanes at about 60ft, but I’m now fairly convinced these were just training planes. Still, we didn’t get our cameras out in time, but I did managed to catch one good shot of one of them heading out of the other end of the valley.

On the Saturday (and after a better night’s sleep for the lack of snoring we had had to endure on the Thursday night in the hostel) we went out to Derwent Water, Keswick, Thurlmere, Buttermere, Borrowdale and Ullswater, doing a couple of shorter walks up near Honiston Pass.

Deako shoots a EOS 10D which is a couple of levels up from the 350D I use, and it was good to compare the results. I probably will upgrade the camera body at some point (even though I’ve been very pleased with it so far), but as things only get exponentially more expensive from this point on, it probably won’t be that soon.

We got back down to the Midlands on Sunday morning and only in a couple of hours (which is pretty good going) and despite a late night in Penrith with Bev (a friend of James’) and her fiance, Kev. I have to say I was more than impressed with Penrith (considering it isn’t really somewhere I would have considered going out), but it wasn’t bad at all.

So after all that I have a large stack of images to sift through, tag and upload, not to mention responding to the backlog of voicemails that are filling up my phone.

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I’ve finished Return To Tibet , Heinrich Harrer’s second book on his time in Tibet. Written in the early eighties, soon after the border was reopened for the first time since the Cultural Revolution (1960s), this book is a completely different animal to his first volume, Seven Years in Tibet .

For a start this not a story – more of an account – and it only spans but a couple of weeks. By far the most significant change though is how much more political this is than Seven Years.

Harrer clearly was disgusted by many of the changes since the time he spent there, and although the physical destruction of the country’s heritage clearly appals him, I also found his negative attitude towards the Tibetans who collaborated with the Chinese revealing. In the first book there is little in the way of a personal revelation – much of what he says is very matter of fact – but here we learn his opinions on the Tibetans in general. If you can believe anything of the film in relation to his personal behaviour, it is clear why he now expresses his admiration for the Khampas (out-of-city warrior tribes) and belittles those who co-operated with the Chinese invaders in order to save themselves.

I wasn’t so sure of the book format this time – many of the chapters are of unequal length and at times Harrer repeats himself, but by the final sections I definitely was reaping the benefit of his insights. The more I have read, the more I have found his story ingratiating. With it being nearly 25 years since this second book was written, it is interesting to now compare my own experiences with his.

This book is not to be tackled without first reading Seven Years, and doesn’t quite grip you in the same way, at least initially and certainly if you are more interested in a good story than reminiscing on the past, the airing of personal regrets (if circumstances had been different) and conversations with Buddhist lamas on the level of oppression suffered by their countryfolk.

Overall I enjoyed it, although not as much as the first book. It had that same appeal of the ‘Seven Up’ television series – with a genuinely worthwhile gap left between instalments (unlike the distance between Charlotte Church’s two autobiographies).

Harrer died in January last year, which is a shame as there are many questions that seem unanswered and especially in relation to the differences between the books and the 1997 film portrayal. I don’t have anything concrete to back this up with, but after reading this second book I get the impression Harrer probably wasn’t too dissimilar from his portrayal on the screen.

His full autobiography is due out this year, so I’m hoping to get my hands on a copy. In the meanwhile, I’m going to have to locate some other reading material…

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The final two days in India were pretty spectacular. After departing Jaipur for Agra (tourist trap hell according to the guide book) we stopped off for a couple of hours at another of India’s previous capital cities, Fattepur Sikri. Eventually abandoned due to a scarcity of water, we weren’t overly impressed with much here.

Thankfully Agra was not too far away, and so we met our next guide, Bilal, who took us to the city fort and spent most of the time asking us trick questions. By the time we got our first glimpse of the world famous Taj Mahal (from a distance) we were far more enthusiastic than we had been looking around at the comparatively plain FS.

Despite the praises I sang of the hotel in Jaipur, Agra managed to turn it up one last notch. This old colonial building, now the Grand Imperial, was built by the ‘Britishers’ as a hotel and has since been refurbished into it’s former glory, if not a little better. Although the resteraunt service was a little slow, the expansive rooms and palatial feel made up for it – even the rooms are named after notable Mughal emperors.

The next morning was a 5am start to catch sunrise at the Taj. Unfortuantely the grounds are locked until 6am, which meant the sun was well and truly risen by the time we made our way to the top of the famous reflective pools that surround the main building.

It really is impossible to put into words how stunning this building is. There is nothing vaguely similar in either western architecture or even colours that competes with the shear planes of Indian marble and the hundreds of thousands of individual precious and semiprecious stones that make up the Taj.

Immaculate, the building shows some signs of discolouration, but this has become less of a problem since all polluting vehicles have been banned from the immediate vicinity of the garden walls in recent years.

Built as a mausoleum to his dead wife, the Mughal emperor who built this entirely symmetrical building fully intended to build a matching ‘inverted-colour’ version on the other side of the river that runs alongside. This all-black construction would have cost considerabley more (black marble not being a local rock) and probably taking another 22 years to complete. His son (killjoy) decided this was just too much, and so locked his spendaholic father up in a specially built prision until his death 8 years later.

It is quite clear how this is one of the more famous wonders of the world.

After Taj Mahal it was a case of breakfast, then a brief stop at a marble factory to watch inlay work being done before taking the long ride back to Delhi.

We spent the afternoon walking around the city-central ‘circus’ of shops and boutiques known as Connaught Place. At one point we even played host to four random Indian English students who just wanted a bit of a chat, which was nice. Unfortunately we ran short of time on trying to catch another Bollywood film though.

Having spent a week in India eating curry every mealtime, it was only appropriate that our final dining out should be at a Chinese. Oh well.

A few hours later and I was on a plane back to the UK via Milan. Sam remains in Delhi for another day until her flight to Malaysia, while I spent the majority of today arranging my transport home from London.

I’ve enjoyed the whole four week break. I’m hoping to get some photos up sooner rather than later and also get some fresh clothes on the go.

It’s going to take couple of days to work through my in-tray.

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The old part of Jaipur was painted pink (more a terracotta colour) over 100 years ago for the visit of a prince, and ever since it’s remained that way. We arrived here yesterday from Pushkar where we had an early morning start for a desert camel trek at sunrise.

I’ve never sat on a camel before and it’s not quite like sitting on a horse (getting on and off is a gyroscopic experience too), but Tony (my camel) and Johnny (Sam’s camel) didn’t seem to bothered that we were novices.

It was the second time we have had to break out of a hotel in the early hours before any staff had awoken (due to us forgetting to tell anyone of our plans) but it was worth it and we took three hours to venture out into the surrounding areas and up and down sand dunes before returning to meet Mr Singh and get on our way to Jaipur,

Our hotel in Jaipur took us a little by surprise. AFter doing a few passes of the road we eventually found the place, set back and quiet compared to the noise outside. We had requested our tour agent try and get us into the nicest hotels he could for our money, and despite not being a five star we’ve got marble, arches, a three piece suite and matching four poster bed so we’re not complaining too much.

AFter dumping our stuff we met our next guide who took us to the City Palace, the residence of the royal family and king of Rajastan. A personal friend of the current Windsors & Co., the collections and parallels are inetresting.

Included in the museums and grounds are two vast pure silver urns (used to carry water from the Ganges to Britain for the coronation of Edward VII) that are as high as me and huge carpets the size of houses (so big they no longer can be displayed on the floor).

After a good exploration of the palace, we visited the royal astronomical instruments. The initial reaction to these megaliths is that they were probably built in the 1980’s as some kind of modern art park, but in reality they are over 250 years old and are an incredibley accurate and sophisticated set of marble devices, including the largest (and therefore most accurate sundial in the world) which stands about seven or eight elephants high.

In the evening we came back via a hand-carpet factory before going out for a traditional Rajastani evening. There were all the awkward hallmarks of being a westerner including having to wear a turban (badly) and struggle to eat while sitting on the floor (pins and needles). Sam got henna-ed up on both hands and feet which meant she was walking around like a zombie until this morning when the whole lot could be peeled off.

This morning was a trip over to the Amber Fort (the previous residence of the kings, but abandoned for 250 years) where we took a swift elephant ride (this time in a proper padded saddle box) up to the top of the hill and had a couple of hours of exploration.

This afternoon has been quieter. With another nice pool at the hotel, we’ve taken time to recover from the heat and early starts. Tommorow, Agra.

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So things are going much better than we expected. Delhi usually starts travellers off on a torrent of horror stories, but we’ve found a guide and we’re very happy.

We stayed for the last two nights near Connaught Place, central New Delhi and had the great luxury of an air con room (Lucy!). In the morning we were met by our driver (Mr Singh) and our (opinionated) guide.

First stop was Lakshminarayan Temple, a modern Hindu shrine, painted in traditional yellows and oranges and beautifully decorated in marbles. We found this was a reoccuring theme around the city. The next stop was India’s largest mosque which again was sandstone and marble construction. It’s hard to express how impressive this building is but in the 37 degree heat of Delhi in the morning and with a pale yellow sky the whole thing is stunning.

Next up was a drive past the Red Fort and bustling Chadni Chowk (like Delhi’s Oxford Street) before heading to Humyans Tomb. This incredibley impressive (awesome in the true sense of the word) was the inspiration for the later built Taj Mahal. Being ‘off-season’, we have had most of these attractions to ourselves. Next were the cremation sites of the major players in India’s history, starting with Ghandi and Nerhu in a beautiful green park. After a drive up to the very colonial presidential palace (past all the shining white ‘Ambassador’ cars which are still diplomatic vehicles) and quick view of India Gate and the administrative district we took lunch before getting back on with the tour.

In the afternoon we visited Qutub Minar, a massive hindi-muslim co-operation in the form of a huge tower that is nearly 1000 years old and set in amongst various other ruins from the time of the Afgan occupation. Finally we were taken around the obligatory Indian export bazaar, but after taking the free drinks and deciding there was nothing we wanted, we ended back at the hotel.

This morning was an early start for the six hour drive out to Pushkar. This holy town is home to the largest camel fair in the world (5000 camels descend upon the towjn in November to be traded) as well as the only Hindu temple in the world dedicated to Lord Brahma. Our hotel has more than exceeded expecations we have a pool, and whatsmore, it’s a pool with a bar in it (shame the town is dry and vegetarian due to the religious significance).

We took an afternoon walk around the holy lake edge and recieved a ritual (expensive) blessing from a holy man. We were warned about this in Lonely Planet, but they really don’t give you much option to refuse. After a little bit of shopping we’re now back at the hotel and contending with power blackouts every five minutes.

This is not a bother to me as the food here (in India) is exquisite and it’s dinner time. I really am loving it all.

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