123RF
India is a vast and complicated land of many cultures, languages and traditions, so it can be hard to know where to start. Even for someone who has been there a few times, knowing where to start is difficult.
So here are some resources on India.

The Lonely Planet, love it or hate it, is a useful starting place and has loads of practical information such as highlights, costs and how to get around. It’s useful for planning an itinerary and getting estimates on how much it could cost and how long it’ll take. Remember, it’s not the Travel Bible, it’s just a very practical guide and it will serve you fine.

The website has many of the features you’ll find in their books. Useful for an overview of a place and practicalities, they also have the Thorn Tree, an active forum where you can post questions about India and are likely to get some answers.
Out of the main travel books it seems to be the most comprehensive website.

Rough Guides introduction to India at first glance appears to have little information but this is deceptive. Click on ‘explore India’ and you can read about what the states of India have to offer and once there you can find out more information about each state.
Rough Guides are well written and entertaining. They also provide a useful overview of the country.


Footprint produces some very good guides books but their website has only limited information on India and the forum is not active at the moment. Looks like they are catching up with Lonely Planet and The Rough Guide


Incredible India, the government’s tourist webpage, is an attractive website with lots of gorgeous photos. The information is divided in many ways, from types of holidays (adventure sports, well being, beaches, etc) to destinations. There’s a lot of practical information to. Some of the specific holiday options they highlight are probably the more expensive ones.

Definitely worth a look to get ideas on what to do in India.

The great thing about India is that English is widely spoken and written. Indians have provided some of the best reads in English over the last 100 years. If you want to read about Indian’s opinions on a range of subject, this is a comprehensive introduction to Indian Bloggers.


Indian Travel blog written by photojournalist Arun, the site contains beautiful photos and write ups on his trips around India. The photos really show India off to its best and can give a feel for destinations much better than just reading a guide book.

I’ve read ‘The age of Kali’, which delves deeper into stories of the present and the past. Many of the stories have a political and social view, which can shed some light on why things are as they are in India. Stories include political intrigue and corruption in India’s poorest state – Bihar, the status of women and include interviews with Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto as well as a host of other intriguing characters. The author is William Dalrymple.

Salman Rushie has written some wonderful books that capture the magic of the India, including Midnight Children and Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

Drive by Horn – India’s notoriously dangerous road

Drive by Horn
I’m kept awake by the driver’s sleepiness as we head towards Agra from Delhi, India. Darkness is all around as we speed down a fairly empty motorway. But this is no ordinary motorway. Unlit police barriers pop up unannounced causing the driver to sharply brake and swerve like a Formula One driver going through a schecane. Unlit trucks appear only as blacker blocks in a sea of darkness and unlit camels/horses cart provide extra dangers for a drive that’s more akin to a video game than well, a drive.

That just one of many memorable experiences I’ve survived on Indian roads but they do have incredibly grime statistics with over 100,000 deaths and 2,000,000 injuries every year according to this bbc video. This is an article featuring Harman Sidhu Singh, the man in the video who was disabled in a car crash and is now campaign for safer roads in India.

Judging from the article and the video, they’ve got a long way to go before things will get better. Beside education, better infrastructure and law enforce, another obstacle faced by Indians is the sheer diversity of vehicles on the road, which makes it more difficult to control.

I remember reading before that cars only accounted for 5% of the traffic on the roads. The rest being made up of an amazing assortment of vehicles and animals, including big colorful trucks, rickshaws, tempos (a big rat like vehicle), camels, jeeps, elephants, horses, donkeys and cows, which are allowed to do their own thing in the roads.

Like in the article, I’ve also heard about the three ‘Gs’ you need to drive in India from a man who worked at a hotel in Ahmedabad. He said it like this ‘First you need good brakes, second you need a good horn and most importantly you need good luck.’ All said with a laugh but roads in India are not a laugh.

Besides wondering about the spectacule of animals on the road and seeing which rickshaw can carry the most people, roads in India are stressful and it’s usually a relief when the journey is over. Unfortunately, the statistics seem to bear this out too.

Do you have any experiences of Indian roads? What do you think of driving in India?

urban road scene

Incredible India - a favourite

I've been asked many times what is my favourite country and I've never been able to answer it. I can answer that Thailand has my favourite food, Nepal has my favourite trek, the Philippines has my favourite beaches, Taiwan has my favourite people but for a whole country ..... I find it very difficult to answer.

Sometimes I answer 'India isn't my favourite country but it's the country I feel is the most interesting'.

Some of the highlights include

History going back thousands of years, a land full of myths and wonders, with countless examples of great temples, palaces, towers, rock art left all over the country. India is home to the Rajputs, warriors who sometimes went into battle to face certain death, whilst their women and children would commit mass suicide, Akbar, the greatest of all the Mughal emperors, who united much of today's India with wisdom, tolerance and political verve. Other heroes of history include Gandhi, Buddha and many more.

People is something India is not short off. There's also no shortage of diversity with the people. India is where Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhist and Sikhism originated and is also home to sizeable Muslim and Christian populations. Hinduism, the main religion, has something like 330 millions gods, with Shiva, Krishna and Vishnu being the main ones, and each of these gods have their own distinctive followers. On top of the main religions there are numerous ethnic minorities who add their own distinctive culture to the

Amazing geography, from the Himalayas in the north, the deserts of Rajasthan and Gujarat, the great Ganges Plain, the Deccan mountains to the lust green backwaters of Kerala.



Experiences - whether in a beach rave in Goa, a 36 hour train ride, a temple full of rats, India is generous in dishing out experiences, most are welcome though some are not. Besides experiences that happen when you travel, India is a great place for learning; spiritual, meditation, yoga, music, cooking.

India is not all spices and colours. It has numerous issues that will confront your comfort zone and don't expect your personal space to last long too either. Call it friendly, call it annoying, Indians will consisting be coming up to you, asking, begging, helping, conversing, advising, selling, conning or whatever that Indian's interest. Sometimes I've found it too much but other times it can be amazing too. And as for issues, India has too many of them. From dalits (outcastes), to Maoist insurgences, to governmental corruption, to religious conflicts, to riots, the lists grows the longer you know India. Yes, the papers in India are usually an interesting read.

I've been in India a few times and admittedly I was very happy leaving it after the first time I spent two and half months there. But India has a special power and continues to draw me back.

I want to revisit Kerala, relax on the backwaters and get hugged by Amma, the hugging guru.
I want to see the raw beauty of Kashmir.
I want to marvel the detail of erotic art at Khajuraho Temple.
I want to spend time in Mumbai and get to know the beat of this crazy, chaotic city.
I want to spot tigers.
I want to experience Sikkim.
I want to visit Hampi as everyone I've met who's been there, loves the place.
I want to go to the northeast, visits tribes, ride on the Darjeeling railway, drink Assam tea, trek, and get drench in Meghalaya, the world's wettest place.
I want to revisit Varanasi and spend time quietly reflecting there.
I want to walk the numerous treks in the Indian Himalayas.
I want to go Pondicherry and experience auroville and its living experiment on spiritual regeneration.


I'll probably never complete my want list but I definitely would love to go back to India one day.

Let me know what you think of India and what you think about the country

Calling all Asian Photographers

If you have a DSLR camera, a passion for photography and an appetite for learning then microstocks could be for you. Treat it as an experiment and the very least it will do for you is to broaden your photographic horizons.

Also you have an advantage being in Asia as you have easier access to Asian things than most Western based photographers. You can convert your travel, interests and things that surround you into a new source of income. A source of income that has no setup costs.

You have a choice of agencies to start with but some require that you qualify for photography status first before you can submit i.e. Shutterstock, Istockphotos and Stockxpert.

I’d suggest that you first try Dreamstime, Fotolia and 123RF because;
• You can summit photographs straight away.
• If your photographs get rejected, you can still submit more.
• You will learn from rejections and be in a better position to submit more photos.

You can build up a portfolio and also understand which photos are the most suitable to use to gain qualified status at Shutterstock, Istockphotos and Stockxpert.

Shutterstock is now considered to be the number one in microstocks. It certainly is in my experience but it’s also notoriously hard to get accepted. It took me three goes and that knocked my confidence. After my first rejection, I didn’t try microstocks for another year and Shutterstock for another 15 months.

Here are some tips for submitting to Shutterstock.

Only submit photos that were taken at ISO 100 or less.
Submitted photos should be different from one another.
Use the Shutterstock forum to help. They have one specifically for critiquing new submitters.

And good luck. I’ve found that once you have been accepted by Shutterstock that they are fairly constant with what they accept and reject. It’s now my favourite site.

A similar approach with Stockxpert will get you accepted though I haven’t really summitted many more as I found their keyword requirements complicated.

Don’t ask me about Istockphotos; I’m still to be accepted there. They have an artistic qualification system where you submit three photos and they accept you depending on ‘artistic’ quality. I think if you have good stock photos of people then you’ll get accepted.


Submit Photos to Shutterstock and make $$$!









Click Here for link to Fotolia

Diving Options in Asia

photographer Krishna creations,Dreamstime








Here are some resources on diving in Asia. I'm no expert as I've only been on an assisted dive in Bohol, Philippines but after that experience I want to get my licence. Also, with some dismal reports that coral reefs will be a thing of the past in 50 years, now is the time to go.

Here are some great reads and beautiful pictures.

Cheap Dives in Asia and many more articles Divehappy

Lots of info on diving, seems to be focused on Thailand but has stuff about other Asian destinations. Finsonline Magazine

Top destinations in Asia, also has a top 100 dive sites for the world - if you're interested. Scubatravel

This site has a very active forum discussing 'Dive Questions' relating to Asia. Dive Forum on Asia

Learning to Dive in Taiwan. I've snorkeled in Green Island, Lanyu and Kending, Green Island was surprising good. I saw loads of fish and pretty good corals. Apparently for diving Lanyu is as good as Green Island. Taiwan Dive

Mini-Retirement - Learn Thai the Natural Way

Sick of learning languages the traditional way, perhaps it's time to try something completely different. Automatic Language Growth (ALG), is a Thai (Chinese and Japanese also) language course provided by A.U.A.

There are no tests, no homework, an open schedule so you can go when you want (provided the school is open), no books, no exercise, grammar isn't a focus and you are actively encouraged not to speak, and yet, the programme produces many competent students who have near perfect accents. For people, who complete the course (over 1,000 hours), it is said that they have a much better grasp of the language than other language courses.

Instead of the usual language classes, there are some striking differences with AUA's approach. One of the most, is that two native speakers provide the class. In this way, students get to hear realistic conversations (natural language)that are made comprehensible to the students, via visual aids, objects, actions, props, body language etc. Reading about people who have attended the course, they claim to have understood fairly complex stories with almost minimal Thai.

The course was designed by Mr Brown, who based the course approach on how children learned. He didn't develop this method until fairly late in his life. He spent approximately 30 years teaching the traditional way. He was a great believer in practice, practice, practice but after a disastrous review of his course in an American University, he completely revamped his approach. Once he got the ALG course running he knew that the model is much better than the traditional approach.

The basic tenets of the course are;

-- Listening and observation are the primarily tools for learning a language.
-- Speaking too early will damage your long term ability in that language (by this, they mean approx 700 hours for a Western studying Thai)
-- Acquisition and guessing at the meaning of words, are a better model of picking up a language than vocabulary lists and practicing are.
-- Listen first, speak, read and write much later.

Unfortunately, this approach seems to be unique to Thailand. I haven't tried the course but I'd love to. it might not be to everyone's taste (as some people want to speak straight away) but it sounds like the most effective approach so far developed.

To find out more about the course AUA Homepage

Cheap Air Flights Asia

Accustomed to cheap flights in Europe, I was initially disappointed when I moved to Asia in 2005. Taipei is a destination rather than a hub of cheap flights in Asia. It wasn't until 2007 that I discovered cheap flights in Asia and that was primarily through 'attitude travel' website.

Attitude Travel - Asia

They list airlines that are considered cheap. I've used some of the Indian airlines they've listed. Whilst not dirty cheap, they do provide an affordable alternative to a one or two day train ride. For many of the tickets in India the added-on costs were more than the ticket cost, hence no dirty cheap deals.

Since then, the list of airlines have increased alot. Airasia seems to be the leading cheap airline in Asia now, oftering numerous flights from Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok to destinations in SE Asia, China, India and even London.

For expats and travellers, these airline open up huge possibilities for travel in Asia, especially SE Asia. They have opened up much of Indonesia

Lion Air (Indonesian Airline) flies from Kuala Lumpur and Singapore to many destinations in Indonesia. Though I found their website frustrating to use and therefore haven't been able to provide any details on prices.

Some prices from Airasia (food is extra but can be prebooked at a 20% discount) click here to go to Airasia

Kuala Lumpur to Manado (Sulawesi) $105 return (I think with tax included) for flying in a month time.

KL to Guilin (China) $268 return (in one month time)

KL to Hong Kong $265 return (in one month time)

KL to Kochi (Kerela, India) $160 return (in one month time)


I get the feeling that most cheap airlines are primarily regionally focused i.e. SE Asia, the Indian Subcontinent. Attitude Travel said that Airasia has opened several SE Asia to India routes but that others have done this before and failed. I remembered trying to get a NOK flight back from India to Thailand but that route had already closed down.

I will do more investigating into cheap flights in Asia. There's plenty of choice and with time and patience these airlines will open up new distinations for you.