At the moment I am sitting in the Farang Bar in Chumphon, waiting for my train which should bring me over the border to Malaysia.

I plan to be in Singapore in 2 weeks. There I will hopefully meet my friends Kai and Emilia.

On the way I plan to stop in Georgetown (Penang), Kuala Lumpur, and Malacca (Melaka). You can always check where I am and what my ever changing plans are on the Map.

On my last day in Nepal I picked up a book titled Mistress of Spices of the writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I remember that I picked up an advertisement flyer at an Indian superstore in Zurich for the movie with the same title and with Aishwarya Rai as heroine. Back then it failed to catch my interest.

At that time I did not knew that the movie script is written after a book. When I saw this book in a second hand bookstore, it made me curious and I bought it. I did not regret it, it is one of the best books I have read during the last seven months of traveling.

It is a story about witchcraft and magic, about tragedies and loss, about a secret order of sorcerers who try to help with ailments and problems of people in disguise of old shopkeeper women in spiceshops, and finally about the longing for forbidden love.

I am to lazy to write a real review, if you are interested, you can always ask google or read the reviews on amazon

After a couple of days in Bangkok (crazy place, and quite “dangerous” for single male travelers…) I moved on directly to the island Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand.

Here I started scuba diving again, after 7 years of forced abstinence because of insufficient funds. It feels absolutely phantastic to be under water again! So far I went diving every day (there is not much else to do here anyway besides diving and partying, and I am not that much into the latter). Tomorrow I will complete my 50th dive, would be nice to spot a whaleshark on that occasion to celebrate my scuba diving career

Now I really regret that I have only calculated one month for Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, I would love to stay longer and check the diving sites next to peninsular Malaysia at Pulau Perhentian or to make a trip to Borneo. I checked if I can change the flight date, but it is not possible with these ultra lowcost tickets. The only way to stay longer would be to let the tickets expire and book a new one way ticket. Lets see what I feel like when I reach Singapore…

btw that is me in the picture

At the moment I am in Kolkata (Calcutta). It is only a short stopover (something like 50h) on my way to Bangkok.

Originally I planned to take a bus from the Royal Chitwan National Park and travel east along the Mahendra Highway and cross the border to India in Kararbhitta, which is near Darjeeling. I dream of visiting Darjeeling since years and thought I could stop there for a day or two on my way to Kolkata. But it seems that there was a strike going on in Nepal with road blocks on the Mahendra Highway. I can not afford to be delayed for a couple of days, otherwise I would miss my flight. So I decided to skip Darjeeling and instead stay some days longer in the national park, and then cross the border at Birganj/Raxaul and take the direct train to Kolkata. And there I am now, a bit exhausted and sweaty after a 19h trainride with 3.5h delay…

Maybe it is better that I did not see Darjeeling this time. Two days is not long enough for more than a glance. And I want to do some trekking in Sikkim in the near future, then I can also visit Darjeeling. Anyway my friend David would have been outraged if I visited Darjeeling without him

There are quite a few activities on offer for the tourists in and around the Royal Chitwan National Park. By far the most fun of all is for sure bathing with the elephants.

Every day before noon the mahouts (’elephant driver’) bring their elephants to the river to wash and scrub them. For a small tip you can join them, help them scrub, and frolic in the water together with the big grey. The elephants seem to enjoy it as much as the tourists do.

If you know some Hindi, you can even try to give “your” elephant commands like ‘ooper do’, and if you got it right he will splash you with water from his trunk

I had great fun and it was a good conclusion for my all to short Nepal adventure.