You might not know it yet if you depend completely on this blog to keep up with my whereabouts, because I abandoned the blog a couple of months ago:
I have been home from my big journey since November.
I have been away for slightly more than a year. I spent about 8 months in India, and during the rest of the time I traveled in different parts of Asia
(in chronological order): Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey
You can see the full route on my travel map.

The trip was a fantastic experience with uncountable memories I am fond of. I will write down here on the blog various bits and anecdotes from the journey. And of course you will find loads of pictures in the gallery.

Now you might wonder if I made a typo in the title and it should correctly read “home again”. But no, I really mean it, in a couple of hours I will board a flight to Egypt in company with my brother. For the first week we booked a diving package in El-Quseir. After that, my brother will return home. My flight is on the 8th of January from Cairo, that leaves me with 10 days for traveling.

This time it will be kind of a new experience, because it is the first time I go traveling practically unprepared, quite unlike the last trip where I even took Hindi lessons for a year before starting. Now all preparation I did was ordering the lonely planet guide and a phrase book on amazon. So I have one weeks time during the stay in the diving resort to plan the rest of my trip.

Well then, I have to get a couple of hours sleep, have to catch the first train to the airport in the morning. Wish you happy Christmas and cya next year!

The 3 days in Singapore were my last stop of my Southeast Asia trip. I went there to visit my friends Kay and Emilia and I did not expect the city itself to be very interesting after all I have heard from other people. Accommodation is quite expensive, so I was happy that I could stay in Kay’s appartement. Unfortunately my friends were rather busy at that time, so I had to spend the daytime alone. But Singapore proved to have to have easily enough to offer to keep one entertained for much longer than a few days.
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But the service quality varies massively between different places. In most cities the connection has about the same bandwidth as the good old analog 56k modem, which is tolerable for email and lightweight web browsing (the technology of the network would allow 144kB/s under ideal conditions). But in some places the Reliance network seems to be helplessly congested.

I am since about 3 weeks in Varanasi, and unfortunately this is one place where the NetConnect service quality is intolerable. While I can get at times an acceptable connection in the morning, after the early afternoon becomes absolutely unusable:

what else can I say besides *AAAARGH*

Spotted inside the main entrance of Masjid Sultan (mosque) in Singapore.

What looks so much like an ATM , is in fact a machine to give donations to the masjid. I assume the money gets transferred directly from your banking account to the account of the masjid. And you get immediately a printed recipe which you can use for claiming income tax deductions.

How innovative, they should introduce such machines in our churches!

I found bills like this one sticked all over Melaka, Malaysia: Public Talk: Will Israel attack Iran?. I was a bit shocked by that title because the idea that Israel would do something like that seems to me to be quite absurd. First I wondered if the Malays were radical Muslims because the idea of Israel attacking seemed to be quite popular. But then I realized that I might be about to succumb to a common prejudices about Islam, about Muslims being aggressive and bloodthirsty, wanting to annihilate Israel and ultimately all the infidels. I don’t really now much about Islam in Malaysia, it could as well be of the moderate type. And I did not attend that talk, so as much as I know it could even have been more pro-Israel than it seems from the title…

Does anyone know some good articles summarizing the relation of Malaysia and Israel?

“Malaysia, truly Asia” is a slogan of Malaysia Tourism. In my opinion this claim is stupid. Of course Malaysia is Asian by definition, after all it is part of Asia. But in my opinion the slogan gives the impression, that Malaysia is somehow more Asian than other Asian countries. I don’t see how that would be. From what I have seen it is one of the more modern and westernized countries, so one could even argue that it would be less Asian (though this statement would be equally stupid). But then I have spent there only a short time (not even two weeks) and have only seen cities, so I have of course only a one sided view of the country…

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Malaysia
- Kuala Lumpur
- Melaka (Malacca)

Singapore

India
- Kolkata
- Varanasi

In the next couple of days I will write some blog posts about my journey in these places.

Yesterday I witnessed the arrival of the monsoon for the second time in the last fortnight, this time in Varanasi (aka Banaras|Kashi).

I was walking in a small lane, half way from my guesthouse to my tabla teacher, when I had to stop to take some pictures of the incoming clouds. You can see the result on the right. Shortly after that shot it started to pour down like crazy and despite my umbrella I got soaked from head to toe within seconds, the contents of my wallet and my travel notes suffered the most. Within minutes the lanes were transformed into torrents. Luckily my camera did survive, but I did not dare to take pictures during the downpour.
Today I saw a picture in the morning paper taken at the Dasaswamedh Ghat (also called Main Ghat). It showing massive amounts of water rushing down the steps of the ghat. It looks incredible.

When I was sitting there soaked to the skin, I thought at least the lanes will be clean afterwards. But it did not stay like that for long. Just a few hours after the rains stopped, the lane looked again like a garbage dump. This is one of the things in India I will never be able to understand, how can one do this to ones own living space?

found in the toilet of the Raggae Bar, Kuala Lumpur

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.