HERE AND THERE

We've headed about 80 km north of Bangkok for the day, to the historic city of Ayutthaya, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (I do love visiting UWHSs.) Ayutthaya flourished for about 400 years, between the 1300s and 1700s, as the capital city of the Siamese Kingdom. It was built on an island of rivers, far away enough from the sea to prevent warships from other countries reaching it easily. At that time Ayutthaya was one of the world’s biggest cities, with sophisticated technolog

One member of our travelling party (not me) is a keen market-goer so today it's train market and floating market day! Okay, I have to admit, they're fun destinations. We start at Ban Laem Railway Station, about 80 km south of Bangkok, in a little village where even the dogs take it easy. We travel about an hour by train to the Mae Klong Railway Market. The market stalls are laid out next to the rail lines. When a train enters the market, stall-holders have to pack up their go

It's not the first time we've been to Bangkok.* Still, how much could have changed in 30 years? We're staying in a hotel on the Chao Praya River. It's 33 °C and humid, which makes a welcome change from Melbourne's chilly winter. (Although we have all come down with congestion, runny noses and coughs in response to our endless battle between humidity and air-conditioners.) About 6 million people live in the city of Bangkok, the largest city by far in Thailand (population 71 mi

Join us for a walk through Varanasi at 6 o'clock in the morning. Why are we up so early? We're heading to the river, along with all these people, before sunrise. At the start of the day, people bathe in the river and/or pay their respects to the gods. It's hard to imagine this city shutting down, ever. Varanasi is India's most ancient city, and one of the world's oldest continually inhabited cities. Its ancient name was Kashi; the Mughals and the British called it Benares. Th

And we're back in the big smoke: Kolkata — called Calcutta until 2001 . Kolkata has a population of 4.5 million, the fourth biggest megacity in India. The Port of Kolkata is India's oldest operating port. Our ship is moored in the section from where indentured labourers set off in the 1800s to work in foreign lands: the Caribbean, South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji. Today this part of the port has been sold to developers who are building a high-end club and dining precinct, but it

Early mornings on the river are indescribably peaceful and serene. The feathery silvery heads of the elephant grass blend into the mist and the borders between sky and water are indistinct. The colours are simply sublime. We’re in the town that was once the centre of the Asian universe – seriously. Murshidabad was the old capital of Bengal, the largest and richest state of India, and the wealthiest town in Asia. Murshidabad's peak was from 1725 to 1765. But the British East I

Still heading upstream on the Ganga. We arrived in Matiari early in the morning. We’d been woken up by the sound of metal being beaten. Matiari is a village known for its metalwork, brasswork in particular. Many years ago, men from this village were employed in Kolkata in the metalwork industry. When they became too old to work, they returned to their village where they passed down their skills. Kolkata merchants now outsource metalwork to the artisans in Matiari. Scrap metal

This is a misleading title, I admit — b ecause the Ganges is a very very long river, and we're only seeing a relatively small part of it. But anyhoo. We flew from Jaipur to Kolkata, and we're now in West Bengal. From here, we boarded a ship in Kolkata and will travel up the river for seven days, stopping in various towns and villages. We'll be spending some time in Kolkata after our river trip, so more on Kolkata in a later post. The Ganges Voyager II is a river ship on the

We're back in the state of Rajasthan, but this time in the capital and largest city of Jaipur — population 3 million. Jaipur is the third...

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