Disclaimer: Due to the number of comments that have been received it has been felt necessary to clarify that this trip is in no way based on "The Long Way Round" which the authors of the trip were not aware and nor was it first broadcast of at the time at which this trip was drunkenly conceived. The authors of this trip would like to distinguish their intended trip from the journey undertaken in "The Long Way Round" in that unlike Charlie Borman and Ewan McGregor they are not experienced riders (they have both only been riding motorbikes for just over one year), they are not receiving sponsorship and they will not have a support crew with them at any point on the journey. Just to avoid any further confusion it has been thought that it would be helpful to point out that Tom Horovitch and Peter Caley are both fictional characters and are not famous film stars.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Merry Christmas from Palolem Beach, Goa, India - 14,791 miles from London

Christmas Photo

Ho, ho, ho! A very happy Christmas to one and all! This cheesy photo was taken in June, many thousands of miles back. The Santa Claus pictured is not one of the fakes that you see in shopping centres in the UK, but the real guy. He lives in Rovaniemi, Finland on the dividing line of the Arctic Circle. He seemed like a jolly nice chap.

Entry by Tom (photo by one of Santa's little helpers)

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Palolem Beach, Goa, India - 14,791 miles from London

The beach at Palolem - Web-site quality photo
Palolem Beach in Goa - our home for the next couple of months
After five months on the road, having ridden through sixteen countries and covered over fourteen and a half thousand miles we can finally give ourselves a bit of a rest as we have reached Goa and are planning on staying here for both Christmas and New Year until sometime in January.Since we left Agra we have been back to Delhi to pick up the bikes and from there we have ridden south stopping at Jaipur, the tiger park at Ranthambore, the abandoned city of Mandu, the ancient Buddhist caves at Ajanta, Aurangabad famous for it's "Baby Taj Mahal" and a handful of other places en route with little in the way of mainstream tourist sites but with sufficient numbers of friendly local people and glimpses of normal Indian life to have made the journey memorable, albeit, given the distance we have travelled, very tiring.

The Hawa Mahal at Jaipur - Web-site quality photo
The outside of the The Hawa Mahal at Jaipur - built to allow aristocratic women the chance to stare at the masses and the every day life of Jaipur without being seen themselves
Ranthambore Tiger Park - Web-site quality photo
One of the three tigers we saw at Ranthambore Tiger Park

The ruins at Mandu - Web-site quality photo
The peaceful long abandoned ruins at Mandu

Tom meets people in Dhule - Web-site quality photo
Tom forcibly meeting and greeting locals at Dhule after we msitakenly made a brief stop in the centre of town - both Tom and the bikes are in the photo if you look hard enough!

The interior of one of the caves at Ajanta - Web-site quality photo
A picture (completely failing to do justice) of the amazing cave sculptures inside the caves at Ajanta

The Baby Taj Mahal in Aurangabad - Web-site quality photo
The Baby Taj Mahal at Aurangabad

Web-site quality photo

Peter on the final stretch of road into Goa - Web-site quality photo
Tom and Peter on the final, unexpectedly incredibly difficult to ride, stretch of road before we arrived in Goa

Written by Peter