With our passports still in our hands after visiting the Indian Embassy, we realised we could apply for our Myanmar visa while the first stage of the Indian one was being processed. Handy!
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We thought Turkey's greatest drawcard (other than Istanbul) deserved its own destinations page. We have a bunch of practical advice, too, if you want to plan your next trip there. We hiked through valleys, explored dusty paths, and got lost countless times.
And even made friends with a fluffy little thing called Ôrdek. Click here to read all about it. Update January 2018: Please read the last comments for detail. The border crossing for foreigners is now only accessible with a complete tour booked for Myanmar. If you have any updated information, please let us know as this page gets quite a lot of traffic, so we can let everyone know! Update January 2017: 1. Dimapur (Nagaland) to Imphal (Manipur) transport can be difficult to organise. Shared cars for 1500IDR may be your only option as government buses have had political trouble. 2. Myanmar government changed border requirement that you need to pay for a two-way crossing, even if you only cross once. This costs USD160 With India committed to developing tourism in the North-Eastern states (hello living tree-root bridges and hill-tribes) and Myanmar looking to uphold its cooly-undiscovered-but-totally-discovered image for at least another few years, it’s natural that the passage between the two is going to develop rapidly.
Follow the official websites and guidebooks and you’d be left scratching your head wondering how to cross between the two by land. If it wasn’t for travel bloggers out there, we’d think it wasn’t possible. It is possible. And it’s easy with a bit of planning. Most articles we’ve read have shown how to cross from Myanmar into India, so we’re adding to the pool of knowledge out there with our experience doing it from India to Myanmar. And we did it on a Sunday - so there were a few extra steps. Click 'Read More' below to find out how! It was around five hours into our bus ride to Mawlamyine in the east of Myanmar/Burma that we glanced at our watches and noticed the date. We left London 9 months ago.
We’re still going strong. We cross into Thailand in a few days time, then it’s a hop south through Malaysia, skip along a few Indonesian islands and a small jump to the top of Australia. We have a Facebook page which we’ll push a lot more content to when we cross the border (and finally have some decent Internet). Thanks for following our journey so far. Pete & Em As soon as we arrived in Cherrapunjee, we took one glance at each other and knew we were drastically un-researched for this unique part of the world. Not that it was any fault of our own. We’d read the guide books (one paragraph…thanks Lonely Planet), Googled various blogs and conversations on Trip Advisor, and from what we could tell this was a 3 night destination before we headed off to explore the rest of the North Eastern States of India.
Oh how wrong we were. After a few quick conversations with the handful of starry-eyed and blissfully chilled out backpackers that were either on their way to or from the unique village of Nongriat, we quickly realised that we had stumbled across a place that might just be one of the most special places we’ve discovered in our eight months of travel so far. 3 nights here was never going to be enough. We didn’t even know the village of Nongriat existed, let along the fact that you can stay in one of the two family owned guest houses, surrounded by lush jungle forest and eating the divine simple and fresh local cuisine. So whats the deal with this place called Cherrapunjee, where is it and why have I never heard of it? And what the heck is a living tree root bridge I hear you ask? Well, here are a few answers to these questions you may be thinking, and most importantly, how you get there so you can discover this fairy tale world / jungle book fantasy all for yourself. Merry Christmas everyone from Imphal, Manipur; in the far Eastern states of India. We may not have seen another tourist in days, alcohol may be banned, but we've treated ourselves to a fancy hotel with wifi and hot water, and we can catch up with our family and friends across the world.
Happy holidays to everyone, Love Emma and Pete xxoo What do we like to do on Christmas Day? Make the most of the wifi in our fancy hotel and update our blog!
If you've opened all the presents and are too stuffed full of turkey to move, grab another drink and click here to have a read of what we got up to on the beautiful coastline of Eastern Turkey. (And if you want some more, check out the video of the area on the videos tab). Merry Christmas! Emma and Pete xo We had a blast in Turkey - so much so that we decided to break it into a few parts.
First up is Istanbul. We drank lots of tea, looked at stuff, and got tear gassed. Kelvin even came to visit us (unrelated to the tear-gassing). Click the image - or here - to read all about it. And if sitting back and watching a video is more your thing, check the videos page for our Turkey extravaganza. It even has a bit of Greece in it too. We've just uploaded our latest monthly video, Chapter 5: Georgia. We squeezed a lot into the two weeks we spent in this beautiful country, even though Pete had a very sprained foot for most of the time. Cant walk? The solution...horses!
Click here to check it out. We're just back from 18 days trekking through the stunning Everest region. Read all about our daily adventures and see some of our favourite photos, under the Destinations tab.
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EMMA & PETEWe're just two Aussie's who met in London, married in Prague and travelled overland back to Australia.
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