Water in the Desert

I've been so busy telling you about my adventures in Tibet and Nepal that I didn't have time to tell you about my trip to Rajastan.  

Rajastan is in the west of India and I went there in September.  It's normally a very dry place - a desert.  I saw lots of camels walking along the road.

There was lots of water in some parts of Rajastan though.  I went to a town called Udaipur, which is next to a beautiful lake, and I took a cable car up to this viewpoint.  (I would have walked, but it's a bit too hot to walk in India when you're a stuffed traveller with fur, like me.)

I also saw a massive waterfall and quite a lot of trees.  I was surprised because you don't normally find big waterfalls in very dry areas.

Adam, Robin and Grace often see waterfalls, like Linton Falls, because the UK is quite a wet country.  It doesn't rain as much in India though.  The only time when it rains a lot is in the summer - mostly in July and August.  I visited Rajastan a few weeks after the wet season so there was still quite a lot of water.  If I had visited later in the year, there might not have been so much left.

There were lots of other interesting things to see in Rajastan but I'll tell you about them in my next blog post.  I hope you're still following my travels?  I'd like to know which bits you enjoyed the most when I get back!

The Other Side Of Everest

I've been looking at some very big mountains again! I told you that I'd seen Mount Everest from Tibet.  Now I've decided it's time to have a look at the world's highest mountain from Nepal (as Everest is in both countries).  First I had to go on a long trek to get there.

I started in the Rolwaling Valley where people were growing lots of millet in the fields.  It was very pretty. 

As I got higher up the valley, the weather got colder.  I camped quite near the beautiful lake in the photo below.  All of the water at the campsite was frozen and I needed something to drink.  I had to cook pans of snow on the camp stove to turn them into water.

It took a long time because even if you cook a big pan of snow, you only get a small amount of water.  This is because most of the snow is actually air and it disappears when you melt it.  Robin, Grace and Adam could try this on the cooker at home (with mum and dad, of course) using ice from the freezer.

After I left the lake, I started climbing onto a glacier.  Glaciers are made of ice all the time.  This is different from patches of snow which melt for part of the year.

It was hard work walking across the glacier because there are lots of big holes in it called crevasses and I didn't want to fall in!  There were also lots of rocks to climb over.

I spent three days on the glacier, camping on the ice every night.  It was very cold and a bit scary!

Eventually I crossed a big mountain pass where I got an awesome view of Mount Everest.  I could see lots of other big mountains as well.

Here's another view of Everest (on the left) and Lhotse (on the right).  Lhotse is the fourth tallest mountain in the world.

On my way back to the village at the end of my trek I met lots of men carrying big pieces of wood on their backs.  They were planning to build a hotel near the Everest viewpoint.  There isn't a road to the viewpoint though so they had to carry all of the building materials on their backs.  It looked like very hard work!

I had a very exciting time looking at Everest from both sides (Tibet and Nepal) but I think it's time to say goodbye to the mountains now.  I've seen a lot of snow in the last few months. Sometimes even stuffed travellers who are wearing fur get cold!

Next time you hear from me, I hope I will be somewhere warmer!

The Top of the World!

I've been to see Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world!  It's 8,848m high, which is over eighty-eight thousand times taller than a stuffed traveller like me!  (I haven't actually measured myself recently but I think I'm about ten centimetres tall.)

I was so excited to see Mount Everest that I thought I'd take a few photos to prove that I've been there.

There were lots of Buddhist prayer flags in front of the mountain, just like in the mountains in Nepal.  Mount Everest is in both Tibet and Nepal - it's on the border.

Did you know that in Tibetan, Mount Everest is called Chomolungma?

I'm not sure my last photo showed how enormous Mount Everest is so here's another one.

In Nepal, you have to walk for days and days to get to Mount Everest but in Tibet there is a road to the viewpoint so I went there in a minibus.  I took my photo when I was 5,200m above sea level, which isn't quite as high as my record (6,000m high in Argentina) but it's still pretty high.  It was quite chilly!

After I left Everest, we drove across the border into Nepal, where I went to see some more Buddhist monuments like this one.

I was excited to be back in Nepal.  It's very interesting to visit new places but it's also nice to go back to places you already know.  I'm starting to feel quite at home in Nepal!

I expect I'll feel even more at home when I go back to Birmingham to see Adam, Robin and Grace in a few months time!

The Most Amazing Monasteries Ever?

Hi.  How do you like my Potala Palace selfie?

The Potala Palace is in Lhasa, the main city in Tibet.  It's a very beautiful building, all in white, red and gold.  Here's a close-up picture.

The Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibet, used to spend a lot of his time here but he lives in India now.   

China rules Tibet but lots of people in Tibet want to be separate from China, a bit like lots of people in Scotland wanted to be separate from England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  In Scotland they had a referendum, so everyone voted to say whether they wanted Scotland to be a separate country or not.  There isn't going to be a referendum in Tibet though; it's going to stay a part of China.

I went inside the palace and there are lots of gold statues of the Buddha (people in Tibet are mostly Buddhist, a bit like in some parts of Nepal).  There are also lots of monasteries in Tibet.  They are some of the most amazing buildings I have visited on my travels.  I have never seen so many gold statues before!

When I went to visit a monastery, the monks were learning about Buddhism.  They divided into pairs and one person asked questions while the other person had to answer.  I imagine Robin, Adam and Grace do this at school sometimes except they might be testing each other on maths or history instead of Buddhism.

I was very impressed by Tibetan monasteries.  I saw lots of them in just a few days though so I think it might be time to go and look at some more mountains now!

Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ADAM, ROBIN AND GRACE!

I hope you have lots of fun and see lots of grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.

I'm having a lovely Christmas on the beach in Thailand.  It's over twenty-five degrees here and most people go in the sea every day.  I'm going to be eating rice and curry for my Christmas dinner!

I'll send you some pictures soon.  Until then, enjoy your Christmas!

Two Days on a Train

When I left Chengdu I went on a forty-four hour train ride.  That's a very long time on a train!

I slept for two nights on the train and ate some bread and eggs in the restaurant car.  Uncle Guy and Auntie Susan drank some Chinese wine called 'Great Wall Wine'.  It's named after the Great Wall of China (maybe you can find some pictures of the wall on Google images?).  Stuffed travellers don't drink wine though.

I actually had quite a comfortable train journey even though it was so long.   I wonder what is the longest time that Grace, Robin and Adam have spent on a train?

I saw lots of views from the window.  In some places I saw lots of skyscrapers being built because some Chinese cities are getting bigger very quickly.

Then the train started climbing very high to get to Lhasa in Tibet.  Tibet is in the mountains.  It was a bit like being back in Dolpo!  (I'm sorry my photos aren't very good but I had to take them through the train window.)

It must be very difficult to build a train line that goes more than 5,000m above the sea, where there is snow on the ground all the time.  I reckon there are some very good engineers in China to build such an enormous railway.

Maybe Adam, Robin and Grace will take me on the Severn Valley Railway when I get back to England.  The only question is: will the train ride feel a bit short after riding on trains in China?!

New and Old China

Hello again from Chengdu, home of the giant pandas!

Chengdu is an enormous city, much bigger than Birmingham.  It has 14 million people in it.  Wow.

Most of the city is very new.  I have never seen so many skyscrapers.  There was lots of traffic too but luckily but most people ride electric motorbikes so there wasn't too much noise.  (Electric motorbikes are much quieter than the normal ones.)  I wonder if Adam, Robin and Grace ever see electric cars and motorbikes in Birmingham?  

Uncle Guy and Auntie Susan also used the underground trains to travel around Chengdu, just like in London.  They found it quite difficult to buy their tickets though, because everything was written in a language called Mandarin.  Mandarin letters are different from English letters so we couldn't read them.  Luckily some very friendly people from Chengdu helped us.  

After seeing so many new buildings it was interesting to visit this Buddhist temple.

There are still some monks living here.  I think they spend most of their time praying but I was happy to see that they had a table tennis table so they can have a bit of fun in their time off!

You don't see as many old buildings in China as in Europe.  About fifty years ago, China's government decided that it wanted to concentrate on the future instead of the past, so it decided to destroy lots of old buildings.  This is very sad as lots of beautiful places in China were destroyed.  (The government has changed its mind now and it tries to protect beautiful old buildings.)

There are some other things that Robin, Adam and Grace might find different about life in China.  There are some websites that you aren't allowed to use.  For example, Robin, Adam and Grace wouldn't be able to hunt for minecraft videos using Google during their daily screen time because Google is banned in China.  (China's government thinks Google gives you information that's wrong sometimes.  I reckon it sometimes gives you bad information and sometimes it gives you good information, so you have to be rather clever and decide which is which.  What do Adam, Robin and Grace think?)

Anyway, that's why you didn't hear from me for a while - because I'm using Google Blogger to write my blog and it isn't allowed in China.  I hope you didn't mind too much!

I enjoyed my visit though.  China is an enormous country with lots more to see.  I'd like to come back for another trip some day!

Visiting the Pandas

Look what I've seen.  Giant pandas!

Last time you heard from me, I was in Dolpo in Nepal, and I was looking for snow leopards not pandas.  After I finished my trek, I flew to a place called Chengdu in the South of China.

Chengdu is one of the only places where you can still see giant pandas.  (There are giant pandas in zoos in other places, like Edinburgh, but not in the wild.)

Pandas are in danger of going extinct as there are not very many of them left.  I visited the panda conservation reserve in Chengdu to see them.  Pandas are specially protected in the reserve to try and help them survive.

I was very happy to see them up close!

Giant pandas eat bamboo and there aren't very many areas where lots of bamboo grows.  This is one of the reasons why pandas are in danger of extinction.

Also, the bamboo doesn't give them very much energy, so a lot of the pandas in the reserve were having a nice long rest.  (Adam, Robin and Grace eat lots of pasta, plus their five a day, so they have much more energy than the pandas!)

I also saw some red pandas.  They are much smaller than giant pandas but they are still very cute!

I've seen lots of amazing animals on my travels.  I enjoyed riding elephants and seeing monkeys in Sri Lanka, but seeing the pandas was just as good!

Harvest Time

When I was in Dolpo it was harvest time.  (It was October - unfortunately I've got very behind with my blog!)  

You see the different levels of ground behind me in the photo?  These are all fields of wheat and you only see them near the riverbank.  Further away from the river, the hillsides are far too steep to grow things.  (I know this because I climbed some of the slopes - well, actually, I mostly let Auntie Susan carry me!)

In Britain, the farmers use machines to thresh their wheat but in Dolpo the villagers do it by hand.  They use tools that look like big whips to thresh piles of wheat lying on the ground.  It looked like very hard work - probably as hard as playing football or running round the park or cycling to school.   The villagers need to make sure they finish before the snow arrives!



Dolpo is very pretty in the autumn sunshine but in a couple of months there will be so much snow that even Adam, Robin and Grace would not be able to go sledging there as they would get lost in a snowdrift!

It's quite difficult to be a farmer in Dolpo.  Apart from the snow, there is another problem: there isn't very much water.  You can see that the ground is quite bare except for some beautiful red flowers.

I don't think I'll become a farmer in Dolpo but I enjoyed visiting!

I've told you lots of things about Dolpo, in Nepal, so in my next blog post I'll be talking about a different country.  I wonder if Adam, Grace and Robin can guess which one?

The Snow Leopard and the Wolves

Hi.  I've been tracking snow leopards!

A snow leopard is like a giant white cat.  It's smaller than a tiger though.  (Perhaps you can find a picture on Google images.)  It's very rare, but there are more snow leopards in Dolpo, where I went trekking, than in most other places.

I saw this footprint and thought it might be a snow leopard.  It's definitely not a goat or a yak or a person or even a stuffed traveller, so what else could it be?  There aren't many other animals in Dolpo.

I saw lots of other footprints too, like these ones:

In fact, I followed the footprints all the way to our campsite!

Grace, Robin and Adam might think this is a bit funny but one of the best ways of identifying an animal is to look at its poo.  Cats leave 'scat' (long thin poo).  Horses and donkeys leave big round droppings.  Goats leave smaller round droppings.  And I think you know what human poo looks like!

We saw some long thin poo - a bit like a cat's poo but much bigger - so we thought it might have come from a snow leopard.

Unfortunately we didn't see the leopard but it would have been very exciting if we had!  We asked some local people and they said they had seen the leopard recently.

We heard some other big, scary wildlife nearby though.  When we were getting ready for bed we heard some wolves howling in the mountains.  It was very frightening.  They howled again in the night and then we heard them coming through our campsite.  I was desperately hoping that wolves don't like to eat stuffed travellers!

The wolves must have found a small yak or a goat to eat, because they soon went away.  I was very happy when we woke up the next morning and everybody was still safe and I couldn't hear the wolves howling anymore!

I wonder what is the scariest animal that Robin, Grace and Adam have ever met?

Dancing with Elephants!

Hi!  I've been looking back at my photos from Sri Lanka and I realised I have a video to share with you.  I was giving the elephants a bath when it was taken.  

They had their bath in the river and when I scrubbed their skin it felt like toothbrush bristles!  I think they enjoyed getting clean because, after bath time, look what happened ...

An Ocean on Top of the Mountains

Hi.  I've just been looking for fossils.  There are lots of fossils of spiral creatures called ammonites in the rocks in Dolpo.  Here's an ammonite that I found when I was on my trek.  (Do you see it?  It's next to my left hand.)

The funny thing is that ammonites are sea creatures.  So what are they doing on top of the mountains?Uncle Guy explained it to me and I'm going to try and explain it to Grace, Robin and Adam.  Here we go ...

Adam, Grace and Robin are very clever so they know where lots of places are, like France and Germany and Canada.  But I wonder if they know that countries move?!  This takes millions of years so Adam, Robin and Grace won't be able to see France or Germany or Canada moving around, but if they came back to earth in millions of years then all of the countries would be in different places!

Once upon a time, India was an island.  There was an ocean between India and the rest of Asia, called the Tethys Sea.  Then India moved north and crashed with Asia.  It was such a gigantic crash that the earth in between India and Asia got squashed and crumpled.  Have you ever seen a crumpled car bumper after a small crash?  Well it was a bit like that except millions of times bigger.  The squashed earth turned into the Himalayas, which are now the biggest mountains in the world.

Some parts of the Tethys Sea got pushed up onto the top of the mountains when India and Asia crashed.  This is why there are sea creatures like ammonites in the mountains.  

Here are some more fossils from the Tethys Sea.  Can you spot them?

Here are the mountains where I found the fossils.  I took this picture when I was over 4,000m above the sea, but the fossils were once on the sea floor.  Isn't that amazing?

Here's one last fossil picture.  Grace, Robin and Adam should be expert fossil spotters by now so they will probably spot the ammonites straight away.

A Monastery in a Cliff

Hello.  Sorry you haven't heard from me for a while.  I'm still in Nepal at the moment.  I promised to tell you some more about my long trek in Dolpo, so here goes...

In Dolpo, most people are Buddhists.  Buddhists often meditate, or sit in silence, to look for peace.  It's a bit like being Quaker in some ways, and Adam, Robin and Grace know all about Quakers in Birmingham.

Buddhists don't go to Meeting Houses though, they go to monasteries.  Can you spot the monastery in the cliff in this picture?

The white and brown statues in this picture are Buddhist monuments.  They are called Chortens and you see them at the entrance to villages in Dolpo.  The pile of stones next to them (Mani walls) have prayers written on them.  You have to walk to the left of the stones when you enter the village.  I wonder if there are any places where Adam, Robin and Grace always have to walk on the left?  Perhaps in their school corridors? Or when they get on the bus?

Dolpo is near Tibet, which is owned by China, and the people speak Tibetan not Nepali.  Here is the Tibetan flag flying outside a monastery.  It's very colourful, isn't it?

I've still got some more exciting things to tell you about Dolpo so you will be hearing from me again soon!

Eighteen Days of Trekking!

Hello!  Namaste!  (Namaste is the best way of saying 'hello' in Nepal.  I'll definitely be saying 'Namaste next time I see Robin, Grace and Adam so I hope they remember how to say it.  I'm sure they will as they are very clever.)

I'm sorry you haven't heard from me for such a long time but I've been trekking.  I went walking every day for eighteen days!  That's the same as going walking instead of going to school for three whole weeks.

I was in a place called Dolpo in Nepal which only has a few people living in it.  (I reckon there are more people in Bournville School - where Adam, Robin and Grace are busy being clever every day - than in some villages in Dolpo.)  

There were no computers where I could log on to the internet when I was in Dolpo, so I didn't get any screen time.  Oh dear.  I don't think Adam, Robin and Grace would like to go eighteen days without screen time!

The scenery in Dolpo was amazing though so I didn't mind.

The photo at the top of the page shows me at the top of the 'Kang La' which was over 5,000 metres high.  (This is more than half the height of the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest.)  While I was in Dolpo I went over three passes that were more than 5,000m high and there were amazing views from all of them.

I also passed a beautiful lake called Phoksundo Lake.  The people who live in Dolpo hang multi-coloured flags in special places, including the shore of the lake.  The flags are red, green, yellow, white and blue, as you can see in my photograph.  People in Dolpo think the flags give them special protection to stop anything bad from happening.

I slept in a tent every night during my trek.  It's hard work carrying a tent and sleeping bag and food for eighteen days.  (I wonder what Adam, Robin and Grace eat in eighteen days?  I wonder if they could fit all of their food in a rucksack?!)  We thought this would be quite hard so we took nine donkeys with us to help carry everything.

The donkeys had quite big packs at first but the luggage got lighter and lighter.  This is because we ate lots of food every day so the donkeys did not have to carry it anymore!

There are no roads and no cars in Dolpo, so animals carry most of the luggage.  Here is a picture of some yaks carrying wood to build houses in a local village.  Yaks are a bit like giant woolly cows!

I had an amazing time in Dolpo and I'm looking forward to telling you more about it soon!

Going trekking!

Hi.  I've been travelling around Rajastan in the west of India.

I've had a great time looking at big fortresses on the tops of hills and lots of beautiful palaces.  I've been such a busy stuffed traveller that I haven't had a chance to download my pictures yet.

I'm going trekking this afternoon and I won't have internet access for three weeks.  (Just imagine three weeks without screen time!)  You'll hear from me again in October.  I'll upload all my pictures from India then.

If you want to look on a map, I'm going to be in Dolpo in the west of Nepal while I'm trekking.

Bye for now!

Walking on Fire

I've just visited Kandy, which is one of the biggest cities in Sri Lanka.  It has a beautiful botanical garden.

I got a very good view from this tree.  It's lucky that none of the fruits fell down on my head!

In the evening I went to see a Sri Lankan dance.  There were lots of people playing drums and wearing masks like this one.  Can you see all the cobras (a type of snake) on the mask?  Lots of Sri Lankan masks are decorated with cobras and some are decorated with peacocks.  I preferred the peacock ones because I'm a bit scared of snakes!

At the end of the performance, some of the dancers swallowed flames.  I was worried about them getting burned but nobody was hurt.  It was very impressive.  The flames were definitely real as I could feel the heat from where I was sitting.

(You have to be a specially trained Sri Lankan dancer to be able to swallow flames without getting hurt.  Nobody else should try it!)

Some of the dancers also walked across burning coals!

It was a very interesting evening, but I don't think I'll take up flame-swallowing as a hobby.  I prefer travelling around and writing my blog for Adam, Robin and Grace.

I'm going back to India soon.  I'll blog again from there!  Bye for now.

Hillsides and Tea Plants

I've just visited a tea-making factory.  There are lots of tea plantations in Sri Lanka where they grow tea leaves.  (Did you know that tea comes from plants?)  At the tea plantations, they pick the leaves then dry them, put them in packets, and send them all around the world so that people who like drinking tea can buy them.

I wonder if Adam, Robin and Grace's mum and dad drank any tea this morning.  Perhaps it came from Sri Lanka?  (If you want to ask them, it might be useful to know that Sri Lankan tea is sometimes called Ceylon tea.  I'm sure Granny Kath has some in her kitchen!)

Here's a picture of me in a tea plantation!

Here's the tea factory.

The tea plantations in Sri Lanka are in the centre of the island, where it's quite hilly.  The weather is much cooler and wetter.  This makes it a bit like Birmingham!  In fact, there is a town in Sri Lanka called 'Little England' (Nuriwa Eliya in the local language) because it's a bit chilly and it rains quite often!

There are some nice walks and beautiful views in the hills.  This viewpoint is called 'World's End' because there's a big cliff and the path through the hills suddenly stops, so it feels like the end of the world.

There are also some big waterfalls in the hills.  This one is called Baker's Falls.

I enjoyed seeing the hills and the tea plantations but I'm looking forward to going back to the beach where it's sunny.  After all, I can get rained on as often as I like when I get back to Birmingham!