... and counting.
Vaccination
on Thursday, 9 February 2012
Had jabs today for Hep A and B, Tetanus/Diphteria/Polio and Typhoid. Some boosters in March still required.
India
on Friday, 3 February 2012
One of the challenges of this trip is ... India, Delhi in fact. As there are no direct flights to Kathmandu from London, we booked flights changing in Delhi. We were pleased to hear that Delhi has a brand new international terminal that has pretty good reviews. Little did we know that one small detail still seems to escape them: transit. It looks like India doesn't "do" transit. The concept seems to elude them completely and the net result is that despite the fact that we have only two hours between flights it is impossible for them to transfer the checked in luggage all the way through to Nepal from Heathrow. Not to worry, we'll pick our own bags and check them in again in Delhi. That of course means we need to pass through immigration and that means we need a visa. It turns out that they can't "do" visas either. A transit visa seems the most logical thing to get if one might want to transit an airport but in India a transit visa is only valid for 15 days from the day it's issued, so won't work for both the return trip as we are away for 18 days. Besides, the processing time for postal applications is 10 to 15 days and the general advice is not to make any travel arrangements before a visa is issued. Great advice Sherlock!
So we have to get a tourist visa. Besides the £50 per person this will cost when adding all charges together (the visa is £30 plus £10.20 charged by the subcontractor appointed by the Indian High Commission, then there is the additional £2 consular fee, courier fee etc, etc, etc.) the visa rules are far too complicated and the defintions a tad on the ambigous side.
To cut a long story short, finally filled in all the online applications - we'll send them off in a week or so.
One thing is for sure, India managed to slide to the bottom of the "bucket list" if not off it completely!
Geotagging photos
I've been interested in Geotagging for a while; I even considered a GPS attachment for the Nikon SLR, but the reviews are all pretty poor. I have, in the past, done this with moderate success, using GPSED on my phone but it was limited to photos uploaded to the net.
With the announcement of Lightroom 4 - currently available as free beta - and it's map module I gave up on the GPS module and decided to persevere with the GPS logging and retrospective geotagging using Lightroom or Geosetter, both with the ability to write into the EXIF data area of the RAW files. As GPSED used to fail regularly on symbian phones, after a bit of research, found a great little app for the iPhone, it's called Trails from www.everytrail.com, the logs in GPX format load well into Lightroom and the app reduces the power consumption of the iPhone to the minimum.
This brings us to the problem of power while trekking. While it seems possible to charge phones at the lodges along the trek, there might be a better alternative. After reading too many dissapointing reviews about a miriad of solar chargers I decided finally to go with this: http://thesunleaf.com/
Watch this space.
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