Welcome to my oriental pages! These pages are constantly under construction...

Journey to the East
My journal of an overland trip from Ireland to Nepal, and back (still not complete!)

Mysterious East
A holiday in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, March 2000

World Cup Diary
Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and Thailand, 2002

The Irish Soldier in India
19th and 20th century

Links
Links to sites of interest

My Home Page

About Journey to the East
I never made it to Samarkand, the legendary capital of Tamerlane in Uzbekhistan, but an unexpected sequence of events did take me across Europe to ancient Damascus, to spend a sleepless night beneath the walls of Jerusalem, re-trace much of Alexander's route through Iran and Afghanistan, barely avoid a lengthy jail sentence in India and almost get drowned in Nepal. The pull of the East. When I reached the borders of China, and they sensibly refused to let me in, I was forced to take stock. I had £47 sterling, and I was somewhere up in the Himalayas, and it was beginning to get cold, so I thought it time to start heading home. Back, westwards, on the insanely crowded Indian trains, with the smugglers through Baluchistan, in truck after truck to the borders of Europe, a wild illegal dash through Bulgaria and another close brush with prison, and across a frozen snow-covered Europe to arrive in Dublin just in time for Christmas.