Tomorrow Steve Carver sets off for his bike journey to India for a forthcoming radio programme [working title] ‘Man on a motorbike.’

The programme will involve Steve riding across north India and recording his reflections, thoughts and his poetry (mixed in with some humour) on the smaller details of India: from spending time with those who live in poverty, to travellers seeking spiritual enlightenment, to some unusual locations seldom visited by foreigners. He has an open reign to see what comes his way. His first leg will be to drive near the border with India to Lumbini – birthplace of the Buddha – and a place known well by Angel travellers:  they stay in a monastery there on their holiday to Nepal with Angel Holidays.  Beyond that, and with Steve’s old Enfield motorcycle, the road is just open. And that’s the magic of the series.   Here’s the bike on the eve before the journey.

For all those booked on our journey to Peru this August (departing 6th) we hope you are looking forward to the experience. Along our journey, we’ll be venturing far from the tourist trail and staying in the Andes, at 11,000 feet above sea level. With no light pollution and near Colca canyon (twice the depth of the Grand Canyon) together with an active volcano in the background, our stay here will be dramatic.

At this altitude the air, being so thin and clear, has become popular with astronomers. Our hotel has been chosen as it has an observatory and powerful telescope.

We’ll take you inside the tower where on clear nights you can see Saturn and its rings, as well as, quite spectacularly, Mars with the naked eye. The next day we’ll take you to walk inside Colca Canyon. Here you’ll be surrounded by the flights of condors.

With just over a week to go to our adventure in India, many of you might be thinking about changing sterling to rupees. Our advice is not to buy rupees in the UK, the rates are poor compared to India, and you can change money when you are in India. There are ATM’s throughout big cities, and often Delhi has the better exchange rates compared to other parts of the country, so it might be best to change a larger amount there – although post Brexit, exchange rates are changing daily.  We hope this helps.

Whilst travelling abroad, many like to keep up with the news, so we’ve looked at which sites are best for you.

http://www.aljazeera.com Based in the Middle East, the site offers a sober tone of world news and tends to focus news stories near its geographical area – North Africa and the Middle East as well as US based stories.

www.cnn.com an American and London based site, it’s very much based on US led stories or those issues that have a US impact.

http://news.sky.com/world is popular and presents a good overall perspective, particularly for UK readers.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world provides a good all round package focussing on the West and European/US readers

www.bbc.com suitable for younger readers (it’s sponsored by a backpacker guide) expect an equal measure of ‘what’s happening with the Kardashian’s’ to a lighter view of selected news.

 www.reuters.com is politically based with an American bias.  It has some good political commentary and analysis as well as sophisticated coverage.

Other sites are available from your favourite newspapers, we hope this helps

Thanks to all travellers who’ve booked our epic journey across the desert state of Rajasthan, India (28^th Oct – 19^th Nov, 2016). We’re flattered so many signed up for this exploratory trip, with little more than a list of places we might visit; no definite plan or itinerary. It’s a testament that people trust the authentic way of ‘Angel’ travelling.

Many of you have been with us to Nepal, Peru or Cambodia & Laos, and if you may like to join too, please read on.   The trip cost is just £1,490 for over 3 weeks (based 2 sharing) plus flights which we help you find. We’ve now got some more detail to the trip with some very interesting surprises, not least we’re off to the Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Our journey will begin in Delhi with a short tour of the city, followed by a drive into the desert frontier town of Mandawa; here we’ll stay in an old ‘haveli’ trader’s house (all en-suite) for an unusual night. The next day we ride camels out into the desert, for a night’s camping under the stars by campfire.

Next we reach the desert city of Bikaner. Here we’ll stay in a classic hotel, Maharaja style. This is home to a cousin of the Maharaja of the city, a friend of Angel Holidays. From here, we’ll take you to a camel breeding farm to see herds of camels coming in, in the late day sun, as well as Karni Mata – a unique temple devoted to thousands of live rats featured on the BBC (entrance is optional).

We then head into the desert again, this time near the town of Phalodi, and largely in the middle of nowhere. Our accommodation will be a mixture of Swiss tents (luxury tents where you can stand & en-suite) or comfortable bungalows. We’ll come here to witness an unusual phenomenon. Each morning, nature permitting, 25,000 demoiselle cranes fly in on migration from the Himalaya, to this small village in a ‘huge cloud of birds’ to be fed by the locals. This striking spectacle has also been filmed on the BBC.

From here we move to the far west of the Thar desert, around 200 miles from the Pakistan border to the magical citadel of Jaisalmer; rising out of the sand like something from ‘Arabian Nights.’ You’ll enjoy free time and rest here in this magical location.  We’ll then drive south, to the blue city of Jodhpur and take you to explore its bazaars, show you the opulence of the city’s Maharaja or you can even zip-line around its fortresses’ walls (something that London Major Boris Johnson boasted about).

After this we’ve added something special to the trip; a visit to the annual Puskhar camel festival: the largest collection of livestock on earth. Here, you’ll be staying in Maharaja styled tents for two nights (with en-suite) and enjoy free time at this once in a lifetime event. Traders, herdsman and tribes people come together to trade and celebrate desert culture.

From Pushkar we move south; to the most romantic city in India: Udaipur – with its rooftop restaurants and palaces in this stunning lake location.  Angel Holidays has become friends with the owner of the ‘Exotic Marigold Hotel’; the hotel used for the two movies with Judy Dench, Richard Gere etc.  We’ve arranged a visit to this hotel and lunch on its grounds – all complementary on us. We’ll also take you on a fascinating walk to a nearby village, unspoilt by time, where old herders drink opium and people still live in traditional Rajasthani ways.

On to Udaipur, a beautiful place, so we’ve allowed 3 nights here.  Time to rest, wander, shop or simply enjoy being here.  There are many outdoor rooftop restaurants where you can enjoy dinner in the desert over looking its palaces and lake.  From Udaipur we take a train journey, Indian style, right across the desert and to the pink city of Jaipur; the capital of Rajasthan.

It’s here we’ve our second ‘Marigold’ connection.  An old mansion in the city, owned by Brigadier Singh, a friend of Angel Holidays, was used for the BBC documentary ‘The Real Marigold Hotel’ with Bobby George, Wayne Sleep, Jan Leaming etc. Here they lived for 3 weeks exploring what it might be like to retire in the city. If you might like to go there for dinner on its rooftop one evening, let us know and we can arrange this.

At this point we’ve added another surprise to the journey: a visit to Ranthambhore National Park, where we’ll take you on safari into the Indian bush in search of tigers. This is a stunning park, once a hunting ground for British royals and Maharajas, and we’ll take you on two game drives. Finally, we move to Agra, to crown our journey with a visit to the magnificent Taj Mahal.  After this we return to Delhi.

We hope you’ll agree this is a fantastic holiday.  We’ve added some meals that weren’t in the original plan; full board in Pushkar and Ranthambhore for example.  Other nights you’ll be able to enjoy some fantastic meals from romantic rooftops to ‘al fresco’ dining out Indian style.

As with all our trips, we’ve allowed some free time for you to explore and savour these stunning locations at your own pace.  You’ll also enjoy the support of being in a friendly group, and can rest whenever you want to, you don’t have to come on all our day trips. We’ve a private bus and will enlist the help of local guides in some locations.  Some hotels will have swimming pools to enjoy the winter sun!

If you may want to join this trip, please let us know.  We just need a deposit of £190. We can provide a detailed itinerary shortly.  As with all our journeys, a concise dedicated guide book will be given to all travellers on this trip.  A shorter, two week version of this holiday is planned for 2017.

We look forward to hearing from you.  Angel Holidays

On Prince Harry’s recent trip to Nepal you would have seen how wonderful the country is. Harry was very kind in his remarks, please see the attached slide. We’re sure that those of you who would have traveled with us to Nepal before would agree.  If you might like to follow in his footsteps, why not join us on our tour in 2017 – simple click ‘Holiday in Detail’ on our site.

We’ll visit many of the places on Harry’s tour, plus others; noticeably a flight around Everest, the birthplace of the Buddha, ancient cities and Pokhara in the Himalaya. Already our 2016 tours are now sold, but we’re currently taking bookings for our holiday in the Autumn of 2017.   Led by broadcaster Steve Carver and at just £1,095 this is wonderful opportunity to do something different.

Dates have now been set for our 2015 tour of Nepal – 11^th until 23^rd October.

If you might know someone who’d like to take part in the adventure, please tell them.  Places are limited but we’d love to take your friends with us. Plans are afoot too, to develop our new Angel Holidays tour of South East Asia, and we’re thinking of incorporating Laos, Cambodia, possibly Burma too. If you’re a previous Angel traveller and have a comments on which south East Asian countries fascinate you –   please let us know.   We’d like to take you with us. Talking about previous travellers, one group of 21 people who came with us on holiday a couple of years ago to Nepal, are having a reunion in Manchester and playing a one hour film that was made on the trip. I wonder what it’s called ‘Angel – the movie?’  Here’s a picture that might bring back some memories. The ancient city of Bhaktapur at sunset, where again we’ll be staying for two unusual nights on next years’ tour.

Up here on holiday in the Himalaya some of us went on a half day hike to see the Annapurna range of the Himalaya.

Here’s a shot I’d taken. Incidentally, the first paperback novel ever published was ‘The Lost Horizon’ a fictional novel about a British team who crash landed somewhere up there and discovered a city where you never age.  How unglamorous cities like Swindon by comparison seem!

Back to reality and it’s also possible to go micro-lighting as well as paragliding from here – you’re strapped in with a professional pilot – as the thermals are so good you can stay up gently for quite some time. There’s a new trend in ‘para-hawking’ here in Nepal too, where para-gliders follow the flight of trained hawks as they glide through the air – it’s quite spectacular.  Here’s a shot of a micro-lighter as he or she flew over us. It’s not often you can look across at some of the highest peaks on the planet.

That same afternoon the group returned to ‘Basecamp’ to enjoy beers and champagne: which, given the views, was quite fitting.

Dinner the other evening was in the Pagoda room overlooking the city. Here, are some of the group in mid discussion getting to know each other. Travellers have flown in from California, as well as Australia and Sweden this year. The dining room, with Tibetan paintwork dating back from the centuries created a wonderful atmosphere for the start of our holiday to Nepal. Our heritage hotel has a library, theatre (they are currently rehearsing a play) as well as mature gardens and ancient trees where you can sit under for breakfast or a midnight drink.

Out here on our current holiday to Nepal, some of our group are getting very excited.

We’re all enjoying it here!  The local rickshaw drivers have been working hard to get us around in the warm sunshine. There’s 24 of us in this group, of all ages and backgrounds and the country is bringing us all together. We’ve retired folk as well as youngsters on this years’ holiday to Nepal. We’ve had colourful nights in Kathmandu and enjoyed two nights in the ancient city of Bhaktapur spending time inside the medieval houses of local people.  Last night, all we had was the twinkling stars and a half moon above an ancient silhouette of the city that hasn’t changed for a thousand years. Quite remarkable. Soon we head for the jungle….