James

The Uganthem

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Today was a bit of a strange one; I didn't leave the hostel and I barely even moved from the couch where I parked up because I had all of my stuff with me. All of it. Trying to carry lots of heavy bags around when you've sunburned your shoulders is a recipe for not having a good time.

I caught up about 3 days worth of Trogging whilst looking out over the beautiful landscape. Considering how little sleep I got, I really felt considerably fresh which was a nice surprise. I read a lot more of my book Barbarians At The Gate and again I tried to practise some pool but the terrible table (honest, it was atrocious) and lack of opponent meant it was difficult for me to take it seriously. James - pictured - came over to shoot a couple of games as the bar was very quiet and the powered cut out. I was rubbish, but luckily he was even worse.

Some big organised tour group started coming through the hostel today taking all the seats in the bar and causing a huge backlog in the kitchen. I wouldn't have minded but they kept themselves to themselves which resulted in the sounds of their arguments echoing through the hostel. I have taken an organised tour before, and I met some incredibly cool people on it and now I wholeheartedly condone travelling alone. I think the end effect of getting people interested in travelling is great (much the same as Instagram getting people interested in photography is brilliant) but my personal opinion is that travelling in organised tours is not the true experience and 'graduating' to solo travel is the ultimate goal. It's not sustainable as tour-travel is too expensive.

Andrew emerged from his room in the afternoon and we spent hours talking about travel, the U.S. and where he's going next in Asia. It was a great chat and so chilled. Afterwards the whole tiredness thing caught up with me so I climbed in to bed, read for all of about 5 minutes and then crashed out to catch up on sleep.

A great night('s sleep).

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I censored my own Blip title for this entry.... I love the picture, though. In an ideal world I'd have had a reflector to light up the left hand side of James' face but you gotta work with what you got.