Departures

Seat 38J, Flight EK 015, Dubai - London Gatwick

We are currently 28.5 hours into a 33-hour journey back from Christchurch. I am tired. An excitable infant is screeching somewhere away to my left. I have exhausted the supply of watchable movies and old Top Gear episodes on the in-flight entertainment system so thought I'd take the opportunity to scribble some concluding thoughts. I have decided to do this in the form of a series of not-quite-random memories and accolades jotted down in no particular order. I thought about doing this with the aid of the diaries I have kept but have decided that those memories that spring most easily to mind are probably the most worthwhile anyway, so here goes:

• Turning the corner into Delhi's Main Bazaar an hour after landing on our first day in India to see a seething mass of humanity, motorcycles, dust and rotting vegetables, and wondering if this was such a good idea.
• Best beer - Tui (New Zealand)
• Trying to catch the sleeper train from Agra to Jaipur, squeezing into an approximately coffin-sized berth, realising we were on the wrong train, giving up on our actual train once it was more than five hours late, heading back into the city and finding a hotel room around midnight.
• Best hotel - Hotel Siddartha, Agra, India
• Cycling from Siem Reap (Cambodia) into the ancient city of Angkor and around its remarkable temples in sweltering heat on decrepit but loveable bicycles.
• Distance travelled - 32315 miles
• Days away from England - 129
• Walking along the beach in Arambol, Goa.
• Best beach - Booti Booti, nr Wingham, New South Wales
• Tweedie knocking an old Vietnamese man off his motorcycle almost as soon as we landed in Hanoi, and moments later the smiles on the faces of everyone involved.
• Best country - Vietnam
• Gawping at glaciers, mountains, lakes and the like in New Zealand.
• Best breakfast - bagels at Café Stir, Christchurch
• A longtail boat trip through Bangkok's canal network, lined with riverside shacks and decks.
• Song - a Bangkok busker's interpretation of Radiohead's 'Creep', with enthusiastic "whoop"s inbetween chorus lines
• Album - Is This It? The Strokes
• Escaping the hordes of infant salesmen for the tranquil spleandour of the ancient palace at Fatehpur Sikri
• Best lunch - 'Two-Steak Tuesday' at a forgotten pub on our first day in Sydney
• Climbing a very steep hill in Pushkar and sipping a well-earned mango juice at the summit, only to feel rather less proud on the way down when passing elderly Indian women in barefeet comfortably completing the same ascent.
• Most attractive women - Vietnam
• Most attractive men -New Zealand
• Hopping into a tiny fishing boat in Hoi An where an even tinier old Vietnamese lady had agreed to take us up and down the ruver, only for her to hand me the paddle and roll an enormous reefer.
• Longest bus journey - Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City, 25 hours
• Longest train journey - Kota to Thivim, 25.5 hours
• Going on an irrelevantly unsuccessful fishing trip with our new Australian friends Paul and Gillian on their friends Ross and Helen's boat on an otherwise empty lake near Yamba.
• Best dinner - Tandoori Pomfret on the beach in Anjuna, Goa
• Going tandem kayaking in Ha Long Bay: amazingly clear and still water, a unique landscape and the opportunity to splash Tweedie.
• Best film - Invictus
• Best book - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• Top Ten Places We Visited (in chronological order): Delhi, Pushkar, Jodhpur, Panjim, Arambol (India), Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Hoi An (Vietnam), Siem Reap (Cambodia), Yamba (Australia)

The screen says we are ssomewhere over eastern Europe. The end is truly nigh. Thanks to Tweedie for coming with me, and for not yet running away with a dashing Indian, trendy Vietnamese or a burly Kiwi. Thanks to my Aunt Joan, without whom none of it would have happened and to whom I am forever indebted. And thanks to you, whoever you are, for taking time out of your day to read this and other such self-indulgent wafflings. I look forward to seeing you soon.

• Autocomplete option #1 if you type "nap year" into Google - "nap year diaries"
• Number of followers of 'Nap Year Diaries' - 7

For the last time,

Over.

Come on England

Hotel Off the Square, Christchurch

In truth there isn't a lot to tell of our last few days in Christchurch but I said I'd write another one while I was here and I've got half an hour to kill. Keen not to leave with the campervan memory souring everything we have spent our last two nights in a hotel which has been a pleasure.

It has been raining most of the time, so we've mooched about a few markets , been to the cinema and the cathedral and seen three generations of a half-Maori family perform a rendition of the Haka at the Christchurch art gallery. The All Blacks are a bit more frightening. At one of the afore-mentioned markets I purchased a fake but not terrible England shirt, ready for kick-off, from a Scotsman. Recognising his accent I asked if he would be supporting the Auld Enemy in South Africa. Irritated, he replied in the negative and with a glint of delight in his eye asked me if I'd heard about Ferdinand's injury on the radio that morning. I had not, so hurried off to check BBC Sport before I could deliver my knockout "at least we qualified" blow. For the record, he said he'd support New Zealand, and after that "anyone but England". Bless.

Today is our last day in New Zealand. I admit to being a touch disappointed by the experience we have had here. Everyone who has ever spoken to me about New Zealand has raved about it, and to an extent I can see why. If one were to come here in season, with reasonable weather, and make a sensible decision on accommodation then the range of things one can see and do is phenomenal, and we've only seen the South Island. And although some of these elements have not been present, parts of our three-week stay have been tremendous and I don't regret coming at all. Having said that, it is possibly the country in which I have had the least good time of those we've seen, and certainly the one I am least likely to revisit.

I do not recommend a campervan, or anything similar, as a holiday option.

Told you there wasn't much to tell. I'll do one more when we get back.

Over.

Things to do before you die

Dub Dub Dub Internet Café, Christchurch

After dinner that evening we went to the casino in Queenstown where my second bet on the roulette spin came up trumps (twelve) and in my excitement I took my winnings off the table before it was allowed, leading to a frightening level of consternation and condescension from the croupier and his manager who was immediately called out to interrogate me on how I could have forgotten this basic rule of casinos. I offered the best I could do at the time - "I just forgot" - collected my winnings and departed $70 richer but feeling rather poorer in stature and with a growing feeling that, after the 111kg episode, New Zealand was having more fun than I was at my expense.

The next day, keen to do at least something exhilerating with our days in the adventure capital of the world, we steamed back into the information office ready to go paragliding, having carefully read all small print for relevant weight restrictions which were thankfully sufficiently liberal. I had the cash in my hand ready to hand over as the lady phoned the office to make the booking only to hear her repeat the words "wind blowing in the wrong direction" and immediately understand that me and extreme sports are a marriage made in hell and the universe is clearly conspiring to keep us apart for both our sakes. This suspicion was confirmed when we next took the gondola ride to the top of the mountain and did a thing they call a 'luge' ride, except instead of sliding down on your stomach you sit on it like a go kart. Unbeknown to me, they are not designed for people of 6'2" in height (on the contrary, this is an activity clearly designed for kids, but since we weren't allowed to do anything grown-up it seemed worth trying) and my scrunched-up legs prevented the brakes working properly until I let them dangle rather ridiculously out of the sides in a less-than-streamline fashion which prevented any great velocity being achieved. Obscenely fat and freakishly tall - what a lucky lady Tweedie is.

The day after this we left Queenstown, a town I feel I liked more than it liked me, and headed north and inland to Mount Cook, where we did a walk through the snow almost up to the foot of the mountain - the tallest in Australasia - before deeming it too cold and too icy to be worth the effort in our less-than-thermal running shoes/converse. In the afternoon we went on to Tekapo, the drive to which along Lake Pukaki and then Lake Tekapo itself was the most spectacular hour of scenery I have seen in my life. The view from top to bottom went something like - blue sky, heavy snow-topped peak, low-lying cloud, mountain-side lightly dusted with snow, valley village, crystal-blue lake, grass, shoes - all of which looked better than it sounds when I read this back.

Anyway, we arrived in Tekapo where we spent the next two nights in a park overlooking the lake. During this time we walked to the top of the very steep Mount John (an hour up and 20 minutes down, although the latter was more precarious in the snow and ice) and elsewhere inspected what was sold to us at the local information centre as "one of the most photographed spots in New Zealand" which turned out to be a statue of a border collie next to a "historic" (1930s - Kiwis have a similarly limited sense of the scope of history to the Australians) church. Even in static form the dog was a little frightening.

From there to a town called Geraldine to visit a wool shop which boasted both a giant knitted jersey on the wall (it was indeed giant) and a recreation of the Bayeux Tapestry made out of painted bits of old sewing machine. As we stared in bemusement at this bizarre creation a woman in a Christmas-cracker cardigan appeared at our shoulder to announce "it took my husband (also wearing an absurd jumper - not a good advertisement for their product) 25 years to complete". Every fibre in my body wanted to ask "why?" but diplomacy and the thought of an irate woman wielding a knitting needle prevented me.

After this brief and somewhat surreal interval we proceeded north and east, all the way to the coast in fact, arriving at Akaroa on the Banks Peninsular on Wednesday afternoon. The highlight of our two nights here, in fact the only thing of real note we did, was swimming with dolphins yesterday. After donning an enormous dry suit over normal clothes and a 20-minute catamaran ride out into the Pacific we sighted some dolphins and were basically told to jump in. Tweedie didn't particularly enjoy the choppiness of the ocean waves, and opted to climb back aboard ship after half an hour or so, just before a pair of dolphins swam just a couple of metres past me which was very cool. Seeing the big blubbery mammal up close and personal was a bit of a shock, but the dolphins seemed to adjust relatively quickly.

This morning we drove from Akaroa back inland a touch to Christchurch, our final destination. We will spend the next four nights here, partly because we slightly misjudged the length of our trip at other stages, and partly because we are both keen to come home and being here, close to the airport from which we will depart on Tuesday, feels like a step closer to leaving. I should stress that this doesn't mean we're having a terrible time, rather that we are looking forward to returning to home comforts and the company of friends and family. Something like that anyway.

The end is nigh, but not quite yet. I'll do one more post from New Zealand, and then hopefully one more back in Blighty, depending on whether I can stay awake long enough after landing to write it.

Over.