An apology, an update

Cop writing the report of our theftWe apologize to our concerned and faithful readers for not keeping up to date with the blog. There are at least two reasons for this. One is that an unfortunate incident occurred on the train from Delhi to Varanasi back on Jan. 2. We had just boarded and were settling ourselves into our compartment, and chatting with the couple we were sharing it with. They had a 2-year-old who was doing an orangutan imitation, and a valise that was the size of a small car, and so in trying to move ourselves and our luggage in, we put a small shoulder bag on the top bunk. More commotion ensued, the conductor came, an empty neighbouring compartment became available, and in the process of moving our gear over we noticed that the shoulder bag on the top bunk was gone.

The bag contained some of our electronics, including the palm pilot, the portable hard drive, our MP3 player and the small digital camera. Except for the camera, none of the other items were much good to whoever took them, for one thing because the cords and chargers were all proprietary, and were in another bag. The police were summoned, and Katheryn joined a posse of rifle-toting guards cruising the train in the vain hope that something might be spotted. It was to no avail, and we took stock of our loses. We still had our SLR, and although we were having fun shooting videos with the digital, it wasn’t indispensable. We could also live without the tunes, although Katheryn had spent many hours selecting a good sound-track before we left. The hard drive was a big loss. It was the back-up for all of our photo and text files, and contained all of the high-resolution pictures we had taken up to that point. Fortunately we didn’t lose any pictures, as they had just been uploaded onto Flickr. Now we will have to burn CD’s to back up our photos, which is deterioration-prone and time-consuming. The palm pilot was an integral part of our data system, and we had all of our addresses and contact information on it, as well as information on costs, distances, where we stopped for lunch etc. We also used it to type the blog entries. It was a huge improvement to working in internet cafes, with the expense, the noise, and the power cuts and computer malfunctions. Without it, we have lost a lot of the incentive to write.

Another reason for falling behind is that for most of the last month we have been in one of the most technologically-removed places on our trip. Look up the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in an atlas. It took us 4 days by boat to get there from Calcutta, and then we went another half day to Havelock Island. There actually is internet capability there, theoretically, although only once did we succeed in sending an email. Alas, we had to simply dispair at the idea of sitting in front of a computer, and instead concentrate on marvelous Radha Nagar beach, or the sublime snorkeling at Elephant Beach.

Anyway, we are now back in Bangkok, where keyboards work and the connections are fast, so we will make an effort to get the story up to date. Stay tuned for the next episode, and don’t hesitate to write us and let us know how you are doing!

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