[It's all gone Steve Wright]

As one commenter on the previous blog entry noted, my ending was a little unfashionable and abrupt. The story of the next few days offers an explanation of this.

As i sat down in the Cyber Cafe in Guwahati to write the first blog entry, i suddenly became overwhelmed by a fever; looking around at Arun's cousin Bhaskar, i explained to him that the pastries we'd eaten earlier most definitely contained a load of nuts, disguised by delicious spice and veg. We abandoned the Internet and headed straight home, where i remained for the rest of the afternoon feeling awful.

At this point I should point out, and i'll emphasise it with the super-power of capital letters, I'M FINE! I had about 48 hours of fever and a bad stomach, but now it's friday afternoon in Delhi, and all is well. It's buzzing and beeping outside and it must have climbed to about 25 degrees.

We both had an incredible time in Guwahati. Arun's extended family are the most wonderful hosts, and we managed to visit most of the people we visited four years ago in the space of three days. Spending some time with Arun's uncles on his mother's side was a lot of fun, as some hilarious photos will show. On Thursday morning, about 24 hours after nut-gate, we were escorted by Borditta back to Guwahati airport for our flight to Delhi. After fond farewells we sat down in the tiny little departure lounge and were approached by a young lady (whose name we never discovered) who was an Assamese tourist student. We chatted to her for half an hour and as we did, it became apparent to me how lucky I, in particular, was to visit the region. It's truly a beautiful part of the world; a piece of India barely touched by Westerners, as Arun put it. Whilst our stay this time was short, it was, in the words of Budumama (Arun's uncle), very sweet.

After a comfortable two hour flight back to Delhi, we met Arun's cousin Loya and got in the back of the same car we'd been dropped off in a few days earlier. The only difference this time was the driver. Apparently, he only spoke Punjab. With Loya communicating in English, Hindi and Assamese, we eventually made it to the Guest House where we were due to stay, but only after several detours round and round the same area, and a nice clean scrape against a parked motorcycle on the side of the road. With all due respect to our driver, none of us were sure if he'd driven before, let alone in Delhi.

So we woke this morning, after an evening of watching wrestling, knowing that today was something of a waiting day. We're taking a trip around the city, and we've arranged to meet one of our closest friends from Assam Valley School, where we taught 4 years ago, who is now studying in Delhi. Tonight we check out of the guest house at around 9, to catch our flight to Bangkok at 1 a.m. We'll land at 7.30 Thai time, and then it all begins.