Photo gallery and slide show: The pictures in this gallery come from an earlier South Asia (India and Nepal) backpacking trip in 1996-97. The trip was done partly by bus and train, and partly on an Enfield motorcycle, and covered some of the most popular sights and destinations for budget travellers in India, such as the Taj Mahal in Agra, the forts and palaces of Rajasthan, the ghats of Varanasi, trekking in Ladakh, and the beaches of Gokarn and Goa.

One of the great attractions of independent travel lies in the ability to pick and choose your own destinations, and not be tied to a fixed itinerary as would be the case on a three week package holiday tour. The motorcycle part of the trip allowed us to get off the beaten track and visit places where tourism is less developed such as Gujarat, including the port city of Bhavnagar and the shipbreaking yard at Alang, and allowed us greater access to the daily life of the people in the villages we stopped at along the way.