That the combined age of our two oldest Globetrotter members is 174 years!

Sanjay, one of our regular readers in India is justifiably proud of Puri, the area in which he lives. He wants to tell us about the Chariot Festival: Puri, on the shores of the bay of Bengal is one of the holiest places in India. It was “discovered” by pot smoking backpackers in the early 1960s. The Jagannath Temple at Puri comprises one of the four dhams (holy places) for Hindus and is on India’s pilgrimage circuit. The temple, built in the 12th century stands 65m high and is in the heart of the town. The temple complex contains over 100 other smaller temples of different Gods and Goddesses. You can also find one of the finest beaches in India in Puri where beautiful and complex sand statues are constructed from sand, on the beach.

The chariot festival is an annual event, attracting many thousands of pilgrims and tourists and takes place during the early monsoon season. This year, it fell on June 23rd. It is an amazing spectacle: the God of the Universe, together with his brother and sister ride along the road in a chariot in three chariots. The procession starts from the Jagannath Temple and continues to another temple where it stays for eight days before setting off back to their own temples.

Puri is connected by train and by road. There are also flights from Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay and Bangalore. There is accommodation for everyone, ranging from $4 a night to over $100 a night. Sanjay in Puri tells us that he has recently formed a backpackers community club in Puri called Rangers where rooms/dorms cost from US $ 4 a night. To get in touch with Sanjay, contact the Beetle: Beetle@globetrotters.co.uk

Next month: hiking in the Grand Canyon

Let’s talk about the first of the really well known explorers: Christopher Columbus, whose name can be seen all around Central and South America as Cristóbal Colón. Although Columbus was born an Italian, in Genoa, he obtained sponsorship from the rulers of both Portugal and Spain and made four trips to the New World. He was amongst those who believed that the world was round – not a widely held view at the time – and he longed to sail west to the Azores and further, to the legendary lands described by Marco Polo.

As every schoolchild in the UK knows, “In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. Even though the Scandinavians had reached North America a long time before Columbus, Columbus’ trip was important in that he was amongst the first Europeans to set foot on so many islands in the Caribbean, and land masses in Central and the northern part of South America. The sad thing is that Columbus thought he had reached the East Indies and that the islands of the Caribbean were in islands off mainland China.

Of course, there were commercial motives in all these great ocean-going trips, which often took years to undertake and in dreadful conditions on board. These lay in buying new and exotic spices, although Columbus was not too successful in this – he found capsicums and is also attributed as having bought back tobacco, known locally as a “bewitching vegetable” from the West Indies in 1496. On the one hand, he is believed to have possessed great courage and explored parts of the world that were completely chartered territory – his crew were in constant fear of toppling over the edge of the world. On the other, historians reckon that he was really quite greedy, constantly looking for increased wealth and a terrible administrator (although a fearless explorer) and was cruel to the local people he found in these new territories.

Next month: Vasco da Gama