Alas my friends, it is the end. After 2 years, 4 months and 9 days I am finally drawing my trip to a close and returning home. Maybe one day I will travel again, but this chapter has finished thus meaning the end of these online diary entries. How empty your lives will be.

I hope you have enjoyed reading as much as I have enjoyed writing. The idea of the diary was never to change the world, it wasn't even to really keep you informed of what I was doing or feeling, just to share the funnier side of my trip with you, to shed a little light on your lives as it were. Hopefully you have seen the funny side of all of this and have been able to take the racism, sexism and all the other ism's I have covered throughout the diary with the pinch of salt they were prescribed with.

Travelling changes many people in many different ways. I have always tried to stear clear of the cliched backpacker ways, thus I haven't grown my hair long or got dreadlocks. I haven't bought a pair of baggy orange trousers. I haven't started smoking or found inner peace and I certainly haven't found religion (quite the opposite in fact).

I HAVE become more open-minded, and I do appreciate and understand other cultures more than ever before, although I think it's too easy and wrong to say you should always respect other cultures (cultures/religions who think it's okay to murder a baby when it is born the wrong sex for example, not a big fan). I have met loads of great people, seen loads of amazing sights and drunk a shit-load of booze.

So home it is. To England. Am I excited? Actually yes I am. Travelling has made me appreciate other countries, but it has also given me a better understanding and a new fondness for my own country. So give me Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, Captain James Cook and Jeremy Clarkson. Give me Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth II and the Spice Girls. Give me the home of football, the Premiership, and arriving home just in time to not watch England in Euro 2008. Give me beautiful English towns and cities, from Bath to Lichfield, from Matlock Bath to Skegness. Give me the Lake District, the Peak District and the suburbs of Birmingham. Give me Monty Python, Only Fools & Horses, Little Britain and Coronation Street. Give me a Sunday roast, fish'n'chips with lashings of salt and vinegar, pork pie, mushy peas and brown sauce and a chicken vindaloo. Give me a decent cup of tea. Give me my friends and family with a dry sense of humour. Take the piss. But above all else, please please please, give me a decent fucking pint of English ale in a decent English country pub. Get 'em in lads, I'm coming home.

Thank you for reading, it's been a fucking pleasure.

The End

(...for now)