Pathenkot

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Kangra was pretty - the bus dropped me off at the main road and I had quite a walk to get to the train station. I was quite early for the train so I hung about on the platform. It was very quiet in some ways, until the sounds of the birds became clearer. It was very tropical sounding and a very relaxing interlude. The toy train was very slow and crowded (6 hours 70 km). I was hoping for a window seat, but since I didn't get on the train where it started there was no chance of this and none of the locals seemed to want to offer a tourist a chance to look out the window. After 6 very cramped hours I got to Pathenkot at 6pm and decided to stay the night there and take the 3 hours train ride to Amritzar the next day (8:30 and 10:30 apparently). Worse room I've had yet was in Pathenkot, tempered by the fact that the host was so funny. It was a divey little Dhal bar, but he had a big desk in the middle of it which he would watch TV from, order people around, and tell me how many Sikhs there were in the UK. The table also got a lot of cleaning, which is more than could be said for the rest of the place- cockroaches and all. The bedbugs were a little annoying when they started to jump 3 hours after I had got to bed - so I threw the soft parts of the bed out of the room and blew up my thermarest - the first time I used it, and I was very glad that I had it.
I got to the station the next day, but they said there was no train until midday, so I took a cycle rickshaw to the bus station and was in Amritzar by midday.

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