We arrived into Delhi at 4:30 in the morning. Not the best time to arrive in a huge metropolis that has the reputation to drive crazy even the most hardened traveller, especially since I was feeling more sick than I ever felt in the last 3 weeks. The indian man whom I had been talking to on the bus told me the price I should expect to pay to go to the train station (my accomodation was close to the train station, and by getting a ride there you avoid to pay commission to your rickshaw driver which they'll get from [View Full Entry]

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I had another 10 hours bus ride in front of me. I was getting a bit sick of them by now since I had 3 in the last few days already. I was planning to catch the 8AM bus but I underestimated the distance to the bus station. People had told me it was from one to three km from the hotel and I found out that they were all overoptimistic, it was more like double that and it was uphill all the time. I managed to make it by 7:59 while mumbling stuff like "It's like if they put Kathmandu's [View Full Entry]

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I somehow managed to drag myself at the train station 15 minutes before 6 but I won't lie and say it was painless. The bed was very comfy and it required all my willpower not to fall back to sleep. I asked around at the bus station for where the bus to Kaza was and everybody gave conflicting answer so for 15 mintues I was just walking around trying to find my bus. Then I found it. Apparently it left in Kullu, about 1 hour south. This meant that almost all the seats were taken already. The only seat left was [View Full Entry]

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I hadn't planned to go to Manali as it has a bit of a bad reputation. Apparently it's packed full of neo-hippie staying there for months for the cheap drugs that is grown in the nearby countryside. The drug industry makes trekking around dangerous as you might walk in a plantation; several foreigners were killed while walking in the last few years. Now I have nothing against drugheads, but I do find that drug travellers are among the most boring people on earth. They just talk about how they did nothing last day and spend the whole night smoking. They're not [View Full Entry]

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After sharing a dorm with a few mouses for the past 2 nights, I was ready to move on. The plan was to go to Dharamshala, the home of the Dalai Lama. Apparently, the Dalai Lama was around according to Kirsi, the finnish girl I met at the border so maybe I'd have a chance to have a chat with him over a beer and a juicy hamburger. I left fairly late, at around 830 or so. I left a generous donation to the temple as I felt very grateful for the way I was treated there. They give you free [View Full Entry]

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The 7th was my last day in Pakistan. I was still not 100% healthy but good enough. My plan for the day was to cross the border and then watch the border closing ceremony, a daily show where the guards *gasp* close the border. I must admit I wasn't totally optimistic about this border ceremony thing but the LP raved about it, even saying it was a highlight of India so I figured it would be stupid to miss it. I took my time in the morning as there was no point of leaving early, the ceremony happened about an hour [View Full Entry]

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On October 2nd, I decided to leave my cell-like room of Islamabad's Youth Hostel, probably the most soulless hostel I've ever been. Before leaving, as I was still sick, I popped an immodium in the hope that it would last 5 hours. I took a cab to the nearest bus station and got a ticket to Lahore. The bus left immediately and it took a whole 5 hours to get to Lahore, through the Punjabi plain. The land seems very fertile, it is no surprise that the majority of Pakistan's population live in Punjab. The bus station was at the outskirts [View Full Entry]

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I'll go really fast on this episode of my trip as I prefer not to think about it. Wednesday September 27th I was going to Islamabad this day to get my Indian visa application going. I said goodbye to everyone at the guesthouse and took the bus to the bus station. There I had to ask around for the minivan, then wait for an hour for enough passengers to pile up. We hit a massive protest in some town on the way which made us lose a lot of time. Even then, the driver was trying to escape it by going [View Full Entry]

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Saturday September 23rd Another though ride ahead of us, but at least it would be the last before India. Technically it should be 11 hours to Peshawar but we'd been told this was about as optimistic as a "welcomed with roses" statement coming from georgie before the Iraq war. It started badly as they told Samuel it was full. He hadn't bought his ticket the day before so he was out of luck. It seemed a lot of people were missing and after a ride around town he went back to the station and picked Samuel as well as a few [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday September 20th Today I was leaving Gilgit and the Northern Area for Chitral in the North-West Frontier province, right next to Afghanistan. Chitral is a big valley blocked from the rest of Pakistan 6 months a year. It is in the extreme north-west of Pakistan, just south of the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan (the little handle that sticks out of Afghanistan, a little colonial fantasy) and east of Nuristan (the Land of Light, named so after the muslims killed every single one of the infidel local inhabitants in a jihad slightly more than a hundred years ago). The ride to [View Full Entry]

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