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Published: August 10th 2007
Last stops in India - Amritsar, Dharamsala, Delhi
Asia » India By Debtravel
April 7th 2007
golden Temple, Amritsar
This might be more of a sombre blog as my time in India comes to an end. Some of this has been written while I was still in India, some since leaving so hopefully won't be too disjointed or confusing.
The last few weeks, knowing that time has been limited now, has made me realise all the things I have loved about being here. And I haven't seemed to spend too much of my blog talking about the details of the cultural life I have seen here, except in anecdotal tales....so....
I feel really privileged to have had this opportunity and to have been welcomed into this amazing, complex, magical country - to have had the freedom to explore so many different states, cities, towns, aspects of culture, to have had the freedom to fall in love with it, and also to have had the freedom to hate it, to be intensely frustrated with the chaos and confusion, and the fact that because it's still a developing country, nothing works properly and you can't count on anything.
Currently I feel like it's changed me a bit for the better, that I have learnt here not to expect things to
temple complex
go my way, to just try a different route if I can't make it work the way I initially wanted; and I suspect I'll lose this to a certain degree but hopefully not altogether. Mostly I hope I can hold on to the memory of the range of colours, sights, sounds, smells (well, maybe except the sewers, toilets and cow shit), people's smiles, the madness, the endearing Indian English language, breathtaking scenery, and above all the warmth that I have become so used to I almost didn't notice anymore. Indians don't have a sense of 'boundaries' which at times is completely annoying and irritating, but the beauty of it is that because of that, you never feel emotionally cold here. Well, it may be that you walk along the street and you are invaded by the person behind you doing a surround-sound heavy duty mucus-clearing operation; and that personal space in India is diminished to less than a millimetre; it may be that there is not an inch of environment where silence is not broken by
vehicle horns, dogs' howls and barking, peoples' conversations, cows mooing; it may be you cannot walk down the street for more than a metre
temple complex
without being called at: 'madam, just looking, what you want to buy today?/ rickshaw madam? taxi madam? drum madam? boat madam? nice rings/anklets/bus ticket/pashmina/clothes/hat/spices/restaurant/just looking no charge/coming from,madam?'.... it may be you get to the end of the day and feel like you're going completely mad; but you rarely get to the end of the day and feel that life is boring. And however much India has got to me during the day, I have generally fallen asleep at night loving it, because somehow something has redeemed it before night comes: just looking at someone's face, that doesn't carry the western stress or hostility or guardedness; a little interraction that is just open and clean; looking up at a crescent moon where in India you see it from the bottom so it's like it's smiling at you; or just a really comforting masala chai with about half a kilo of sugar in it.
The thing I think about India is that here people do things with love, even the little things; it's like everything
is a creative expression. In some towns and villages, there is a tradition of drawing 'welcome' pictures in chalk outside the front of where you live
golden Temple, Amritsar
or work. People spend ages on these drawings, every morning, and they can be really beautiful. Normally they're practically rubbed away within minutes of the person finishing, by peoples' footsteps, dogs, cows or dust and rubbish blowing on the street, but it doesn't stop people taking the same careful time over the whole thing again the next morning. There is also a law (apparently a legacy of colonial times) that parcels cannot leave India without being sewn up in cotton and sealed with wax. (us British, eh?...) A few post offices have their own parcel packers but mainly what you have to do is take your stuff to a tailor or to someone who has a parcel packing business, and they will wrap and sew it up for you. If you watch them while they do this, they take the same care over it with their sewing machine that they would if they were making you clothes out of silk; then painstakingly melt some red wax and drip it over the
corners of the cotton bound package; knowing that it will just be chucked around a hundred times on the way to its destination and then torn or cut open
children at the Golden Temple
at the other end. One of my sisters said to me that one parcel I sent her was so neatly bound and sewn, she couldn't open it...
And one of my very first images of India, when I was in the taxi on my way from Mumbai International Airport to my hotel, fretting in the back about my luggage which had been left in London, I passed a flyover, under which hundreds, if not thousands of families were living, each occupying a tiny space defined by a piece of cloth they were sitting on; and I caught sight of a young girl of maybe about 10 or 11: sitting with her sisters and parents, she, like everyone there, had nothing, and a quality of life someone like me can't even begin to imagine (being so concerned about all the new stuff I'd bought for my trip being lost), yet she was sitting on her cloth, calmly braiding her hair, again with this love, care and precision
I've seen those people draw their welcome pictures, or parcel packers sewing up the cotton.
There is a sort of untamed energy here, which is what I think people tend to love or
streets of Amritsar
hate, (or both love and hate) about being here. It can make me feel really alive and completely drive me nuts simultaneously. Not much is done privately in India, maybe because there is such a huge population, privacy is just not possible, maybe also because the spirit here, the wild energy, just spills over all the time. As most people who are reading this know about me, I used to be a Buddhist several years ago, for quite a long time, and partly because of my history with that, I have mainly avoided the whole religious/spiritual thing about being in India since I've been here (apart from the ashram at the beginning), and haven't at all been looking for anything in the way that lots of westerners who come here are. I've also got certain opinions about some of the religious and cultural activity that goes on here, in terms of being oppressive in some ways. But a few weeks ago I stopped
at the temple in Jodhpur fort, and was just watching people, as I have done in hundreds of temples around India, as they bowed, prayed and made offerings to the shrine, just simply, not in unison, coming
father and son, Golden Temple
in and out, maybe on their way to work or in between jobs; then the other week in Amritsar I kept tripping over people at the Golden Temple ( A Sikh pilgrimage site) because they would leave the temple accommodation then suddenly turn round and bow or prostrate themselves before walking away; and there's something quite nice about that, that it's just so public and part of people's lives, in the same way that I might be reading a paper or drinking coffee. It's not my way, that kind of ritual or worship or anything, but it's kind of nice to see people living their lives openly, without self-consciousness. Of course, I could also be happy if people could expel their mucus in sound-proof rooms.... but double-edged sword and all that...
It's said a lot by people who've been to India that it is a real place of extremes and I don't want to be unoriginal and
just repeat that, but it's true - what I mentioned before about loving and hating it I think goes along with that: in such a country of extremes, it makes sense that your emotional response to it is also going to be
Temple complex, accommodation
extreme. Everything here is as loud as it could possibly be, as bright as it could possibly be, as beautiful, as ugly, as spicy, as sweet, as smelly - good and bad - I can't remember if I mentioned walking down the alleys in Varanasi and simultaneously being hit by the odours of spices, cow shit, incense, sewers etc; women in Rajasthan wear bangles all the way up their arms (literally all the way), and women everywhere jangle with multiple anklets. Even the dogs are extreme. One starts barking far away and that's it for the next hour at least, every dog within a 5 mile radius joins in.
And somehow the whole chaos, energy and extremity of India blends together and sort of works, though you can't really see how. Yes, I have really loved it here, and my long time dream to come here has not been disappointed at all.
Anyway,
enough of all that. Probably I'll leave the internet cafe and get immediately profoundly irritated by a car horn, dog, cow or touter and the bubble will be burst but.....
Famous last words. Ten minutes after I wrote the bit above, the guy in
me by the Pakistan border
the internet cafe who had been downloading my pictures from my new camera onto CD, said he couldn't do it, and when I took the camera away, I realised he(or his machine) had done something to the memory card and all the photos were wiped off....
I write the rest of this since leaving India, which feels a bit weird but I ran out of time before I left. So, on to the last 2/3 weeks I had there.
I left for Amritsar at about 2.30 in the morning, got on the train (sleeper class) and had to turf someone out of my bunk; the man next to me spent the whole night going 'aaarghnnnni' about every 5 minutes and I got quite worried at first, thinking he was ill, maybe having a heart attack but his wife didn't really seem bothered so I thought it was probably
ok, and he did it just as much when he was awake the next day.... in between looking at my Lonely Planet... the journey felt a bit gruelling on the whole, not helped by me eating too many pakoras because they were the only thing being sold and I was
Border gates
really hungry all the time. The countryside changed a lot on the way up to the Punjab, becoming much greener, and bits of it could almost have been England, it felt really strange. I changed trains at a city called Jalandhar the next afternoon, and caught a connecting train to Amritsar, sharing my carriage with a group of Indian students who all got really interested in my Dan Brown book, and were passing it round for almost the entire time. Not being able to read, I was forced into eating more pakoras to pass the time, and arrived at Amritsar feeling like an oil slick. I intended to get the free bus to the Golden Temple, where I was going to stay, and walked happily past all the rickshaw drivers calling to me, saying to them, 'no, I take the free bus'. That was until the bus arrived.
I had made the grave mistake of thinking that as I was now in the Punjab, Sikhs would behave better on public transport and there wouldn't be any pushing or shoving or anything. I was partly right in that it seemed a bit more good natured, but basically was still a scrum,
Indian side of the border
and the bus was already bursting at the seams while there were still about 50 people pushing to get on. I had no chance with my rucksack. A kind man turned to me and said, 'better you take rickshaw, this bus is not good for you.' He laughed when I said to him that it didn't look like it was good for anyone, and went back to the smug rickshaw drivers with my tail between my legs. I did get a really nice cycle rickshaw driver though, and had a good chat with him on the way to the Golden Temple, through the packed streets of Amritsar, though he did make me get out and walk when we were on a hilly bit (I blame the pakoras); and I made an arrangement with him to pick me up in the morning to take
me to shops where I could look for a replacement camera.
I went into the Golden Temple complex to try and find the foreigners dormitory I'd read and been told about. This is free accommodation inside the complex, where you can stay for up to 3 nights, and also have meals there if you want. I couldn't
cheering the Indian side
find where I was supposed to be and kept finding myself in crowded lobbies with Sikh pilgrims all clamouring for the front desk, but eventually a man walked in, beckoned to me, and took me to another building where the foreigners dorm was. I managed to get a bed in the dorm, and got talking briefly to a German woman who wouldn't tell me her name because ' I am leaving tonight so it's not worth introducing myself' (?????) though did have plenty of time to tell me she comes here every year and does the number of circumambulations around the Golden Temple, according to how old she is: she had two more to do tonight before leaving...
I chatted to a couple of other people, then went to find the dining hall to get some food. It
was just like going back to the ashram: everyone sitting on straw mats in lines on the floor, with a thali plate, and people coming round serving you from buckets with dhal in them, and chapattis (which they will only give you if you hold both hands out - I had been told this already by about 3 different people in
waving the flags on the Indian side, border closing ceremony
the dorm, but still managed to keep putting out just my right hand, then remembering my mistake, and putting out my left , before actually getting it right - simple in theory I know, but again, I blame the pakoras...).
I went back to the dorm later and then went out with a couple of the guys I met in there, Morley from America and Danny from Brixton, London - we were looking for a martial arts show which was apparently put on every night, but couldn't find it anywhere, and eventually found out it only takes place on festival days. I was shocked to discover that it actually wasn't a festival day as practically every other day I have been in India for the
last 5 and a half months has been a festival day, so it would be a good bet to presume the martial arts show would be on. Anyway, it wasn't, so instead we went to watch the ceremony at the Golden Temple of putting the holy book to rest for the night (it's late and I can't think so can't remember exactly what this book is, but a Sikh scripture). Every
soldiers at the border closing
morning at 4am, this book is ceremonially taken out and every evening, around 9 or 10pm, it is put back. It gets carried round the temple in something that looks like one of those carriers that Kings used to be carried around in (apologies for the really bad lack of informative knowledge here, again, it's late, I'm tired, can't remember the name of those things).
The next day I planned to look for a camera so I could have it to then take some pics around the temple. As I said, I'd arranged to meet my rickshaw driver at 10.30 so I went along first to the 'Tasty Bite' cafe (!!!) (it was quite tasty) for breakfast. bumped into Joachim, a nice German guy
from the foreigners dorm at the temple, so chatted with him. My food took so long to come that I was late meeting the rickshaw driver and he wasn't there, which I felt a bit bad about but I looked for quite a while and couldn't see him. It was Sunday so was proving difficult to find anywhere open, and kept being dropped off in the wrong places. Two shops, one a mobile phone shop, the
eveing out in dharamsala
other a chemist, both said they could 'arrange' a digital camera for me, when I asked where I could find a camera shop, but eventually I went back to the Hall Bazaar, near the temple, and found a shop which was open, and got a camera. This had taken the best part of the day by then, and I had arranged to meet Joachim and a friend at 3 so we could make our way to Attari, at the Pakistan border, to watch the border closing ceremony, which takes place every night. It's sort of a 'performance' between the soldiers on each side of the border, done ceremonially, and has become so famous that hundreds of people from each side
go along every day to watch this ceremonial border closing and cheer for their side.
We arranged to get a jeep to take us the 30km or so to the border, who turned out to be a bit of an angry bloke on the road (quite unusual for Indians - normally driving is completely hair raising, irresponsible, dangerous and chaotic, but rarely aggressive) and nearly got into a fight with a rickshaw driver. He spent the entire time driving like
they're Dutch...
a maniac on the main road towards the border, with his hand permanently on the horn, till eventually I asked him if he could stop sounding the horn so much. 'Yes yes madam, no horn' he reassured me and managed to stay away from sounding it for at least a minute. Anyway Joachim said to me after it was just as well he didn't listen to me for very long as I'd effectively removed his only civilised means of venting his anger by asking him to stop beeping.
The border closing ceremony was really entertaining and funny. There were a group of young Indians sitting in front of us, who were explaining everything that was happening. Each
side is a bit like a small stadium, or at least half a stadium, as all the seats face one direction. The Indian side, as you'll see from the pictures, was mesmerising in itself purely from the sea of colour through the audience. Everyone was really excited about the whole thing and shouting and singing and dancing. Each side plays music associated with that country and then someone chants and the audience responds. Then the soldiers of each side start a bizaare
prayer wheels in temple, Dalai Lama's residence
routine of marching really exaggeratedly up to the border gates, time and time again, the flags of each side are paraded up and down by audience members; and then eventually there is a ceremonial flag lowering conducted by the majors (generals? I don't know) of each side. I found it really interesting watching the difference between the two crowds on either side. The Indian side, unsurprisingly, was a usual melee of over- exuberance in every way, and energy erupting all over the place. The Pakistan side seemed quite different; the men and women sat separately, and the male side was quite boisterous, but in a different way to the Indian side,
more rhythmic chanting; and the women's side was very subdued; some rhythmic clapping but that was all. I think for the first time since I'd been in India, I saw Indian culture as quite liberal and free, in comparison to what I saw (or my perception anyway) of the Pakistani people on the other side of the gates. It was a strange experience.
A man I met on the plane when I was leaving India for Singapore told me that the majors/generals/whatever they're called, of each side, for all
poster at Dalai Lama's residence
their play acting of marching around and defining their territory, show their camaraderie by sharing a whisky together once the ceremony is over and people have gone home...
Am ashamed to say I never actually went inside the Golden Temple, despite spending 3 nights in Amritsar and in the complex itself. More and more pilgrims were flooding into the complex throughout the time I was there, partly due to it being a new moon, when apparently more people go, and partly due to it being the first weekend of the school summer holidays; but when I got up the next day to go the temple,
there was a queue going all the way out of the door and halfway round the lake, and the queue stayed this size for the rest of my time there, so I decided not to try to go in as I never really enjoy seeing things anyway when you're in the middle of a crowd and probably being herded round, just for the sake of saying you've seen something. In any case, the outside of the Golden Temple is spectacular enough in itself, and it was enough to walk around the lake a couple
Himalayas, Dharamsala
of times, soaking up the atmosphere and watching people sitting around the Temple, praying, talking, in some areas listening to someone chanting or lecturing. It's quite a festive atmosphere, and with something strangely evocative about it: the complex has a weird mix of vibe in that it simulataneously feels tranquil but is bustling as well. But also seems to retain something within it that feels completely different from the noise and choked streets of the rest of Amritsar, just yards away.
On my last night there, I went out with Morley to get a milky pudding thing which apparently is unique to Amritsar,
from one of the street stalls. I never found out what it was called but it's hot milk flavoured with cardamom, cinnamon, spices and then mixed with a stringy mass of something that looks and tastes a bit like shredded wheat - in fact it was like eating a sort of spicy shredded wheat. I just love food in India; it's such a myth that people who go to India lose loads of weight; I had hopefully gone out and bought clothes in sizes smaller than I was before I left England, in anticipation of my
inside the Buddhist temple
soon to be newer svelte phsyique, and have been sorely disappointed in that being constantly tempted with food from the minute I've woken up, I've ended up eating 10 times the amount I normally do.
The next morning, I gave a donation to the Golden Temple and set off for the bus station to catch my bus up to Dharamsala. I was pointed in the direction of a beaten up looking old bus in the corner of the bus station, and forced myself not to look at the tread (or lack of) on the tyres, anticipating the journey up
into the Himalayas. However, despite the hundreds of hairpin bends and overtaking of other buses on them (always more exciting than waiting until the road is straight enough to see what you might be about to crash into), we arrived safely at Dharamsala around 7 hours later. I caught a jeep up to McLeod Ganj (the residential part of Dharamsala a few km further up the mountains) with Alex, a girl from London who I'd met on the bus, and we made our way to the Green Hotel, which we'd both been recommended. It was night time already when we
temple
got there, so we couldn't really see much of the mountains that evening, only having knowledge of them through the memory of the white-knuckle bus trip and the fact that it was at least 15 degrees cooler up there; so we thought we'd warm ourselves by going along to the Sushi restaaurant further down the town, which we'd heard about, which was great food; then got caught in a cold, cold rainstorm on the way back and drenching the only warm clothes either of us had to last us the next few days.... back at the hotel, I bumped
into David, who I'd met back in Udaipur a few weeks back, so we all ended up hanging around together for the next few days, which was really nice. Alex is 18 and David's 19, both are on gap years, and were lovely to hang out with, despite them thinking it was really funny to call me mum, and also to point out that I sounded like Carol Vorderman (???????????????).
Dharamsala was mainly an opportunity to chill out and relax, and it took me four days to actually get down and visit the Dalai Lama's residence and temple complex, and
Alex, Dharamsala
also to visit the Tibet museum, which tells the story of the Tibetan people, the occupation of Tibet, and the situation since. It's sensitively told and well worth a visit. The vibe in Dharamsala surprised me a bit. Having met some other Tibetans in other parts of India, and from other people's stories, I had gone there expecting to feel a strong sense of Tibetan gentleness and warmth, and instead I found myself sensing something more down and sad, even a little hostile at times. At first I found myself feeling disappointed about this, and also wondering
if it was the contrast between this and the feeling I get from Indians, but spending some days there made me also wonder if this was the result of a community in exile; a displaced community with a really strong sense of culture but ultimately in an alien land, and then to be perpetually flooded with foreign visitors....
I caught up on some good movies too, as there was a 'cinema' in town, which was in effect a huge widescreen TV through which DVD's were played in a room full of old coach seats placed in rows.
There was a sign
David, Dharamsala
outside the cinema warning customers that tickets were non-refundable, and saying: 'Reasons no good for refund tickets: 1. Don't like the movie. 2. Didn't have good seat - you are responsible for finding own good seat in cinema. 3. Didn't come on time to see movie. 4. Bad quality of movie - we will tell you if DVD is poor quality then it is your choice if you watch or not.' .....
Being in the Himalayas was a breathtaking experience, though slightly unbelievable as well - looking up at these mountains surrounding us and reminding
myself, this is the Himalayas - and a tiny part of them. I spent a good deal of time on a rooftop cafe just looking at the snow capped mountains, and enjoying the crispness of the air.
From there to Delhi probably couldn't be much more of a contrast. I was booked on an overnight bus for 12 hours to take me into India's capital, that I still hadn't seen after 5 and a half months in India. The bus itself looked in quite good shape and it was a shame the same couldn't be said for half of the passengers who spent
David and Conrad
the first 3 hours throwing up out of the windows and doors of the bus; unsurprisingly as the whole thing felt like a bit of a sickening fairground ride - going down the Himalayas made going up them seem like a walk in the park: the whole of the bus rocked disconcertingly wildly from side to side as we hurtled down and round and down and round for 3 and a half hours non stop. Thankfully the rest of the journey after that was reasonably flat and peoples' stomachs seemed to settle down.
I didn't end up getting much sleep but saw the most amazing sunrise as we approached Delhi at around 6.45 in the morning, surprisingly even more beautiful than the sunrise I had seen over the Ganges in Varanasi. I took it as a good omen that my last few days in India, in Delhi, were going to be good.
We were dropped off at a 'bus station' a good 15km from Delhi, where a number of taxis were waiting to get our business into the city, co-incidentally. 3 of us shared a taxi; Karolina, from Spain, who I'd been sitting next to in the bus, and
David without the benefit of red eye reduction
Adam, from Poland, who we met as we got off the bus. I headed for the Ajay Guest House which someone had recommended to me months back, and Adam came with me there, so we got a room to share there. It felt really weird that I'd had my last bus trip and experience of arriving somewhere new in India, and that the next time I packed and moved on, it would be to leave India. In the meantime, I was already loving the vibe
of Delhi. Despite, again, so many other travellers telling me how awful Delhi is, I had a different experience of it, but mainly because it was my last stop, I think - by this time being so used to India that I could just enjoy the great things about it, the complexity and contradictions of an evolving big Indian city; and more able to ignore the choked atmosphere, flies, dirt and pollution.
After trying to get some sleep in the morning, and failing, due to a persistent dog's bark and renovations to the guest house, Adam and I decided to go and see the red fort in Delhi. We caught a cycle rickshaw through the
Dharamsala at night
city, and the red fort really looked spectacular from the outside walls, stretching as it does I think for at least 2km, though inside was a bit disappointing, with not much to look at. We thought we'd do a bit of shopping afterwards, Adam wanted to get a t-shirt as all his clothes were unwashed (!) and we had a usual India experience in the bazaars of Delhi, when asking for a white t-shirt we were shown a whole array of t-shirts,
polo shirts, blouses and shirts in all different kinds of patterned coloured fabric and sizes and bearing no resemblance to Adam's description of 'plain white,no pattern, no collar'. Having confused the entire clothes retail contingent in Old Delhi, we gave up and went and had a masala dosa at the nearest cafe, before heading back to look at the local shops in the Paharganj bazaar, where we were staying. (but still no luck so Adam was forced to wash his clothes....)
The next day we met up with Amy, who I'd met in Varanasi and who'd arrived in Delhi - it was really lovely to see her again and catch up, and we had breakfast and then
Dharamsala
arranged to meet up again later. Adam and I went to do more shopping, as he was heading back to Poland that evening and was getting presents. We ended up in a usual situation with a rickshaw driver who really wanted us to 'just look' in a silk shop, in fact this shop would answer all our needs despite us asking to be taken to the spice market, and he ended up taking us just about everywhere except where we were
asking to go (which was presumably the only place in Delhi which would not give him commission for bringing us there); and he also got very angry with me, when I kept repeating, 'no, we want to go here' he began saying. 'You, madam. You have travel in India too much, too long.' and periodically pointing at me and saying, 'You. You don't want to go in this shop but your husband does.' Eventually we got dropped miles from where we wanted to be with the rickshaw driver just stopping and storming off down the street in despair at us.
We eventually managed to get what we wanted and headed back, also bumping into Morley (who I'd met
Prayer wheel, Buddhist temple, Dharamsala
in Amritsar) and hooked up with Amy and went out and got really drunk which was good fun, then Adam had to go and get his taxi to the airport, so I went to say goodbye, and the rest of us went to another bar and got more drunk.
The next day, Jonathan (who I'd met in Dharamsala) arrived so ended up sharing my room for the last couple of nights. Also then bumped into
Danny from Amritsar, and he, Amy and I took the brand new Delhi metro into Connaught Place as Amy and I needed to go to the Post Restante and Danny wanted to do some stuff at the Palika underground Bazaar. We arranged to meet him back there but unfortunately took so long getting to the Poste Restante and back and picking up a flight ticket for Amy, that by the time we got back we couldn't find him anywhere and ended up missing him altogether as he was heading off to Nepal that night, and we didn't see him again, which was a bit of a shame.
Amy and Morley were leaving India that night so we all went out for dinner first,
Buddhist shrine, Dharamsala
with Jonathan as well, and also Nicky, who I'd met months ago in Chennai and bumped into earlier that day. Jonathan then left the next morning, and I had the rest of the day, my final day in Delhi, to do some last minute shopping and acclimatise myself a bit to the idea of leaving. In the event, I got a bit of heatstroke and ended up having to lie down for most
of the afternoon. Over the few days I'd been in Delhi, it had gradually seemed to get hotter and closer and it sort of felt like time to leave India, despite my sadness at doing so, as from April onwards, the climate gets quite unbearable.
My final few hours at the airport, in the early hours of the 1 April, seemed to be filled with all the reminders of what I had loved about my time in India. Everyone there seemed particularly helpful and friendly and it was all feeling really sad. By the time I got on the plane I was pretty much in tears and was going into a slightly melodramatic movie-like scene of 'this is the last step I'll take on Indian soil'
inside the red fort, Delhi
as I stepped on to the plane etc etc. Which got a bit ruined by the fact then we then sat on the tarmac for 2 hours as there was something wrong with the plane, and ended up having to change planes, so I stepped back onto Indian soil sooner than I'd expected. Only apt that after all my goings-on about my travel in India, that the last
form of transport I took out of India couldn't quite go smoothly. Jet Airways were mortified as they have a really good reputation, and one of the stewards was very keen for me to read the in-flight magazine about Jet Airways which showed how good they were under normal circumstances. They were actually a really nice airline to fly with, and took me to Singapore very comfortably.
And that was India. A week on, (writing from Hong Kong), I still can't quite believe I've left India, and am really missing it. I don't feel I've really been able to put into words all that I'd like to about my experiences there, and my time there; it feels quite indescribable. I have definite plans to go back there now, hopefully after Australasia,
the things you have to be reminded of...
so maybe at the start of next year, which helps with the fact that for now I've left it behind. And my journey is continuing, and there's loads more to experience in all these other places I'll visit.
So that's all for now, don't really know how to end this today. My next one will be quite different, from
Singapore to Hong Kong to Tokyo, so till then, I'll leave it here! (more photos if you scroll down)
xxx
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Pete
non-member comment
Well Done
I have enjoyed following your journey through India - one that I hope I am able to take one day too. In the meantime, the intimicy and detail of your writing has helped give me a taste of what it must be like or was at least for you. Congratulations on your achievement and I hope that you find happiness in the rest of you travels. You ceryainly don't seem to have much trouble meeting people. Better luck with your new camera - the pictures on your site are really good.