The whirl wind tour begins ......

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Looking back on our last three weeks in India after leaving Rakkar I am trying to remember what happened ….lots of early mornings to see the sunrises over things……. long journeys through the night……lots of people trying to sell me stuff and not taking no for an answer, ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! What else? A few nights sleeping at the Andretta house, a couple more under the stars in the desert, oh and our last two staying in what can only be described as a shoe box with no lid! In hindsight it makes sense why we were absolutely exhausted when we got to Bangkok.
I’ve now looked at my diary to refresh my memory on the details of what we got up to in those whirl wind weeks, so let’s start with our visit to Andretta.

After leaving Rakkar we went to Andretta about an hour or so to the southeast, to stay at Hazel’s house for a few days and to see Mini and Mary again. They run a pottery in the village (Mini’s father was famous for Delhi Blue pottery) and they gave us some lessons on the potter’s wheel. We actually threw a couple of pots, check out the photos for our attempts, please contact us by email for any orders or commissions! It’s definitely harder than it looks, but surprisingly therapeutic. I forgot about feeling rather ill (the Rakkar runs again..) and just made pots all afternoon - it was great!

They took very good care of us, making us feel completely at home and our stay really enjoyable despite my stomach being bad. They made sure I ate the right things to sort me out and so far I haven’t been that ill since. PS. Mary, you’ll be pleased to hear the special blue pill hasn’t been needed yet and we haven’t been stopped by customs yet either :o) !!

Mary took us on some amazing walks around the area in the hills behind Andretta house, including one to a beautiful waterfall. I hope I can keep up the speed Mary did on the walks when I am her age, I have to admit I was struggling a bit up the hills!

After 3 days at Andretta, M+ M dropped us at neighbouring Panchrukhi early one morning to catch the Kangra valley train to Pathancot over to the west parallel with the Dhaludhar mountains. The photo’s of the tracks/trains/people you see here are just a small selection of those that Geoff took….. he does get a bit carried away around railways! It took about 6 hours, but the journey was really enjoyable with beautiful steep gorges and rivers. Highly recommended!
You can see Lexa in the photo’s sitting on Pathancot station platform with our ever increasing piles of luggage… She’s also next to a mechanical weighing machine, they look like something out of the 1800’s and you find them all over India. When you stand on the plate and cough up a Rupee, things start whirring around inside and you receive a printed card with your weight and a few words of wisdom. Don’t ask me what the large plastic elephant outside the station is all about….

We then jumped on to the next train to Amritsar another few hours and a bit more of a drag than the previous scenic route and eventually arrived in Amritsar late that evening.

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