From the deserts of Rajasthan back to the Himalayas!!

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Hello everyone!

Well what do we have to tell you? Quite a lot really. India has been an experience to say the least! We began our long journey from Pokhara on the morning of the 27th, getting the early bus at 6.30am. The mountains came out one last time so we could get a last look - lovely! The bus journey was eventful! We got about 2 hours down the road and broke down - still not really sure why but it was something to do with the tyres. We stopped for around 45 mins before they fixed it, only to stop again around 1pm as something was wrong again. It was getting quite hot by then but we stayed on the bus thinking it wouldn't take too long. We were just reading when Phil suddenly felt really weird and the next thing she knew she was waking up not knowing what had happened. Apparently she'd slumped onto Sarah, and Sarah just thought she was too hot and kidding around, only to become slightly alarmed when there was no answer to repeated calls of Phil!! and no reaction to slapping of the face!!!!! Phil must have collapsed, we think from heat exhaustion - oh dear!!!! And we hadn't even got to India at this point!! A lovely German man helped out and managed to support her off the bus (he wanted to carry her!!), got a flannel to cool her down and managed to find her a place to lie down in the cool in some random Nepali's house!! He was very kind!!!

Back on the bus, Phil feeling quite weak but much better, we reached the border around 3.30pm, where we had to go through Nepali and Indian immigration - a very nice rickshaw-wallah took us all the way through to the Indian side, where we got a jeep through to Gorakpur. This was interesting, as they try and cram 12 people into a jeep. We paid for an extra seat so we had a little more room, only to be conned as they let someone else sit there when we were a few miles down the road!!!!! Our first taste of Indian trickery!!! The jeep took around 4 hours, as we stopped for ages so they could have something to eat!!!

Arrived around 8.30pm into Gorakpur train station. This was a bit crazy, very hot with millions of flies around! We got eaten alive!!! And still have scars from the little devils!! The train was 2 hours late, so arrived about 1.30am - we were knackered!!!!! We also found when we were looking for our seats that we'd been tricked again, this time by a travel agency in Pokhara, as they'd got us waiting list tickets not real ones!!! Luckily the conductor found us seats and we thankfully got into the bunks, although we were at opposite ends of the carriage! The train was surprisingly nice, and we managed to get a bit of sleep - there were sheets, pillows and blankets, and it was nice and cool from the air conditioning! Phil managed to meet a Christian pastor from Chandigarh, who decided he wanted to adopt us and for us to come and stay with him. He fed her up on bananas and tea (very sugary!!!). We managed to persuade him we didn't have time to come to Chandigarh, but it was hard work!!!! He was very useful directing us where to go when we got off the train though!!

We arrived into Delhi around 6.30 the next evening and got an autorickshaw (we love them!!) straight to Paharganj, the rather seedy tourist area. The driver was hopeless though and we had to direct him through a city we'd never been in before - seems to be quite a habit with us!! We got a room in Hotel Vishal - not very nice!! Grubby walls and loads of building work going on!!! But it was near a German Bakery which we thought was a good thing at the time! (Little did we know!!). The next day we had a walk around the city, taking in some of the sights of New Delhi like Connaught Place (main shopping area - we counted 3 MacDonalds, 1 KFC, 1 Pizza Hut, 1 TGI Fridays, 1 Subway and 1 Wimpy!!!!) and the President's House. It was hot but not too bad. That night was when it all started to go wrong (again!). Phil had awful sickness and diarrhoea (I wanted to die!!!!!!) and she is never sick, ever!!! It was awful!! Sarah was very good, trying to help with immodium and cool flannels, but it took ages to even start getting better. We blame the German bakery! The next day was completely taken out!!! The day after, Phil dragged herself out of bed so we could go and book the train to Agra (just wanted to leave Delhi!) but we ended up getting talked into hiring a driver and car for Rajasthan, as the trains aren't supposed to be very good. It was beyond our budget, but we're so glad we did it, because that night, Sarah started with S & D as well, and we're both still not right 2 weeks later!! We'd never have been able to do it by train and bus!!!

So the next morning we set off for Agra, both feeling awful! We managed to visit Humayun's Tomb (beautiful Mughal architecture) that afternoon and then collapsed into bed! The next day Sarah managed to get up and see the famous Taj Mahal at sunrise, but Phil was still feeling too ill. We both managed to see some other sights like Agra Fort and the Baby Taj. Phil finally made it to the Taj on the Thursday morning before we left for Jaipur (so glad I made it!!!). We stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, another Mughal city with a beautiful mosque and tombs and a fort, on the way.

Jaipur was another big city, but was cooler than Agra and Delhi, surprisingly, as it rained when we were there - not what we expected in the middle of the desert!! Jaipur had some amazing sights, the best was probably the Hawa Mahal, a building of 5 stories which looks like a crown, but is only 1 room deep! We also saw the City Palace, which was beautiful and had a lovely Peacock Gate, the Jantar Mantar (an observatory with VERY strange sundials, some of which were huge!!!) and the Amber Fort. We also managed to fit in a bit of shopping at an amazing craft emporium - loads of nice bags, dresses, printed bedcovers and of course pashminas - as you can imagine, this was a dangerous place for us to be!!! We made quite a few purchases! We also went to the amazing Raj Mandir Cinema, which looks like a meringue!!!! We saw a film in Hindi called 1,2,3! which we surprisingly understood quite a lot of - it was great! And really funny! Everyone in the cinema clapped and hooted so it was quite different from England!

We moved on to Udaipur on the 6th April, it's a beautiful city on a beautiful lake, but it was incredibly hot! There's a palace on the lake which is a famous hotel (wish we could have afforded to stay there!!) where they filmed Octopussy! Loads of the restaurants show Octopussy in the evenings, so of course we went to a showing! We visited the City Palace - again very beautiful! Then wasted our money on visiting the rubbish Crystal Gallery (don't bother!). Udaipur was also full of nice shops but we managed to restrain ourselves this time! While we were here we'd decided to cut short our Rajasthan trip, as many of the sights were similar so we didn't feel like we needed 16 days, and it was also so hot! We booked a trip to Kashmir (random, we know!!!) for 5 days, hopefully visiting Amritsar on the way back. We spent a couple of days in Pushkar, a pilgrimage town on another lake, which was nice, but not that many things to do, so we spent the day shopping again - Phil bought a lovely dress and Sa bought a bag!

So we spent a night in Delhi (nicer hotel this time) and flew to Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, on the 12th. Srinagar is lovely and mountainous again, but much cooler than Delhi etc, which Phil doesn't mind but Sa is not so convinced! Kashmir itself is incredibly different from the rest of India - the people are really friendly (unusual in Rajasthan!), the scenery is very green and there is much more water about. It didn't feel like we were in India at all! The hotel is fantastic!! So much posher than we've ever had before, as we booked it as part of a package tour. We had a deluxe room, with Sky TV, room service and huge windows! We stupidly didn't bring walking boots or macs with us as we didn't realise it got that cold. However, when we talked to the guide at the hotel (Mustafa) and booked a couple of day trips, it became obvious we'd need these things. Mustafa was very kind and managed to get us boots that vaguely fit, and coats that certainly don't!, and also some lovely ponchos which everyone seems to wear around here - we look lovely!!! He also took us to The Garden of Pleasure and the Tulip Garden free of charge - they were beautiful, especially the Tulip Garden! While there, we met the Chief Minister for Jammu and Kashmir - we found out later that apparently he's very corrupt and lots of people want to kill him, so there were loads of guards with guns around! That evening we ordered room service for dinner and watched Pretty Woman on the telly!! We never thought we'd be so grateful for a cold night - it was so nice to snuggle up in blankets in a nice warm bed instead of sweating in sheet sleeping bags!

The next day we had unlimited toast and tea (proper English tea!) for breakfast and were driven out to Gulmarg (2700m), a tourist village which is reminiscent of the Alps, with a cable car and ski runs. It was really snowy around there, which was weird after Rajasthan, but there were lovely views of the mountains, even though it was a bit cloudy. We even managed to see some of the Karakorum! The cable car was great, it's the highest cable car in the world (over 4000m) but we didn't go to the top as the weather wasn't good enough. Our guide was a strange man with only two teeth at the top (think it was the chain smoking!). At the top of the cable car we went sledging (so much fun!!!!!) but managed to end up getting ripped off by the guide and paying double what we should have paid - grr! We went on a walk after that back down the mountain, had a picnic on a lovely alpine meadow and saw some more wonderful views as the weather had cleared a bit by then. That evening we had room service again (!) and watched another film. Sa managed to stay up till the end but Phil is glad she didn't, as it ended up being about a man on death row who gets executed! Nice and depressing!

Next morning, after tea and toast again, we set off for Sonamarg (2600m), another village in the mountains. We stopped just before Sonamarg, in a place called Gagangir, where we went on a pony trek up a side valley. It was interesting being on the back of a pony, as neither of us had really done it before, but it was quite fun! Unfortunately, it was also quite painful, especially on the way down as the horses went at quite a steep angle. Sore muscles and bruises the next morning! After our packed lunch we drove up to Sonamarg (the road has only just been cleared for the summer) and went for a walk in the snow to see the Sonamarg Glacier - Phil was obviously excited by this! That night we moved to a houseboat on Nageen Lake - the houseboats are supposed to be the main reason for coming to Srinagar. Our houseboat (Lilly of Nigeen) was lovely and we had it all to ourselves! We were greeted with Kashmiri tea and yummy cake when we arrived, and spent the evening watching Father of the Bride (!) while being waited on hand and foot. They even provided a fire to keep us warm, and put hot water bottles in our beds! Heaven!!!

Obviously after this luxury we didn't want to leave, but we had to get to Amritsar that day. We took a jeep to Jammu, which was supposed to take 8 hours but our driver was so slow and the road was so windy that it ended up taking nearly 12 hours! By the time we arrived in Jammu it was 7.30pm and the bus to Amritsar took 5 hours (we were told) so we checked in to a hotel above the bus station - quite seedy but okay! Next morning we got the first bus possible to Amritsar, which ended up leaving at 10.30am and we ended up sitting on it for 7 and a half hours - what a lovely birthday for Phil!! Arriving about 4.30pm, we checked into the Tourist Guest House and then attempted to find a nice restaurant for dinner (that we read about in the Lonely Planet), only to find that it was closed for renovation!!! So eventually we found the Crystal Restaurant and had fish and chips and icecream and brownie (!) so the birthday ended on a good note after all! We visited the Golden Temple the next morning - it's very beautiful and peaceful, set in a nice clean lake and with the sound of the men singing from the Guru Granth Sahib coming across the water. Worth all the travel! We also visited a couple of other sights, the Jallianwala Bagh Garden and the Shree Durgiana Temple, and then it was time to catch our train back to Delhi. The train took 8 hours but was very nice and roomy, and it was air conditioned. We arrived back in Delhi last night around 11pm, knackered but very glad we decided to change our plans and go to the north.

Today we've just done a little more sightseeing in Delhi, seeing the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid (although we didn't go in as they wanted us to pay a fortune for taking in cameras even though we said we wouldn't take any pictures!). Then we grabbed a rickshaw down to Parikrama, a posh restaurant on the 24th floor which revolves so you get an amazing view over the whole city. It was expensive but worth it, and the food was really excellent - we even had puddings! Tomorrow we fly out to Sri Lanka - we're both really excited about leaving India and its troubles, even though there have been good parts too. More news once we reach Sri Lanka...

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