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Published: July 16th 2006
Buffalo Children
At first they were a little wary (look at her expression)afterwards we had them smiling and gigglingGone were the winding mountain passes that have characterized our trip thus far… No more of the friendly roadside dhabbas our road trip became hideous, irrepressible heat, dust storms, motorway services, blaring horns, drunken guest house owners, more heat and an abundance of traffic… to say that initially we missed the mountains would be an understatement… It is just more peaceful up there…
Chandigarh was our first stop… As soon as we were out of the mountains the heat was intense, the Grand Trunk road became a three lane motorway and the trucks, buses and thousands of other vehicles all vying for the best position… swerving round sleeping oxen and kamikaze motor cyclists coming the wrong way only served to exacerbated the heat… Getting to Chandigarh we were struck with the uncanny similarities between Milton Keynes and this city… A grid system was in place and armed with a map we thought navigating through this place would be easy… Oh no, we went the wrong way up a road and were stopped by the police (our first time) and presented with a 201 rupee fine… What for? Unsurprisingly, his English was limited to “201 rupee Sir”… Fortunately, a local hero
came to our rescue and shooed the cop away… taking us to a guesthouse he explained the level of police corruption there was and warned us to ‘just keep driving’!! Reaching the guest house we were told ‘full up’; this was to become a bit of a mantra as Chandigarh was full… Finally at 8:00pm having been on the bike for what felt like years we took what we could… an 800 rupee a night hobbit hole!
Settling we washed ate and slept… We had already decided that Chandigarh wasn’t a place for us to stay and we had designs on reaching Delhi A.S.A.P… However, the road was not easy and the temperatures only increased the next day… We had to stop over in some industrial shit heap ‘Kurukshetra’… Both suffering from sun stroke and the only guest house we could find run by a drunkard and his waster friends who somehow managed to get poor Poulet INSIDE the foyer only delaying our departure… Leaving Kurukshetra at 5 am we carried on our southward journey down the Grand Trunk… Stopping at mid-day for Indian sweets and a nap under a tree…
We stopped around 3 o’clock and rang
Us
coming out of the mountains still smiling... a hotel we had found in our guide, we booked for that night and resumed our uneventful trip to Delhi… Uneventful until we hit a dust storm just outside Delhi and had to improvise dust masks… Finally we pulled into Delhi and set about finding our hotel, another hour or two of deciphering Indian directions… Eventually we found ourselves in the tranquility of the Tibetan colony and were welcomed with the gentile and generous nature that distinguishes Tibetan people and slumped into a mammoth sleep……
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Sue In Naples
non-member comment
Hi Katie: Spoke to your Mum last weekend and she gave me your Blog address. Loved reading all about you and Chris and Poulet!!! You are braver than me, at least Mike and I stuck to Europe when we did our trip. You guys are fearless....Safe travels and keep those journals and great pictures coming, it's better than reading a good book....... Sue PS: ADAM GOT MARRIED!!!!!!