Return To The Melting Pot

After dragging ourselves away from the relative seclusion of the Nepaese Himalaya, we fought our way through the busy Inida/Nepal border post and embarked upon another mammouth 35 hour journey through the melting pot that is India. It seems that the re-adjustment has been even more difficult then when we first arrived in Delhi.

Arriving in the busy city of Amritsar in the North of india in the middle of the middle of the night, all seemed quite peaceful until the onslaught of traffic noise, beeping horns, barking dogs and people shouting into their mobile phones in ear piercing Hindi. There has been a total explosion of mobile phones here with a shop on every corner and every other person having one in their hip pocket. Unfortunatley, nobody seems to have told them how to use them properly. Instead of holding it to their ear like normal people, Indians tend to hold it in front of them and shout at the top of their voices to be heard by the person at the other end (who has to hold the phone away from the ear in case of being deafened).

After a few hours sleep we made our way to the Golden Temple, where basic rooms and even food is totally free! The only price you pay is having to step over the hundreds of people outside the door who are sleeping literally everywhere in the temple grounds. The temple itself is pretty sunning, with a colonnade running around a holy lake with an impressive temple sitting in the middle (which is reputed to have over 650kg of solid gold throughout).

We have since made a quick escape from the crazyness of a large Indian city to the relative peace and quiet of Dharamsala and nearby McLoud Ganj in the foothills of the Indian Himalaya. McLoud Ganj is the home of many Tibetan people in excile, including the Dalai Lama himself. It's very chilled out here by Indian standards, I think we'll stay a few days to recouperate.