I have been advised to post (shit a mouse just ran over my foot haha!) a map showing the route we have followed through India and I really should do that. It would give great perspective on the distances we have covered in a short period of time.

Anyway, we arrived in Amritsar from Lucknow after a 19 hour train ride and all of us were frustrated. I had been involved in a nasty case of a number two gone wrong and had been forced to destroy the evidence in less than ideal circumstances, but that story is not suitable for this blog We stayed in a hotel opposite the train station and immediately set out for some lunch.

Amritsar is north west of Delhi and when you look at a map of India, it is very high up and near the border of Pakistan. It is an interesting place as it is predominantly Sikh and is culturally (and visually) very different to the rest of India. All the men have enormous beards and wear turbans in which they tie their hair up in buns. Sikh men never cut their hair, and I felt rather bald walking among such mighty mounds of hair protruding not just from their chins, but from their ears too!

I found Amritsar particularly daunting at first as all my ignorance about the middle east and Islam surfaced due to the slightly similar appearance of the Sikh men. I guess the turban and the beards immediately makes us westerners think Islam which leads to fundamentalism which leads to terrorism. However this prejudice was immediately dismantled once I spoke to a few men and they were incredibly friendly, gentle and honorable in any business dealings we had with them. In fact as we walked down the street, people would frequently come up to us to ask if we needed help or directions without wanting anything in return. I rate Amritsar as the place where people were the kindest to us and also the most honest. Honesty is something you really come to appreciate in India as so many people try and screw with you.

Amritsar is best known for the Golden Temple which was covered with 750kg of gold in 1802 by Maharaja Ranjit Singh who is a very well known Indian personality. We went to the Golden temple the morning after arriving to see the sunrise and it was indescribably spectacular. The temple area is large and packed with Sikh’s who go there daily to pray. The temple sits in the middle of an open area and is surrounded by water. A walkway leads right around the water and buildings surround it all. As you walk in, the temple is dazzling. As the red sun climbed into the sky, it shone brilliantly onto the gold which reflected perfectly onto the water. As the sun rises, the colours change and the light hits the gold from a higher angle until it shines directly on top of the temple.

Watching the sun shift its aim at the gold and refract the light in a kaleidescope of colours and shades was really breathtaking. It was the kind of sight you would never get used to - like the sunset into the ocean.

Four Sikh men sing prayers 24 hours a day inside the temple. They sit cross legged on cushions singing in deep poetic voices in 4 hour shifts so that the music never stops. This adds to the mystique and Holiness of the place as their voices are projected through speakers right around the temple area.

The Sikh’s inside the temple were incredibly proud of their temple and everyone was asking us what we thought of it. Everyone was smiling and it was obvious that we were in a very holy and special place. What an experience!

Amritsar was a cool place. Lots of good food and great conversations with Shane and Nicola over fantastic coffee. It doesn’t matter how incredible the sites you see are, in the end it all comes down to conversations and these are the things I”ll remember most fondly about our time there, sharing our coffees with a few friendly mice.

However we only had two days there and it ended for me too quickly. The morning we were due to leave, I went out to get a coffee and a feed. I realised I had no money left and needed to get some from an ATM (don’t do anything last minute in India!). I went to 6 different ATM’s by rickshaw and none of them would accept my card, or else they were out of money. It got to the point where it was 15 minutes before we were due to get on a 6 hour bus and I still hadn’t eaten or packed and I was totally flustered. I was lost, I didn’t have a map or a Lonely Planet, and I was starving.

Suddenly my rickshaw pedaled past Shane and Nicola who were going for a stroll and I leaned out of my rickshaw in a sweaty panic/flustered rage and said “Ï’m not coming. I haven’t eaten, the fucken ATM’s won’t give me any money. I’m not going”. Shane and Nicola looked slightly bewildered as my rickshaw slowly pedaled off into the distance.

I stayed another day and was very happy I did. I calmed down, ate some food and managed to get some money out. The next morning I met this really cool Sikh rickshaw driver and he took me around to see a different side of Amritsar - the rich area, some cool parks and monuments, and another temple and museum. Then he took me to the bus and we stopped off at a street tandoor where I had the best naan I’ve ever had with butter and spicy beans. I’ll add some photos soon.

However the highlight of Amritsar (along with the Golden Temple) was going to the Pakistan border to a place called Attari which is about 30km west. That will come in the next installment and was one of the most unique and hilarious experiences of my life.

Well once again my blog post begins with an apology for not posting the updates I promised, however there is justification this time! We were caught in the bombs that went off in Delhi.

Tali arrived in Delhi and I picked her up from the airport on the 13th. We dropped her stuff off at a nice hotel I had booked near Connaught Place which is the city centre of Delhi and the business hub. We got an auto rickshaw into Connaught Place and had lunch at a fancy restaurant, and then walked around for a while checking out the shops.

Later that day we went back to our hotel and chilled out for the afternoon and crashed early as Tali was very jetlagged. In the morning, Shane and Nicola came around to our hotel at 11am and we caught the train to Old Delhi to see the Red Fort. After that we walked through the hectic markets of Old Delhi and went to a great restaurant to get Tali an authentic Indian feast.

It was a hot day and we got the train back to our hotel around 2pm, drained from the humidity and the craziness of Old Delhi which is so so busy. Shane and Nicola told us to check out the markets just up the road from our hotel in the afternoon, and we then organised to meet at our hotel at 6pm for drinks and have dinner at Connaught Place.

Tali and I were keen to go to the markets, but we crashed out and didn’t wake up until 5ish. At 6pm we waited in our courtyard and had a beer with two guys who were also staying at our hotel. They were good blokes and had done a lot of trekking around the world including the Annapurna Circuit. Shane and Nicola still hadn’t arrived at 6.30pm and we just thought they had fallen asleep or were running late.

I can’t remember the exact time they arrived but I think it was around 6.40pm. They appeared in our front garden, Shane covered in sweat and his face had a really weird shocked expression on it. He said “there’s been a bomb. We just saw a bomb go off”. Nicola started crying and we realised how serious it was. We turned on the tv and the news was already showing videos of women being carried away covered in blood, dripping on the floor, and there was debri and people everywhere. We were scared shitless…

Shane and Nicola had been in an autorickshaw heading for our place when the bomb had gone off in the markets 150m in front of them. These were the markets Tali and I were going to go to that afternoon and the markets Shane and Nicola had been at the day before. The only reason Shane and Nicola were 150m away and not closer is that Shane was arguing with the driver over the price. The two of them had to run to a train station and fight with crowds of people to get onto the train amid the uncertainty of whether other blasts were going to go off. It was genuine fear for their lives.

As we watched the news, we discovered 5 bombs had gone off and the death toll was rising. I think it is sitting around 22 dead now. An Islamic group claimed responsibility which really cemented the fact we were caught in the middle of a terrorist attack. We called our parents right away to tell them we were ok, and then we called the Australian Embassy to seek advice. We didn’t know whether to get the next flight out of Delhi or sit tight.

We had a train booked for Agra the next morning and after a long talk we decided to stick to that. The problem was that Shane and Nicola’s hotel was right next to where the bomb went off and they had to leave our hotel to go back to theirs and pack their bags and get their pasports. They left about 10pm and the bomb squad had found 3 more bombs and were still searching for more. I can’t imagine what that auto rickshaw back to their hotel would have been like as they had to go right past the bomb site.

Shane and Nicola were so lucky and so were we. The other bombs went off in Connaught Place which is where we would have been having drinks if Shane and Nicola were on time. They were running late because Shane was watching soccer (typical Shane). I didn’t sleep much that night - it was bad enough our hotel was in the vacinity, but what freaked me out was that two of our friends were one minute away from potentially getting blown up and it was the tiniest of variables that prevented it. You can rationalise all those variables and the reasons why we avoided the bombs are logical, but I think now there’s something else - luck, fate or some reason why everything came together to keep us safe. I dunno - but it’s good to be in Agra.

We’re staying here for 2 more days and just to be safe, we’re getting a private car straight to Delhi airport - neither of us want to get on a train to Delhi.

Anyway, we’re heading off to see the Taj Mahal and check out the sites of Agra. Tomorrow we’re going to an expensive hotel and are going to chill at their pool for the day and drink overpriced cocktails. I know i keep breaking the chronology of the blog, but after this I will get you up to date with Amritsar.

I’ve found it hard keeping up to date with the blog as once I fall behind, there’s so much to say that I lose interest. But tomorrow morning I will post a few mighty updates after my morning double espresso. In the meantime I’ll tell you a story about the trek which was one of the highlights for me.

It was day 7 and we had reached an elevation of 3,000m at a place called Manang. Manang is a small Tibetan influenced village with incredible mud houses hundreds of years old. Day 7 was our acclimatisation day and we were meant to spend the day resting, getting used to the altitude, and hopefully increasing the amount of red blood cells to cope with the reduction in oxygen as we climbed.

We did a short but very steep 500m ascent up a mountain on one side of the village of Manang. Up there was a spectacular view of the village, a violent river, and a panoramic view of endless mountains dotted with buffalo, goats, and an incredible glacier. On the other side of the village, directly opposite us, was a much higher mountain which I guess was about 1,500m high. About 1,000m above the village set into this mountain was one lonely white house, a small white speck.

Leading up to this house were incredibly steep switch backs (a path that zig zags upwards) which looked very dangerous. I asked our guide what the white house was and he told me that a monk lived up there. I was astonished as this was 4,000m above sea level and 1,000m above the village - incredible isolation. The monk had lived in this house for 35 years in meditation and was now 90 years old. He never left the house, ever, and his family carried food and water up to him daily.

It was things like this which made the trek so unique. Beyond the scenery, we met people and saw things so distinct and foreign that you would not experience them anywhere else in the world. Here we were, a 7 day walk into the mountains of Nepal, 3,000m high, looking up at a place where a man has sat in meditation for 35 years. A renouncer who has left the world to focus the mind in an attempt to stop generating any negative karma which would continue to bind him to the cycle of death and rebirth.

A lot of people would say this is a wasted life and a lot of Buddhists would agree - meaningful engagement in the world is a central tenet of Buddhism and is tied up with the notion of compassion and the Bodhisattva (of which the Delai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation)- putting off one’s own liberation from suffering to help others.

We sat up on this mountain for a few hours and just talked, with no one to hear us but the soft flowing  pure air, the birds, and the sound of the water from the glacier. Shane and I threw rocks and I naturally dominated at hitting our set targets. The simplicity and profundity of that moment has etched itself into my fondest memories of life, and to me that cemented what I hope to be a life long friendship with Shane and Nicola.

Sorry I have been a bit slack in keeping things updated. We have been travelling such long distances that when we get somewhere, the last thing I want to do is get on the internet. From Varanasi we got a train to a place called Lucknow. Shane had seen it on ‘The Amazing Race’ and this was the reason why he wanted to go. Apparantly the food was good too and it is famous for kebabs. The kebabs we deep fried, small rolled up veggie patties and were not ‘good’… Thanks Shane.

The time in Lucknow was great and it has a rich history with the British. It was the place where the Indians took on the British and fought an 87 day battle at the British residency in 1857. There are cannon ball and bullet holes at the residency (which is a series of buildings spread around a large maintained garden. As a result of this battle, Lucknow is a place of great national pride.

However the highlight was Bara Imambara which is a huge building which contains a labyrinth with over 1000 different route possibilities. I’ve never seen such incredible and unusual architecture, and because the walls are hollow, a whisper reverberates all throughout the small narrow halls. So as you’re walking down, whispers are coming from everywhere as though you are in a horror movie. 

The food definitely didn’t warrant the long distance and the town is not really equipped for tourists - little english, everyone staring at us, a few guys heckling me, and we only saw 4 whities in 2 days, but overall it was an interesting experience - very modern and a unique Indian snapshot which is Western in one sense, but not at all geared for Westerners. 

My favourite meal wasn’t the tastiest, but was the best experience. We went to a very local restaurant - dirty, low plastic chairs, everyone eating with their hands etc. It was packed with Indian’s and there was only one choice on the menu - veg or non veg. We had an absolute feast of different curries, rice and unlimited chapati (I had 5). The bill came to 60 rupees for the three of us (50 cents each). 

We left Lucknow to head to Amritsar and arrived at the train station one hour early to make sure we didn’t miss it. It was due at 6pm, but it didn’t arrive until 8.30pm. There were no updates and it was very hard to find information. It also changed platforms at the last minute for no apparent reason which left us feeling very flustered. The train station at Lucknow was the dirtiest place I have ever been to and there were rats everywhere feasting on the rubbish. There are also people EVERYWHERE and it was incredibly humid as we sat on our bags waiting on the platform. It was also interesting when there was a power cut and we were left in darkness surrounded by rats and extremely poor people - a rather unpleasant and disconcerting mix.

But we finally got the train which ended up being 19 hours long and by the time we arrived in Amristsar we were frustrated as hell as we had been travelling for almost 24 hours. More on Amritsar soon