Hotel Le Golden Amritsar

We wake up and quickly get ready and scuttle up to the roof for our first look at the Golden Temple in the sunlight and it is, simply put truly stunning. Once more our photographs are in no way going to do justice to an absolutely amazing place. We take in a long lingering breakfast just staring across at the temple complex watching the sun twin...

After 6 days in China, it's time to climb the mountains to conquer the highest paved mountain pass in the world: The Khunjerab Pass, to cross into Pakistan. Highest point at 4675m (depending on which map you have, all claiming different altitudes…). The amazing moment did bypass me a bit as we drove through a Chinese gate entering Pakistan...

Our Journey from Pondicherry to Amritsar was a long long one to say the least.
In brief it breaks down like this:
5 hour bus journey from Pondicherry to Chennai
33 hour train journey from Chennai to New Delhi
11 hour train journey from New Delhi to Amritsar
We set off on Friday at 1pm and arrived on Sunday at 10pm in Amritsa...

We were reading the paper and noticed that there is a matrimonial section. There are two sections; Grooms wanted and Brides wanted. As we read the ads it appears that the parents of the young men and women are running advertisements in the paper seeking mates for their children. I have copied a few photos here to give you a sense of how it looks...

Friday afternoon, Tamir and I left Laxman Jhula and walked across the pedestrian bridge to the High Bank, just as the late afternoon rainshower was beginning. We then took a rickshaw to the bus station and a bus to the train station in Haridwar. We had a little time to get a quick meal before going inside, and when we finally entered the station...

this is the holiest city of the sikh religion and contains their most important shrine, the golden temple. we visited the temple at around 7 am, when it is at its quietest and even then it was pretty busy. our heads were covered as is required and we quietly walked around the temple which is situated in the centre of a man made lake. we then too...

Well, back online again after a long break. We're in Amritsar now close to the India-Pakistan border. We’ve extended our stay here by a day to help Steve, our group leader, an a few others recover from the stomach lurgie that’s going round the truck at the moment. We’re our staying in Mrs Bhandari’s guesthouse and it̵...

My arrival in Delhi was a fairly dramatic affair as I made my way to what I thought would be a reasonable room to rent. The Lonely Planet made no reference to the place being the disgustingly filthy place it turned out to be, with really smelly odours and no windows in some of the rooms. The sheets hadn't been changed for weeks and the bathrooms...

Claire left us in Varanasi so Ragga and I headed off together for Amritsar, where our friend Badris that we met in Delhi, came to meet us. This time we had a 24 hour train ride. It was, of course, a very humorous ride. We shared our berth with a very friendly man who was concerned with all that we did. He inspected our fruit before we ate it (we...