After returning to Vashisht in Manali we again stayed at the Dharma Hotel over looking the valley and snow capped peaks, we booked our next night bus journey back to Dharamsala. The bus left at 10pm and we had to endure another 8 hours on a rickety bus. This time we booked a sleeper bus and sort of slept as we got chiucked about as the bus steamed around the corners. Its best not to watch where the driver is going as they have a habbit of taking over on blind corners with a huge drop of the side. We arrived at Dharamsala at 4am, i was just pleased to get of the bus. Woke up the taxi driver and went back to the Pink House, where we had pre booked.

Getting back to the Pink House was good, the ownwer Javid a young Kashmiri man was the one of the nicest Indians we met. The hotel is set in a lovely valley with a roof top cafe and has the cleanest bathrooms we have encountered in India. The room cost 400rp (a fiver)a night. we had our last look at the Monastery and said good bye to the monks as our next place to visit is Amritsar.

We thought it would be best to hire a taxi for the 7 hour journey as the week before one of the tourist buses went over the edge a killed a few Indian tourists. Javid sorted the taxi out for a good price, which is unusual as they normally take a cut of some sort. The road to Amritsar dropped as we left the mountains and as we did the temperature rose, we were back into the heat. The road was lined with cannabis plants ansd obviously went all the way into Pakistan. Once we were in Amritsar we got to the Hotel Grand, because it had a pub..weh-hey. The hotel was not so grand but it had air con and we needed it. The place was boiling.

We headed to the Golden Temple the following day, a glorious day of burning sunshine. Took a cycle rickshaw there, got ripped by him, he charged us treble the rate. You get used to being ripped of when in India, only by a little bit but it stills annoys us. Took our shoes to the shoe store where you get a massive cheesy foot smell from all of the flip flops stored there. Got a scarve for my head as you need to cover it when inside the temple. Washed our feet in the pool and headed in with the thousands of Indians. The white marble floor burnt our feet if we strayed of the matts but the sight of the golden temple set in the lake was amazing. Thousands of Indians, brightly coloured sarees and turbans, people bathing in the lake, the gleaming golden temple with thousands of people queueing to enter it. We did not bother to wait as it was so hot. Collected our shoes and headed of through the old town past the old crumbling Rhaj style buildings.

Late that afternoon we headed out to Atari to watch the closeing of the Indian Pakistan border. The sun was still beaming and the Indians were flooding in on coaches to watch matcho theatrics of the Indian army close the gate. A huge stadium was built on both sides of the border to hold the thousands of Indiands and hundreds of Pakistanis, to let them cheer and clap their sides. The heat was intense in the heaving electric crowd and the sweat was pouring of us. Never have we sweated so much, the water was dripping of our chins and everone was standing in a pool of water. The concrete benches were to hot to sit down on and we did not have enough water. The army stomped up and down in a goose step style and saluted and stomped as the crowd cheered and chanted, like a football match. After an hour of theatrical play by both sides the flags were finally lowered at the same speed to show respect to either side. While the two sides tried to out cheer each other the gates were closed and every one left.

That was our Amritsar trip and again we left on another night bus, this time on comfy seats and we headed to Delhi. We arrived in Delhi about 7am, the homless families still sleeping on the streets as we headed back to the Red Castle hotel. Our last destination from here was a day trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and the largest Fort in India, the Red Fort of Agra. We went on the fastest train in India the Shatabadi Express. We arrived in Agra about 8am and headed straight to the Taj with our auto rickshaw driver Ali who we hored for the day for 450rp. The white marble Taj Mahal gleamed and is larger than i remember. We wandered around in our shoe covers mingling with the Indian tourists whopwant your photgraph with their family, which we kindly obliged, we never found out why they want our photo. The Taj is a beautiful symetrical building inlaid with semi precious stones. It definately deserves to be a wonder of the world. Next we headed to the red fort after dinner at a resturant our driver suggested because he gets fed for free there. You have to be carefull as some resturants poison you and call the doctor who charges your insurance company thousands to sort you out. Later the rain came and we sta in another temple nick named the baby Taj, even though it was built before in the classic Moghul style. The town of Agra itself is another dirty Indian city with a huge black river running through were we could see Indians bathing and doing there washing. At about 8pm we headed back to the train station to get our ride back to Delhi.

A day later we were heading to the airport at 4am to leave for Hong Kong.