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No more serene peacful mountains, no more un-populated villages. we're now into the real India. I was actually taken by surprise as the bus hurtled its way towwards Amritsar in the Punjab region. Colours, crowds, noise, pollution, and more colour like I'e never seen. The bus ride was probably the most 'typically Indian thing Ive experienced so far. Crowded to the opint of not being able to move your big toe and Indian tunes blasting on the stereo while little kids and adults stared at us, the strange lookng foreigners in their homeland. Not many tourists anywhere, as a matter of fact we've only seen about half a dozen tourists in aMRitsae - a city of 1.2 million. the first thing that hit me when we arrived again was the colour, but also the dust and pollutin. if you thought lndon tubes were bad, or cambodio was bad, think again. This is 100 times more polluted and dirtier than anywhere i've travelled to so far. after about 2 hours i was blowing out thick black gunge from my nose. before i came people always said 'nothng can prepare you for india" and i tell you what, i didnt believe it until we arrived here. still feeling slightly nauseated and overwhelemed by it all we made it to our guesthouse. a nice wee place, but no hot water. we watched indian idol while we waited for the room to be cleaned - its so cheesy its terrifying! yesterday and the day before we visited the golden temple. this is where the Sikkh religion come to give blessings. punjab is the largest SIkkh region on earth. Most of the Sikkhs wear turbans uncut hair, a sword, and steel bangles. they lok amazing. 'd love to take a photot but feel shy asking them if i can incase its against their beliefs or something. the temple is amazing made out of pure gold its a pilgrimage site for not only sikkhs but tourists alike. surrounded by a large lake of water with fish swimmng about its pretty spectacular we couldnt go into the temple as the crowds were huge and we didnt have the patience, but seeng the fantastic display of colourful saris and turbans was a site to behold. we tried booking ur bus tickets for yesterday but to our dismay and first very important lession in indian train travel, found that the next 2 trains were booked out, so we have to wait here for 2 days until until tonight when we catch a 18 hour train to Jaipur and then bus it to Pushkar for the rennound camel fair on the 21st. been eating, sleeping, eating sleeping for a full day and am not sure if the lack of meat and alcohol is making up for the fact that i'm eating so much curry and bread. lets hope so! today we are going to see a temple and kill some time before our train ride outta here tonight, we have sleeper class seats (basically a crusty bed attached to the side of the train), so will be an interesting trip to be sure.
thanks for all the messages! keep them coming :D
julia x
ps. paul says HI to all
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