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Well after all the excitement of Tibet, we relaxed in Nepal for a few days (managed to blag a suite at the hotel after sweet talking the tour guide!), and then made the welcome journey to Punjab to see family and friends...
Our first stop was in Ludhiana, one of the most affluent cities in India - we seriously lived it up here for a whole week - eating out at nice restaurants, shopping, visting health spas, going to the cinema - we even watched a film in Platinum Class... yes that's right, not Gold but Platinum! You basically get a super duper luxury seat with waitress service and check this.... snacks, drinks and a curry while you're watching the movie! Besides that, our routine was pretty much, eat, sleep, then eat again, and sleep some more - soooooooo much tasty food!!!! We're getting quite used to having servants, so are bound to find things a bit tough for the rest of our trip.... the thought of cancelling the rest of our trip and staying in India has crossed our minds!!
Our next stop was the historical fortress city of Bathinda where we've got loads of family - again, same old routine... eat, sleep, shop, relax, eat again!
Next on the itinerary was Patiala to see some more family, stopping on the way at various other destinations to see yet more family! Here, we went to the biggest wedding we've ever seen with about 5000 guests and about 2000 waiting staff.... When we arrived at the wedding, it took us 15 mins to work out our strategy for how we were going to tackle the food... we were both quite pleased with ourselves after we tasted about 30 items, but then someone pointed out that these were only pre dinner snacks and that dinner was actually being served in the main hall! We tried our best to tackle the 500 dishes on the dinner menu but didn't get too far - Rupal did a sterling effort on deserts though (I think she tried about 20 out of 50!)....
Our next stop was the River Ganges at Haridwar - probably the most warming experience of our trip so far. We bathed in the freezing cold water of the Ganges during the daytime (although Rupal needed some convincing first and a bit of an unexpected push!), and then went back in the evening to see the aarti (evening worship) and to make our offerings to Ganga (a leaf boat filled with flowers and candles)... an experience we'll never forget - literally thousands of people at the river banks, thousands of candles, bells chiming and pundits chanting.... awesome! We spent the next day chilling in the Yoga capital of the North - Rishikesh and saw some of the sites such as Lakshman Jhoola.
Our round trip of Punjab has lead us back to the luxuries of Ludhiana now (by sheer coincidence of course!) - we've spent the last few days getting some dental treatment on the cheap, and watching the cricket......... CHAK DE OH CHAK DE INDIA!!!!!!!!!! India absolutely exploded in celebrations after the match against Pakistan - we've never seen anything like it before... after that nail biting match, as soon as India took the last wicket, it seemed like the whole of India came out to party on the streets - people were dancing on the roofs of cars, letting off fireworks, blasting the Chakde India song, playing the dhol on the back of motorbikes.... our car got blocked in by people partying in the streets, so we literally had to bhangra our way through the crowds otherwise they would never have let our car through! We'll post some video clips soon.
We're going to spend a few more days chilling in Ludhiana, enjoying the Punjabi lifestyle and watching the many extravagant ceremonies/festivals which take place around this time of year such as Ganesh Chauthuri, and then will be heading over to Gujarat and then Kerala in the south...
Will keep you posted - Neeshy n Rups
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