When China invaded Tibet in 1949, the Tibetans started to migrate away southwards towards Nepal and India. At first, they were just a trickle, but they became a steady stream. They walk over the high Himalayas carrying only what they escaped with and for weeks at a time. When His Holiness the Dalai Lama eventually went into exile in 1959, he and the Tibetan government-in-exile established themselves in Dharamsala (actually pronounced Dharamshala). Ever since th...

We were not sad to see Amritsar rolling past our train windows as we headed for the Himalayas. Well past the city boundaries, the air becomes clear and the land changes to well cared for and maintained farms. Although the land here is flat, you imagine that these farms stretch to the horizons and up to the places where farms just can't go. There is a definite feeling of an un-ending space that is bordered by the snow capped mountain ranges in the north. T...

Attari border shows Only in this part of the world is the mundane everyday routine elevated to a grand spectator sport! At every other land border crossing anywhere else in the world, the gates are closed without a whimper and the officials go home at the proscribed time and the sunsets peacefully. But here, at the one border crossing between these two national rivals of India and Pakistan, it is an event that has pasted beyond strange into the realms of ...

Amritsar and its GoldenTemple The Sikhs' beating heart is here. The GoldenTemple is a temple that seems to sit in a pool of sacred nectar called amrit, giving the city its name. The GoldenTemple floats elegantly in the middle of this pool connected to the mainland by the bridge of gurus. Every morning the sacred book, the Guru Granth Sahib (a holy book equivalent) is brought out at 04h30 with much fanfare and care and every evening at 22h15, it is returned to it...

The seething, heaving mass of people called Delhi is that capital of this hugely cosmopolitan land. Here about 15million people call home. Home could be a patch of pavement you find yourself on at day's end. Or it could be a mansion of extraordinary extravagance where your every care is taken care of. Every manner of housing is here from plastic sheet hovels and tin sided shanties to brand new sky reaching apartment blocks for India's nouveau rich is catered for....