Longest train journey ever!

This update is just going to be about my weekend, as it was quite an adventure and I haven’t done much else since my last update!

So on Wednesday we suddenly planned to go away for the weekend to Amritsar (North-East of Delhi, near to the border of Pakistan) with Nikki (the girl from America) and Raman (a girl who goes to City School). So Saturday morning at 2.30am our alarms went off to get us up to get to the station in time ready for our 4.30am train (which was then 30 mins late)! The journey took 12 and half hours, and was yet another Indian experience! Although not a particularly nice one – it was a sleeper train so it was very weird sleeping in the early hours of the morning on a bunk bed surronded my lots of Indian men snoring close by. At one point I opened my eyes to see a man in handcuffs walking by followed by a couple of important looking security type men. We finally reached Amritsar at 5.30pm, and caught a rickshaw to the Golden Temple (New record – 6 people in one autorickshaw!). After about 45 minutes of wondering back and forth between several apartment buildings (which had free accomodation) we discovered that there were no available rooms. In the end we had 6 beds made up in the middle of a big empty corridor. After setting up our beds we headed to get some food, and then walked around the Golden Temple. We didn’t actually go in, but it was amazing from the outside especially all lit up in the dark. We then headed to bed for an early night ready for another early morning.

We were planning to get up at around 3.30am, ready to be inside the temple at 4am to see the Holy Book being brought out, but we woke up a bit late and got outside 5 minutes too late, so just went back to bed again! Sunday was a pretty packed day, we started off by having a huge breakfast and then went inside the Golden Temple. It was pretty incredible – lots of gold (suprisingly!) and very detailed decorating, it was beautiful. Part of the temple is now also a museum of painting of previous Guru’s and fights between India and Pakistan. Some of these paintings were pretty disturbing to see what terrible things the Pakistan Army did to the Indians. Our next stop of the day was some a nearby garden where many Indian martyrs had died. We then caught an autorickshaw to a Hindu temple we wanted to visit, but we were taken to the wrong one. This temple was a bit of a disappointment to be honest, the one we visited in Birmingham was more impressive! So we then went to the right one which was very interesting… it reminded me of a fun house at the fair. We had to follow the path around which took us past lots of statues of Gods, made us crawl through these rock-type things and paddle through a stream of water. It was yet another interesting Indian experience!

Having looked around these temples we then travelled about 45 mins to reach the border between India and Pakistan to watch the closing ceremony. It was VERY busy, and not the place to be if you don’t like crowds. There didn’t seem to be much of a ceremony though – just lots of chanting and the guards closing the gates and putting down the flags, but I guess I can now say I’ve been about 100m away from Pakistan!

Sunday evening we decided to go back to the Golden Temple to see the Holy Book being put away, but about 10 minutes before the ceremony began I felt ill, and fainted so left the temple straight away and missed it all, which I was slightly annoyed about. (Though I doubt many people can say they’ve fainted in the Golden Temple!!)

Monday morning we then travelled home on a very squished 8-hour train journey! I was relieved to finally be home and rest. The rest of this week I’ve had to miss school and stay at home, as I’ve been suffering from mild Delhi belly (I think I spoke too soon in my last update!!). Even though I only missed 3 days, I really missed all the girls and children there! I was very glad to be back today!


And that was my weekend… anyone beat it?!?

Hope you’re all doing well, and it’s not too cold in England!! (Less than one month until Christmas!!)

Love, Hannah xx