I was woken by the entire train shaking.
I couldn’t quite work out what was happening.
At first I thought we were having an earthquake but then the horse started braying.

I clutched my top bunk and peered into the darkness. Then it brayed again, but louder. Had the train acquired a farm? It took me a while to regain my senses. And then I realised it was the man below me. Lying on his back and snoring, making the most horrendous sound I have ever heard. It was so bad I was tempted to shove a sock in his mouth but the sheer power of his respiratory structures would have blown the sock to smitherines. So instead I endured it with my iPod on full blast.
And just for the record yes, yes I could still hear him. Braying away.

Snoring
Dictionary definition: “to breathe during sleep with hoarse or harsh sounds caused by the vibrating of the soft palate.”

My definition: “to make an unfathomable amount of noise during sleep with such hoarse or harsh sounds that could wake the dead. These sounds are caused by the vibrating of the soft palate and sound like farmyard animals at feeding time. Said vibrations are likely to cause the earth surrounding the palate to shake uncontrollably, resembling an earthquake.”

Anyway, back to the blog…

Amritsar
And then we arrived in Amritsar, Punjab, fresh from an 18 hour train journey fuelled by one man’s snores.
At the train station we acquired a cycle rickshaw to take us 3km to our hostel. Now, we’re not keen on cycle rickshaws because we always feel mean sitting on the back while a man struggles to pedal us on his rusty bike to our place of abode. And this time was no different as our driver was aged approximately 92, but then we felt bad taking our business away from him. It’s a vicious cycle (excuse the pun). So we set off on our rickshaw feeling extremely guilty. I couldn’t tell if it was the bike creaking or the drivers’ knees. And then we hit the ‘hill’, at this point it was all too much and we had to get out of the cart and help push the rickshaw up the slight incline. Our bags had a grand old time sitting in the back, chilling and smiling at us with their cheeky Osprey eyes. And myself and Lyvette marched our rickshaw and driver through Amritsar much to the amusement of the people of Punjab. Basically we payed to walk our bags to our hostel.

Amritsar was nice, Lyvette’s favourite city, and the Golden Temple is truly beautiful. We had breakfast there which was a great experience. The temple provides hot meals aka langars for up to 100,000 people a day for free (you can make donations if you wish). You sit in a massive hall while volunteers serve you and other staff work in the kitchen, preparing food, washing up etc. This is no easy feat as you can imagine and no one is turned away, everyone is welcome here to eat which is an amazing service to humanity and also humbling to experience.
I, however was not at all comfortable at being stopped by a man jabbing a spear between my ribs because my head wasn’t adequately covered. Apparently a hood is not sufficient. But it was fine, I survived and we spent the day mooching around and being asked for selfies with the entire population of Punjab (this is quite common in India, white people are a novelty). Lyvette then decided to undertake a new hobby -for every selfie she was approached for she decided to take her own selfie as well, so she now has a phone full of selfies with random Indian strangers, as you do.

We went to bed that night dreaming of the Golden Temple bathing in its beauty. That was until I was rudely awoken by another braying horse. We were sharing a room with Indian boys, and what I am learning about Indian people is that they can snore. And I mean SNORE. To the point where it’s not even funny. They could have reached a combined total of 9.8 on the Richter Scale in one swift intake of breath. I almost ran back to the temple to steal the guards spear and ram it into the boys’ nasal passages.

One thing we especially enjoyed about Amritsar was the way people gave us directions in ‘shops’.
Excuse me where can we buy milk? “10 shops on the right.” Brillant.
Where is the chemist? “20 shops on the left.” Gotcha.
But what we never realised is that working in shops is quite confusing. I mean, what is a shop? Does a building with a shutter class as a shop? And what about a hole in the wall with someone skinning potatoes…shop or not? And are shut shops included in the shop direction situation? Who knew shops could be so confusing.

We returned to our hostel (via our directions in shops) to find the snoring Indian guys had checked out and been replaced by two Indian girls. Yeyyyyyyy. I did a celebratory fist pump.
And then…
One.
Of.
The.
Girls.
Started.
Snoring.
NEXT TO MY HEAD.
My insides crumbled, the walls of the dorm shook once again and the braying horse equipped with its loudspeaker stampeded back into the room, while I was left Googling why Indian people snore so badly. It was the finally straw and after Google gave me no relevant answers I spent the next 6 hours wondering if I could get done for assault for launching my Lonely Planet at a (not so) innocent (in my eyes) sleeping girls face.

We also went to see the changing of the guards at the India/Pakistan border, which was one of the strangest things we have ever seen. Basically it was a lot of Indians partying and their ability to party is amazing. Their sheer enthusiasm for dancing is infectious and I never tire of watching them let loose. You will find men, women and children shaking their hips like no one is watching and quite frankly I find their carefree attitude refreshing. The party was rudely interrupted by the actual show which involved the guards stomping and kicking their legs in the air like they were participating in River Dance. I’m not sure Queeny would ever run such a show at Buckingham Palace.

Dharamsala
We left the snorers behind (PRAISE THE LORD) and headed to Dharamsala (where the Delai Lama often resides). An 8 hour journey, on a bus that was so old I swear dinosaurs once used it. And then our vehicle broke down. And, I might add it was freezing. When we finally got started again the bus was so bumpy the guy next to me hit his turban on the roof and we arrived in the mountains with me feeling sick because I was so cold. It was the worst night of my travels so far. My northern roots had finally deserted me and my ability to survive the baltic Manchester winters had clearly become a thing of the past. And then, after 19 months of avoiding it, I finally got Delhi Belly. And I couldn’t eat. My world had ended. Just for the record I liked it here, I was just not equipped for the cold (I am now officially a wuss).

Rishikesh
Armed with brand new fleecey pants, hats and gloves we headed to the ‘yoga capital of the world’, determined to get bendy and wrap our legs around our heads. That didn’t happen. But I did get head butted in the vagina by a cow. A few times. Luckily this cow only had tiny horns or I could have been in trouble. Lyvette reckons he had little man syndrome.

On our first day here we attempted to find an ashram. This was harder than it should have been and resulted in me begging to do yoga at what appeared to be a prison, or some highly guarded cell like building. Then I found the perfect place,
“Excuse me do you do yoga?”
“No ma’am…we’re a hospital.” That was awkward.

In the end we just stayed in a hostel and did two yoga sessions a day and we bloody loved it. There was that one evening when the hostel tried to offer us a bed on the balcony. Outside. In (what felt like) sub zero conditions. We gracefully declined. In the end we stayed nearly a week and I’d go as far as to say Rishikesh is my favourite place in India. I even got into yoga (something I’ve struggled with in the past), even though I started off a bit unsure when I opened my eyes at the end of the class and found I was sat the opposite way to everyone else, facing the class with my back to the teacher. But I did manage to do a banana shaped headstand.
We also tried meditation but it just wasn’t for us. I was too busy wondering what I could have for breakfast and Lyvette couldn’t concentrate because the man next to her kept farting. She also went for a massage and returned looking like she’d dipped her head in a chip pan. Her hair looked so wet I actually wondered if it was raining but apparently the woman had just started slapping her about the head with a fistful of oil. I decided against a massage after the head slapping incident.

One day we got lost and asked a European man on a motorbike for directions. We enjoyed his response;
“I don’t know how to say this in English but if you were a bird you’d just go straight.”
Lyvette looked at him in confusion, “Ok well I’m not a bird, do I still go straight?”
I actually loled.

A week later when my vagina could no longer withstand its daily head butting from the hostel cow we left the ‘yoga capital of the world’ and headed to the ‘spiritual capital of India’ that is Varanasi. We’d had a great week free from braying horses and left with super stretchy limbs, bruised pubic regions and a head full of oil.

And then we arrived in Varanasi and that was an experience. Probably the strangest experience we’ve had in India but more likely the strangest experience we’ve had on our entire travels.

Such an experience in fact that it requires its very own blog…