It's official - I have left Goa! (For a little while anyway!) I'm currently in Amritsar avec ma mere and we're having a fabulous time. We flew to Delhi in the early hours of 4th February and even that journey turned out to be hilarious. I'm not sure if it was the lack of sleep that made everything seem funny but we couldn't stop laughing. The main reason for this was a group of men travelling with us who looked like the Indian version of the Village People or something. I've never seen such shiny clothes (cream silk shirts, black silk trousers), such hilarious shoes (the pointiest boots I've ever seen, even cowboy stacked heels!) and extremely high waisted tight trousers. Another English woman sitting nearby couldn't hide her giggles either, I really hope they didn't realise we were laughing at them!! Thankfully I managed to sleep on the flight (four hours to Delhi via Bombay) and after a quick taxi ride we arrived at Para Ganj in Delhi, I was back in the hustle and bustle that I'd missed so much since October. Everything was the same - crowds everywhere, having to avoid being run over by cycle rickshaws, puppies all over the place - the only HUGE difference was the weather, it was FREEZING COLD! Ok that's probably an exaggeration but after you've been spending your days in 40 degree heat (30 degrees at 9pm!) suddenly arriving into 20 degrees is quite a shock to the system believe me! I remembered Delhi being swelteringly hot, constant bright sunshine and needing a hand held fan. Yet here I was, wearing jeans, two tops, a cardigan and a scarf and I was really really cold. I know those of you in England are not exactly going to be sympathetic as I've heard it's snowing back home but honestly, for the first time in 4 months I've actually been cold and it felt very very strange. We popped into the Vivek Hotel (where I stayed before) to check our reservation for 12th February - we have a couple of days in Delhi on the way back - and to grab a bite to eat. This, as it turned out, was a mistake. Or I should say really that our food selection was a mistake. We both chose the spaghetti carbonara but what arrived at our table WAS NOT spaghetti carbonara. It was essentially spaghetti with scrambled egg, huge chunks of fatty bacon and grated cheese. I had one mouthful, mum managed two, then we both gave up. It was absolutely disgusting and we had no idea what to do with it all. In the end, I ordered some hummus and pita breads, put all the pasta on one plate, put the other on top of it and moved it to another table with hope that they wouldn't ask us about it or ever mention it again! Mum fondly remembers this occasion as 'spaghetti gate' - it actually makes me feel a little sick just thinking about it but it was really funny at the time!

We spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering around Para Ganj, checking out some of the small shops around the area and looking at jewellery and smaller gifts. We got ourselves a cycle rickshaw over to Connaught Place for a wander as well and saw another site that you don't often see in Goa - a junkie who had obviously fallen onto a fire and passed out. This man easily had third degree burns on his chest, track marks allover his arms and was just laying writhing on the pavement. I've seen a lot of things in India but I will never get used to seeing someone who quite obviously needs immediate medical attention and has just been left laying on the street whilst people walk on by and carry on with their day. It was really really awful. On a more positive note, we later met a lovely man named Ohm who really cheered us up and absolutely made my day. He owns a little shop that sells clothes (I bought some fantastic dip dyed grey harems from him) and he insisted on getting his photo albums out to show us photographs of him when he was younger. No word of a lie, he honestly looked like a Bollywood movie star! So handsome and dashing, he even did a little dance for us when we said so! He showed us another album of all his foreign friends. We're going to have some pictures taken with him when we get back to Delhi and print them so we can go in his book too!

Our train to Amritsar left Delhi at 4:30pm and luckily we had no problems finding the platform (Platform 1 - out of over 20, I was so happy!) and finding our seats so we had quite a relaxed departure from Delhi. The journey was only 6 hours which is a hop skip and a jump in terms of Indian train journeys and it really did fly by. We'd expected the weather to be colder in Amritsar but we were a bit surprised during the journey when it started to rain, thunder and lightning - not weather that we had packed for at all!! Before I knew it we were arriving into Amritsar (where it was even colder as expected but thankfully dry!) and piling into an auto rickshaw to make the short journey to the Grand Hotel. Mum didn't realise that one side of the rickshaw had a false wall (just fabric - the rickshaws here don't have doors at all or even bars to stop you falling out) and within 5 metres of us setting off both of the suitcases tumbled out of the rickshaw onto to the road. After the driver retrieved them and we set off again, I noticed a man chasing the rickshaw. Silly naive me thinks we've dropped something and he's chasing us to give it back to us - how wrong could I be. He reached the moving rickshaw, grabbed the side of it, swung up and grabbed my leg and tried to pull me out of the moving taxi! I was so shocked that I didn't react physically at all except to scream which prompted the driver to brake sharply, jump out and beat the hell out of this drunk lunatic who was trying to grab me. Once the guy was on the ground he jumped back in and took off at speed, leaving mum and I in total shock at what had just happened. Thankfully, we reached the hotel just as they were calling last orders so I managed to have a drink to settle my nerves - what a welcome to Amritsar! After our drinks we crawled into bed, sleeping under a huge quilt to keep us warm (I had my lovely boy's sweatshirt as well to keep me cosy) and after such an exhausting day we had a well deserved night's sleep.

We had two days in Amritsar so we didn't waste any time getting ourselves over to the Golden Temple straight away. We bought our own head coverings outside (it never occurred to me to do this in Delhi but what a lovely souvenir!), dropped off our shoes and set off into the temple. Thankfully it wasn't as cold as the previous evening but being barefoot when you're otherwise bundled up in layers left my feet absolutely freezing! Once we got inside though, all thoughts of my frozen toes disappeared as soon as I saw the Golden Temple itself. It really is as beautiful as it looks in photographs and on television but just like the Taj, it cannot really be captured, you need to see it in person to really appreciate it. It was a lot smaller than I'd imagined but just as awesome and the whole place has a fantastic energy - I suppose it's because unlike the Taj it's still a living breathing working place rather than a grave and it really does feel alive with faith. It was filled to the brim with Sikhs from allover the world, making the journey to see their most holy place - it's like the Mecca of the Sikh faith and all Sikhs are supposed to make the journey to the Golden Temple at least once in their lifetime. People were praying, reading, sleeping, bathing in the waters - people were alone or in huge families, and aside from a couple of other westerners we were the only ones. We wandered all around it, trying to take it all in, and spent the better part of a couple of hours just looking at it before we decided to leave, planning to come back that evening to see it all lit up at night. We hadn't yet managed to enter the temple itself as the queue was huge - another thing that we hadn't really realised when booking to come in early February was that this isn't a peak time for western tourists, it is however a peak time for Sikhs from allover the world and we decided to leave visiting the temple until the evening hoping that the queue might be smaller by then. As we left the temple I was left with a strong feeling of (for want of a better word) jealousy. It happens whenever I'm in religious places recently but I feel to jealous of people who have faith - the Golden Temple, the Jama Masjid in Delhi, so many different places with different beliefs but still that same faith, same comfort, same guidance and feeling of belonging to something. It's an odd thing to say I know but standing there I really did feel like I'm missing out on something somtimes. Still, it's not like you opt into belief is it, it's not like joining the gym or something!

After the Golden Temple we headed over to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre site, an event that I'd recently read and learned about in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. To give you an overview of what happened, the massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place in the Jallianwala Bagh public garden in the northern Indian city of Amritsar, and was ordered by Brigadier-General Reginald E.H. Dyer. On Sunday 13 April 1919, Dyer was convinced that a major insurrection was at hand. He banned all meetings, and hearing a meeting of 15,000 to 20,000 people had assembled he marched his fifty riflemen to a raised bank and ordered them to shoot at the crowd which included men, women, and children. Dyer kept the firing up for about ten minutes. Official Government of India sources estimated the fatalities at 379, with 1,100 wounded. The casualty number estimated by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000 killed. I knew this when we arrived so had an idea what to expect but as soon as we walked in I wanted to leave. The garden itself is beautiful but it really has been turned into an exhibition demonstrating the horrific acts carried out by the British army in this place and I genuinely felt ashamed. Photography was allowed and I took a couple of photographs but I couldn't bring myself to photograph the wall filled with bullet holes that so many people were standing in front of or the martyr's well which hundreds of people jumped into attempting to escape and were shot at until they were bled to death or drowned. I actually felt a bit sick, extremely uncomfortable and just wanted to get the hell out of there. I'm glad that I went and I think it was important to go and see what our army was capable of but as my mum said at the time, we're still doing this allover the world today so nothing's really changed.

After the rather traumatic visit to the massacre site, we returned to the hotel intending to relax for an hour or so before heading off to the India/Pakistan border for the closing ceremony that happens at sunset every day. We were promptly informed that to make it we needed to leave five minutes ago so after grabbing our passports we jumped into a rickshaw and sped off towards the border. Thankfully we made it just in time for the start of the ceremony (this may have had something to do with non-Indian passport holders being treated as VIPs - literally, we had a VIP entrance - so we managed to by pass the large queues and get some pretty superb seats!) and I am so glad we didn't miss it. IT WAS SPECTACULAR. The guide book described it as 'Monty Python-esque' and they're not wrong. 20,000 people turn up to watch this every day and the crowds (both Indian and Pakistani - separated by the border gate obviously!) sit in the stands waving flags, playing music and cheering for their country. It really was more of a show than a ceremony - music, a compere leading the ceremony and rallying up the crowd, it was so exciting and I had no idea what to expect. Before the official ceremony started about 50 Indian girls from the crowd got up to dance when Jai Ho came on (famous from the Slumdog Millionnaire movie) and the Pakistan side responded by playing the call to prayer over the loudspeaker - a profound moment I thought. I'm not even sure I can explain the cermony itself - it's almost like a pissing contest between the two countries (who interestingly have worked together on this ceremony, the marching, the kicking, the shouting is all choreographed to be the mirror image of each other so it shows they can work together on something!) and the theatrics are not to be missed. I bought the DVD of the whole thing on the way out so anyone who'd like to see what I'm talking about can certainly borrow it, or google it, honestly it's amazing!

After the ceremony we headed back to Amritsar to return to the Golden Temple to see it at night. Mum was absolutely right, it's like a completely different places when the sun goes down and the lights go on - it's literally glowing in the middle of the lake. It was a lot quieter at night so we did get to venture inside the temple which was a really moving experience. The music, the prayer, the faith - I really couldn't get over it. As we wandered around we saw people sitting on the floor, listening to the prayers, reading their own books with tears streaming down their faces. It really was a place that gets under your skin, where you feel the power of it deep inside, even without being a person of faith yourself. I'll never forget that feeling. It really is an incredibly special place.

We're leaving for Varanasi on the 6:45pm train today so we're having another few hours in Amritsar before our 22 hour journey across India to one of the oldest cities in India. I'm apprehensive about the train journey but I'm packing enough crisps to get me through it (lol) and a few books and a nintendo DS to while away the hours. Apparently the scenery is pretty spectacular too so I can't wait!