This is the final email I'll send from India in all probability, as we're flying back from Delhi to Poland tomorrow. We're in a place called Mcleod Ganj now, which is rather appropriately named because it seems to be permanently cloudy here. When the veil of mist does lift, which is occasional, you are treated to spectacular views though. It's got a very laid back vibe here, which is mainly due to the fact that it has a massive Buddhist community here - this is the de facto home of the Tibetan government in exile since it got driven out of its homeland by the Chinese in the 1950's. The Dalai Lama set up shop here with his entourage, and he occasionally treats the local monks to lectures and lessons. Unfortunately, we're going to miss him by a couple of days - he's down in the valley below in Dharamsala at the moment attending to some official business - maybe giving advice to the Burmese government on how not to treat the monks in Rangoon. It seems incredible that they could shoot on such peaceful people, but then it's incredible that the Chinese are responsible for the death of over a million in similar callous acts over the last half century. I visited the monastry here yesterday and got chatting to a monk about the Tibetan issue - it's an unsolvable one realistically, but the Buddhist community in exile here do agitate for action in their small, patient, peaceful way. I think it'll probably come to the surface more in the run-up to the China Olympics next year - one which should be boycotted by everyone in the same way as for example Moscow was but of course won't be because Communist Russia is far more evil than Communist China.

Anyway, enough politics - I have to write about the highlight of this trip so far, which was the route we took east from Shimla to the Tibet border along the Kinnaur and Spitti valleys. The main backpacker route from Shimla is to go north to Manali and then to Jammu and Kashmir to a place called Ley in the far north, along dizzying passes and through astonishing scenery. Unfortunately, by mid-September, this route is already becoming dangerously unmotorable and it's closed completely by early October; it gets up to 5000 metres in places. So we didn't have to think too long about what to do, especially as our route had already been recommended to us. The hard part was initially deciding how to do it; the choice was between bus and jeep, and we'd been told that these are some of the most dangerous and difficult roads to traverse in the world, which made the idea of bus sound doubly untempting after some nightmarish rides in Rajasthan. Jeeps, however, are quite expensive to hire for two people, so we had to find somebody to share with in Shimla. By chance, we found these people whilst strolling down the main drag in Shimla (amusingly and very Americanly named 'The Mall') - we came across two girls (Bea and Dominique, two doctors who studied in Leeds but were from Jesmond and Corbridge respectively) and an American guy called Tyson. They had been staying in the room adjacent to ours in our hotel so I said hi to them and asked them what they doing. On finding they were undecided, I outlined our plans and they seemed impressed enough to want to go with us in a share jeep. Which was fortunate, becuse it cut the cost by three fifths, to apprximately 350 rupees each a day for the vehicle - less than five pounds or thirty zl.

Tyson was a Yank. We saw him limbering up one morning before a walk and caught his eye. He appeared to have two girls in tow, English as it turned out - Beatrice and Dominique - two very well spoken students in their early twenties who were training to be doctors and who had been doing a placement in a hospital in Gwalior in central India before embarking on a bit of travelling. They were very jolly hockey sticks but he seemed quite down to earth. Tyson had met them in the hospital: he was a nurse. The two girls were as shocked as I was that we were all from Newcastle; none of us had accents you could discern, but they had marbles in their mouths. They seemed ok though, and we agreed to meet at 9am outside the hotel to begin the trip the next day.

We duly arrived at the allotted time after scouting around town for a cash point (this would be the last one we'd see for two weeks) - I got out 800 Rupees - about 100 pounds - and hoped it would be enough for that time. It turned out to be more than enough. The jeep would cost less than 5 pounds a day, and the other costs in the mountains were minimal. We were left waiting for the other three for about an hour. When they finally turned up, they complained that they had been waiting fruitlessly at the office where you need to get a pass to get to this part of India, and had to give up in the end because a faulty photo-copier scuppered the whole thing. They would have to get their passes in the last biggish town down the valley before the Inner Line near the Tibet border, Rekong-Peo. This meant, I knew, an afternoon of faffing around at some point in the near future, but there was nothing to be done about it. Our jeep pulled up, and the Travel agency owner made a big show of telling his driver, in detail, where he would be taking us over the next few days, in English, and the somewhat complicated arrangements for payment (we weren't all coming back together). Our driver gave the Indian shaking head movement which could mean "yes, I understand", "I have some idea what you're saying, but I'm not taking everything in", or "I have no idea what you're saying and am just making this ambiguous head movement to make everyone feel ok". For the next five days, we got about twenty words of English out of our driver, so the last option was quite close to the truth. We set off up and out of Shimla along a fairly busy road, but it got less and less busy over the course of the day. The first day was pleasant though unspectacular. We were still driving through mainly Hindi villages, and though they were generally less scruffy than the chaotic mess of shanty towns you drive through on the plains, there was nothing particularly pretty or picture-worthy. We averaged about 40km an hour on a fairly bumpy road, along the Sutlej Valley. We lunched in a truck stop town called Rampur and beyond there the valley narrowed and became much more spectacular; we entered the Kinnaur, as it's known. We were passed by a huge group of motorcyclists struggling along the bumpy road, and waved. I didn't fancy being in their seats, but this was spectacular biking country. At about this point we passed by two Canadian cyclists who we'd encounter many more times on the loop around Himmachal Pradesh. We turned up a steep sided valley onto a one track road towards a village called Sarahan and reached it after a heart stopping 45 minute drive past some very steep drops just as it was beginning to get dark and starting to rain.

Sarahan was a beautiful little place set high above the valley and with the first of many temples we'd see here in the Buddhist style. This one actually was Hindu, but the lines between the two religions become very blurred sometimes and it can be hard to tell. We wanted to stay in the temple complex, where there was a lovely peaceful guest house, but the motorbikers had got there first and taken all the rooms. We went to a government run place instead which was fine and gave great views of the valley. When we went to eat in the restaurant though, we were told we'd have to be quick because the bikers had booked the place out at 8pm. This was much to my chagrin of course, but we hadn't much choice in this village as it seemed the only place open. There were a couple of ropey-looking Tibetan places down in the village, but they seemed likely to leave you toilet-bound. We repaired to the hotel bar after supper, which was very English-colonial feeling, and ordered a round of beers and sat down to a game of a*******. After about 3 bottles of 'Godfather', an 8 percent concoction which comes in 660ml bottles, we were a*******d. The bikers came in and took over the bar, but they were a friendly, chilled out bunch and we got into conversation with a few of them. A couple from Norfolk told us that they had been planning this trip for years, and had read a lot about it. It's a notorious route for accidents - about 10 bikers fall off the roads and die each year in this region alone - but it's also one of the most respected in biker circles - a real feather in the cap - and, they said, the roads would get much, much worse. One of the women seemed a bit shell-shocked at it already, and would just say "today was hairy". With this sobering thought, we went to bed.

The next day started bright and sunny and we set off after a stroll around the village to take pictures and see the temple. There were some bizarre, strict rules of entry into the temple. Visitors had to wear a cap, leather goods like belts and wallets had to be left with the guards, and shoes as usual had to be removed. The rifle-toting guards seemed a trifle bored by it all though. I suppose they felt that it must have been much more exciting 150 years ago when they still had human sacrifices there. The jeep was left in a cloud of dust by the departing bikers but this wouldn't be the last we'd see of them. The thing with going round this part of India was that if you met someone, they were sure to be going the same way as you because there was only one road. The scenery got more and more spectacular, and the drops to one side of the road higher, for most of the morning, but at some point in the early afternoon east of Niehar, it got very industrial and drab. For 30km or more, the valley had ben harnessed for hydroelectric power and was marred by machinery, trucks and noise. We eventually passed all this reminder of the industrially blighted side of India when we turned south off the main road into the Sangla Valley. This was touted in the guide books as one of the prettiest in northern India, and it indeed was very impressive. The cliff-hanging road up to the village was again white-knuckle stuff, but our driver seemed confident and competent enough, which was reassuring. We'd heard horror stories of drunk/stoned bus drivers in this area veering off roads regularly. We found a great place to stay in Sangla which was populated with a friendly group of Israelis - there seemed to be more Israelis in India than any other nationality for some reason, and all of them were wearing these awful plastic sandals which seem to be this summer's fashion. Looking up at the clear sky that night on the way home, I think I saw more stars than I've ever seen in my life. Our place was a bit out of town and down a dark road, and was a lovely, if very cold, torch-lit walk. The temperature had plummeted by this point, and was down to about 8 degrees at night. The next day, we bumped into the bikers again a bit further down the valley in a place called Chitkul, which at 3500m was another steep climb up the valley in the jeep and even colder. When we went for a stroll there, we noticed that we had some difficulty breathing in the thin air when going uphill. We walked past a high school with a sign on the outside saying "what we learn with pleasure we never forget", and took notes for when I got back to Poland. There was a class of children shivering outside in lines, evidently writing an exam as their teacher stalked up and down the lines. They must have run out of chairs inside.