From Delhi to Dharamsala

Phew. Have now escaped the suffocating humidity of Delhi’s pre-Monsoon heat. It wasn’t an easy escape, mind.

I just spent 13 hours on a bus being periodically, and ever so covertly, touched up for the pleasure of this mountain air. Two tablets of valium and not a wink of sleep, due to a voracious wandering hand that kept ’accidentally’ falling off the armrest and onto my leg.

And it wasn’t even a dirty old man. It was a young university student from Pune, who had earlier been part of a conversation in which a Finnish girl and I were explaining in detail what we would like to do to men who can’t keep their hands to themselves.

Chop. Their. Dicks. Off.

Perhaps he misheard?

So now I’m in Dharamsala, the home of the great Dalai Lama. Also home to about a million travellers, a billion yoga and meditation centres, a thousand ayervedic health centres and a rapacious Tibetan-themed marketing ploy.

I’m staying in a place called Bhagsu, which is a few kilometres further north into the mountains, which is full of winding alleyways and crooked houses and cows in the most inappropriate places.

Have found a room with a big window and a view out into the Himalayas. Unfortunately I think it might also have bed bugs, if the string of red welts on my arm are anything to go by. But for £2 a night and some beautiful mountain views, who’s complaining?

The innards and the outards

My first thought during the approach into Delhi airport was that the city looks much like the motherboard of my poor camera - an illogical union of square boxes and wiry roads, all piled together as if the world is running out of space.


Palatial houses and tower blocks jostle with corrugated iron and tarpaulin towns, the spaces between filled with bricks and dust and relics of life (or sanitiser in the case of my camera).

It’s like the city has been furiously shaken and replaced with its innards hanging out like a run-over dog, intestines spilling from rooftops and lingering in crevices.

I really knew I had arrived when I was greeted in the arrivals hall by a putrid smell of faeces (and for the first time in a week it had nothing to do with me YAY).

In my haste to escape the smells and the Eyes - ah, the Eyes! - I scrambled into a taxi forgetting I was wearing a rather large backpack and promptly tumbled straight back out again as it rebounded against the roof. Smooth as ever. The Eyes loved it.

Also have made dreadful error of all errors. During interminable boredom of five-hour wait at Abu Dhabi airport, I booked flights to Sri Lanka for 6 weeks’ time without taking into account the little footnote on my Indian visa, which says: “Cannot enter country within two months of last visit.”

Oops. So it looks like the decision has been made. I can't return to India. Can I feasibly call this fate or is it just pure stupidity?