7.15 Up and Away

-
We closed up the apartment, left with our bags and headed to the bus stand. We were glad it was all downhill. 

We arrived for breakfast with our friendly cafe owner. 2 aloo paratha, curd, daal and chai. We sat for a further 20 minutes before we saw our bus starting to load. To ensure we had good seats we jumped onboard early.

The driver and his friend replaced a broken wing mirror before we left. Goodbye Dalhousie!


The bus drove carefully down the mountain and made regular stops to pick up and drop off people. We stopped regularly to eat and momos for lunch in Pathenkot filled the gap. The crisps and sweets also helped too.

We arrived at a toll booth on the way to Amritsar. We jumped out here to meet our friend. We were shuttled off to his house one by one on his electric scooter before being treated to a nice hot cup of chai. 

We fed the neighbourhood cats, checked out the vegetable garden and had a delicious meal together. We spent the rest of the evening with the family in deep discussion on living a long life. Grandpa listened in too at 78 ;-)


Popular posts from this blog

Portsmouth

-
Image
Up at 6.55 to meet our 7am breakfast slot. Breakfast was amazing and we ate the lot from dried fruit to double bacon and eggs. All washed down with posh coffee - awesome. Packing the bikes was easy but it takes a little bit of time ... We started our journey about 8.30. We passed our friend's house, his kids school and his allotment. We got a little lost in Southampton due to road closures but after a little back tracking from the scary dual carriageway, all was good. A lot of our route followed the National Cycle Trail 246, however it kept disappearing into nowhere. We eventually found it again but miles away from where we last saw the signs. We passed over lots of water today, saw lots of boats and had puncture number 2! Fixed, we headed off again. A few diversions, some nice tracks and now we could see the Spinnaker tower in the distance. This added a little motivation to the pedalling. A quick stop in Waitrose to stock up on goodies and we arrived at our destination - Portsmout...
Read more

Travelling south

-
Image
Our alarm woke us early as we have to catch the 8am train, which is about an hour's travel away.  Two friends were due to give us a lift to the bus stop on the back of their motorbikes.  However one overslept so the other asked his brother in law to give us a lift in his car!  Rather than dropping us at the end of the road at the bus stop, he kindly took us to the bus station. A bus was about to leave so we jumped on.  This bus took us back into Kozhikode where it was a short walk to the train station.  On arrival we discovered the train we were going to catch was delayed by 1.5 hours.  However another train, which took longer, was running on time so would get us there half an hour before our original train now would.  We bought our tickets and waited.  The station was filling up fast, which is always worrying when you only have a general ticket, so no allocated seat ...  and the journey is 5.5 hours. The train arrived on time and we jumped in a carriage which was less crowded, alt...
Read more

First Day Explorers

-
Image
After a good night's sleep, we woke early...ish for breakfast. We were hoping for a traditional Indian spicy fair but got a traditional boiled egg, bread and jam. We washed it down with a hot cup of Chai, so all was good. We ventured out in search of a few sites, however were easily distracted by fresh fruit platters, mango lassis and mobile phone cover shops. Next, an ATM stop to test various SBI machines. One small branch failed but the head office one worked. This was near the Mumbai stock exchange, complete with bull outside. We ended up at Horniman circular garden. An interesting name but the garden was being 'refurbished' - dug up. Marine drive is famous amongst the people of Mumbai. A huge boulevard next to the sea for romantic strolls. The stroll today wasn't filled with romance, more noise pollution as the whole sea defence boulevard was being fixed. Almost all of it for mile after mile. We had to walk on the dual carriageway but soon got fed up and headed inla...
Read more