INDIA (again!)

Having the time constraint of getting to Poland for August means I've had to pick and choose which bits I will and won't cycle through...and this time India was a fly-by visit.
From the border I take a train to Delhi....and so does half of India...the people keep endlessly pouring into the carriage as it's Indian holiday season. With every conceivable space taken up by body, child or luggage, we all realise that our hopes of sleeping in our own berth for the night are long gone. Those with berths take in as many children and suitcases they can manage, whilst the rest of us resign to squatting on the floor...there's not even enough room for us to lay down properly. And in the middle of the night, surveying this sea of humanity, I feel a deep sense of pride at the dignity of Indian people. Beautiful women in delicately woven saris' squat in silent acceptance amidst the dirt and squalor of the train floor with their tiny babies huddled in close. Without a word of protest people accepted their fate and held their heads high. There is a great dignity to the way Indian people bear their suffering and manage in a system that is constantly on the verge of overload and break down. And so I sat there, watching these Indian queens, dignified even in squalor, silently crying tears for a people who endure such unnecessary everyday suffering and poverty, yet a people who still hold themselves with a quiet pride.

And from Delhi I return to Amritsar on the Indo-Pak border from where the cycling will really start uninterrupted. It seems right to bring the journey full circle and finish where I started. My first taste of Indian night air becomes my last.
And here I meet a fellow cyclist coming the other way-life brings the right people at the right time. He brings exactly the first-hand information I need for cycling in Pakistan, and an upbeat positivity to reassure any worries. And so off I toddle in over 40 degrees heat, back to the good lands of Pakistan. Back to the beautiful red bricks of Lahore's old streets and back to the hospitality of Islam.

Goodbye India, Hello Pakistan...