Our North Indian tour began with a thundery send-off from Delhi. First stop was Amritsar in the Punjab State. We went to the Wagah border at sunset to see the parade. It is between India and Pakistan, and every evening the soldiers from each side of the border salute each other and lower the flags to close the border for the night. We entered the gates as soon as they opened at 4.30pm, to get a seat in the stadium, before the parade started at 6pm. The Pakistan side was half empty but on the Indian side it was v v squashed and we had to sit for ages in the heat 
There was a chanting competition between the countries and naturally we won on the Indian side! In the evening we went back to our hotel in Amritsar. After dinner we visited the Golden temple - the most important Sikh temple in the world. It is made of gold and looked really pretty, because it was lit up in the darkness and reflected in the lake surrounding it. In the morning we visited Jhalia Wali Bagh - a memorial to the Sikhs and Hindus who were shot in 1919 by a British General just because they were holding a peaceful protest.
It was a v long drive to our next stop - Kullu in Himachal Pradesh. This is a beautiful valley area in the Himalayan foothills of north east India. It took us 9 hours (11 including the breaks) to get there, because the roads are so windy and bumpy. It is actually cold here (in comparison to the 40 degrees in Delhi) and we needed to use a quilt at night! It was also cold when we got up this morning, but it warmed up during the day (still nothing compared to Delhi!) although we could see snow on the mountains. We are staying here with Pragya's family, who are feeding us very well! Today Pragya's cousin took us to an area called Naggar, to visit a castle. We took a very steep and tiring uphill walk to a temple. We found a German bakery to have a drink in, and then we visited a Russian painter's museum and house. We took another uphill walk to the 'Himalayan Research Institute' however this appeared to just be more paintings! We haven't had this much exercise since we left England, but we needed to burn off all that food! On the way home, we looked inside a Buddhist Monastery/Monk school, which was nice and peaceful.
It is time for more food soon so we'd better be off xx
