I managed to sleep quite well. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep for over an hour but got up at 8.30. I went for breakfast at a Tibetan café. I had porridge and Tibetan bread with cheese and tomato as I listened to the woman at the till chanting prayers at high speed for a long time. In between, she had to attend to the other workers and lost the calm and shouted like a stereotypical old woman, then went back into the prayers! I stocked up well on food as I was going to get a bus to Chandigarh, 5 and a half hours north in Punjab. I got a rickshaw to the bus station and it was quite similar to those in Ecuador. All you have to do is say where you want to go and they will point you in the right direction. It was much dirtier than in Ecuador but I got on a standard bus and paid 180 Rs. Despite what you may think about Indian buses, it was very civilised – not even half full when I got on and it never got completely full. I read, listened to music and dozed off for most of the journey. I also noticed how incredibly dirty the land is in general. Rubbish just piles up everywhere and the farm animals tend to be where it is the worst. It gave me an idea that all the plastic could be used like straw is when making mud houses – to reinforce the walls. It doesn't biodegrade for hundreds of years so should work. Then, I was reading my guide book and found that in Chandigarh, a man who moved there was appalled with the rubbish and spent many years recycling them to make sculptures! I have to see that tomorrow morning, to see how he did it.
I arrived at 5pm and went to a recommended hotel. They had a room free but it was more expensive than I'd hoped – 1300 Rs. Oh well, it kind of balances out last night's being so cheap at 400. I looked for a restaurant in the book and remembered the roads to take but when I got there, there was no restaurant there, not even a building, in fact! So I had to go back and eat in the one near to the hotel. It was good and I was pleased to be able to eat a lot as I hadn't eaten anything more than peanuts and a peanut sweet thing I bought from one of the sellers that got on the bus at different intervals – just like in Ecuador! It's funny how some things reminded me of there, even though it's in another continent. People are people, the whole world over...
Anyway, the food was cheap so I went to look for a bar as it was only 8.20. I drew a map on a piece of paper to take with me to find a bar that sounded cool, and would you believe it, I couldn't find it. The streets that I walked through were very calm, especially compared to Delhi – wide and spacious, not much traffic or people and it felt very safe. The weather here is not too bad, by the way. A little cold at night, reasonable in the day and I haven't seen rain yet.
I asked some people where the bar was and nobody knew so I came across the city centre with lots of shops around a wide, open square. There were a couple of bars there so I went into one, had a beer and watched the last half an hour of Barcelona's last game! After that, I just walked back and was starting to feel a little tired. It seems that I have adjusted to the time zone already, which is nice...
I'll get an early start in the morning to see that sculpture park and then move on to Shimla in another province.
No comments:
Post a Comment